Breakdown in the tower,
I'm going to miss you
As I wait for the next step up
The lightning crackles on about.

Or waves roar beneath
Past listens crash alive
I'm healed, but
In our past I was broken.

You'll be everything without me, but
Of course
Not our everything,
That's a drop in our uninventable ocean now...

Our sea between us.

Well, know heartily that I laughed,
That I loved you,
Friends and lips,
Walks and trips

Forever chuckling on into my world.

Never been there.
Can't talk about it much.
I've seen shadows on the wall.
Crying faces in my dorm hall.
I've seen reflections of friends
in the communal toilet while they Puke-TSD.
Can't talk about it much.
It's not a subject I like to touch.
Never been there.
Never talking like I've seen it all.
They have. Ask them what it's like to fall
down and check your face for scrapes
and have other people put band-aids
on your ***. ("Oops, my mistake!")
Or better yet, don't.
Don't ask me.
Don't ask them.
They can talk.
I've never been.

If they ask, you can answer with the voice of a friend.
But don't ask. Don't reopen the PTSDen
of pain and the past. Just listen if they ask.
Have some ******* courtesy till then.

He hated open doors
Less to hide behind, he felt
And more for them to charge through,
More to use...

Walking past the spotlight eyes
He broke his sunglasses on the daily
And the burning light of the dim bulbs lit the school
Hurt.

Spaz They whispered
But they might have shouted
What feels like a whisper hurts like a knife
When the names are for you

He walked home out of breath
He never wanted to breathe again
He saw how breaths had been used to hurt
As much as punches.

And she hugged him

Carpet feels soft when you know the feet that tread it
Mum
What a feeling
Coming out of the plunging terror.

Darling
The sweetest word he knew
More syllables, more mind behind what he was used to
He ****** in the cherry hugs through his nostrils

And threw down his books.

She looked in at him enjoying
Time spent away from that
And smiled
He will get through it

Closing the door quietly,
She dried out a tear
Moving a sleeve over her birth-marked face
Which had earned her such identity.

Digging through a chest,
Long ago she had named "Weapons"
She pulled out her old school sword
Hello, Courage. she said.

Next morning she gave her boy his lunch
Of potions of strength and fortitude
Made magic
By her note telling him she loved him

Next morning she wrapped her boy
In an armour raincoat
Made iron by
Her hug compressing it to metal

Next morning she filled his tender hand
With her sword
Made courage by
Her own pain hammered into it

And she sent him back on his way.

As she watched him go
Feigned eagerness in his step
She could not hide his pain ahead,
But she knew what came at the end;

Ah, it has a thousand names.
But I shall call it Beauty;
For when he slays those demons
He shall know what he truly is.

And what they are.

He loved her
For she's only ever been amazing
And she liked herself
For her strength forged in the fire.

The boy knew.

At nineteen you were far too young
To take your final breath,
And though these sixteen years have passed,
I'm haunted by your death

I think about how life would be
If you had never died,
I think about what you'd be like,
If only you'd survived

I'm older now than you were then,
I wish that you were here,
The sister that I never had,
I'd share with you, my fears

Like whether I could be a mom
When I always want to cry
Or how sometimes I feel so sad
I wish that I could die

I wish that when I spoke to you
That you could answer back
I know that you would talk me round
You always had the nak

I feel so lonely all the time
But wear my bravest face
I never let them see me cry
In sadness's embrace

Late summer a lofty pause. At work I am absent from myself; from any conviction. The vegetation has reached to its fullest and covers the vision. Memory free of concern. As in the work of nighttime to morning, so memory of other seasons is dimmed. We wish to retreat at length and recline to watch the season's sunset. Not yet the descent into the urgent. A moment sent to you so silent, it is punctuated with the song of cicadas, chyrp of crickets, so nourishing for you have only to lift your eyes to see.