The rain feeds the trees drop by drop until they're green
Spring has come
I can smell it in the sun

The scent of a summer long ago
Wafts through my open window

Pretzel-legged on the blacktop driveway
A bit past midnight on my eighteenth birthday

The sour taste of a grape Black and Mild
Sits on my tongue

White stars in a black sky
Engulfed by the feel of it all

two months in and
my heart remains
more than in tact
but full

and I realize with
a twinge of
fear

this may be
the real ******* deal

may there be many biscuits
and head pets and big fields for running
where you are now, and
may your memories live on in ours

I want to know you.
to your core.
the gentle chest.
I want to insert myself there and
breathe your breaths

Overwhelmed by how
understated you are

My thoughts aren't
over-thought and instead

I am simply, for once,
content

I am in limbo
searching for
what I need or
what I want
convinced they are
mutually exclusive

I will sit and
consider while remaining
stuck somewhere
in the middle

never once asking if
what I need and what
I want are
not separate at all
but instead,
they are one

Despite all,
loneliness is a downfall.
when leaves start to gather
at the tree’s trunks
and creamy clouds roll in

the pit begins to widen and
autumn will take
its course:
******* me dry once more
every year this time
like clockwork

I hear a young one
asleep in a bed next to me
At five, she breathes so evenly
Untarnished yet from the world to come
All sweet dreams except for some
While my half grown head explodes with thoughts
Of a dark future ahead

I feel the dizzy poetry
coming on
and the American Spirits
box brags about recycling
as if it gives a ****
that the environment is
crumbling

time will always be
my lifelong enemy

it will never find
a friend in me

always waiting for that
fatal flaw

not a minor one,
but the one that ends it all

I know it will come
and I will give up

on anything new,
keep on reliving the past

after all, it's
the only thing that lasts

a text with
"you probably don't care, but
happy birthday"
with three minutes to spare

the next day consumed
by thoughts of him and
what we could have been

move on for good
from the romanticized
day dream about the
strawberry blonde who
never would be?

I used to get pleasure from so many tiny little things

Wrapping a boy’s sweatshirt around me, a zip up, or a pullover, sleeves slightly over the length of my own arms.

Inhaling the scent like a drug, the days before the marijuana and the reek of *** soaked sheets and

this was it.

A hoodie, doused in cheap body spray, Axe maybe?

I thought I was floating on a ******* cloud
Cheers from a homecoming football game and
The scent and warmth of cotton fibers and
it filled me.

Joy out of everything minute

only closure I ever had
with the last I loved
happened in a dream

I wonder if
he had the same one
last night

because I woke up feeling
like it happened in real life

I have been wrong
about many things
and wronged by
many men

I hope this time
I might be right
for once in
my quarter
of a life

and my world
will change
in the best
of ways

I have been wrong
about many things
and wronged by
many men

I hope this time
I might be right
for once in
my quarter
of a life

and my world
will change

Fate has failed me
once again
as March comes
marching back

"now's not
the time"
she says

and I am forced
to move forward
with the weight
of the past's mistakes
still on
my shoulders

chunks of my life
gone

like they were
never there
to begin with

sunk into quicksand
not to be
seen again

buried deep,
an alternate
version of me

In December,
bathed in the light
of a holiday tree,
a man hinted that
he had love for me

then left
for eight weeks
to a place
I cannot reach

I am not the one
who decides
the fate
and nor is he

It rests in
the powers of Time
that be

(c) sea 2017

I feel it,
a pair of brown eyes,
with the perfect
music playing
and
the return of
feelings and the
spark, spark, spark
still there
after a year away

I'll be waiting
because he could be
the one I need
and ****
Father Time
for trying to take that
away from me

I lost it all a year ago:
not a lover, but
a friend,
one after another,
in domino effect.

And as this year
takes its final
curtain call,
I’ve been left
(almost nearly)
on my own
to greet
the year of
2017

As the loneliness creeps in

I have not felt a thing
in quite a while

but for the anger and
heartbreak caused by
my own country's betrayal

he quit me cold turkey
like a pack of cigarettes

and when it did not work
he found his nicotine patch

in the form of a
grade nine math teacher

easier for him than for me
and I kicked the habit

only after months spent
suppressing cravings of

his memories

it is insane to me
how life exists
at four o'clock in the
******* morning
lungs still breathe



(c) SEA 2016

Autumn encroaches
and one year ago
you met a girl
she owned the hot glue gun
and I held the hammer
she may well be the one
and I’ve felt no love for anyone
since it was my cheek
that your lips touched
she fixed the heart I shattered
and I was left with
no pieces to hang on to
in memoriam

she can keep yours and
I will hold my own

her last love found a new one
as she tried to have it all
became a career woman and
got married to the law

unsure of what to say
in a cryptic state,
the balancing beam of
appearing happy while
still being me,
the jaded queen of
uncertainty

I begged for this
and I have it now,
and already I have
saturated it in
self-doubt

My head pounds with the
course of one night's gin
(and a thrown-in whiskey sour)
and I realize this town isn't for me
any longer.

the fear is starting from scratch
nothing from the past
eating away at me
weighing me down so
I can't be happy
I leave it behind
and close the page
what I need is
not simply a new chapter
but a whole new book
a whole new place

I am the gaping hole in your heart
you pour your insecurities into
full-force, I am your canyon.

I am the one you want when
you don't know what it is you want,
and I am to the brim
with your own past

And I still come back with my
Addiction for affection because
I need to keep the void
filled until I can't remember
what my own baggage is for

"The lonely stoner seems to free her mind at night"
the words echo through the halls of an
empty brain
A stereo plays the anthem of the ***-smoking archetype
But it's reality: Can she free her mind
if there's nothing that's tied down?

March, meek, bends its head
half-heartedly mumbles "I'm back"
with an admirably early gust of
mild spring wind
and I wish for it to pass
until summer can take grasp
and the grey clouds spread to reveal
the sky bluer than I have ever seen before

when you care more about
your loved one's emotions
than your own happiness
you write a cataclysm of
drunk poetry that reveals your sense of
giving too much of a ****
deep beneath the brainwaves of your
***** mind
saturate your own feelings with
their happenings
let your body leave its
chemistry and make like
you have too much Empathy
but really you're doing nothing more than
living Vicariously

every touch for lust,
none for the need of love

but this is the life I've chosen,
to feel something outside

of my hollow shell,
no matter what it takes

I measure my latest life in a series of cliches
and obsessive compulsions,
convinced I'll be alone forever if I keep going
loneliness disguised as self-love
every minute awake another piece of me decays
but I muster up and put on the face
fill my voids in the usual ways
and shove down the parts of me I hate

Made it to the edge of the end zone and
I trip over my own insecurities
Can't get back up as the time runs out
I am a one-woman team and
he's far behind
teetering on the 50 yard line
Asking himself: Is it worth it
to try to win this one?
His own answer is in the
timer buzzing and he
forfeits the game,
leaving me back at square one
staring at the leader boards
heart drained of all fight
questioning why I couldn't
make the right plays this game.

I must be my own top player
until someone steps up to plate

it happened again:
Earth went around the Sun once more and
brought us all along for the ride,
leaving me unable to digest
the last drive we had and I must
conclude that I'm not sure I'm ready
to see what lies ahead

Warning label says:
"Do not leave alone for
too long" because she will
climb into her own brain,
shutting the door behind her

you must go in and
wiggle the latch
pull her out and
remind her who she is
if her thoughts consume her
you may never get her back

Warning label says:
"Do not leave alone for
too long" because she will
climb into her own brain,
shutting the door behind her
and if you want her back
you must go in and
wiggle the latch
pull her out and
remind her who she is
if her thoughts consume her
you may never get her back

Yes,
project onto me like I'm a movie screen
trapped emotions for your last lover
with a quiet "I love you" in a beer-drenched stupor
as eyes gloss over and you forgot who
you're speaking to;
blind to the dark hair, the
subtle differences and I know:
those words aren't meant for me
and they won't ever be

the Green-Eyed Monster,
sit down with a box of popcorn
in my mind to mentally watch
the person I truly loved
nuzzle his blonde head
into a new woman's breast

yet here I lie, in reality,
outside of my own
jealous fantasies,
with my face buried
in another man's chest

I won't call it even until I know the story's rest

I need someone like me
aimlessly floating
half-hoping to bump into
love's open door
yet in an attempt to
find their soul again
they miss
and it's back to square one
wandering with no path
a shattered heart lost in the abyss
wondering what went wrong
until they care less and less
yes, a bitter flower
rough to the touch
one I can get to open up
is exactly what I want

“It’s not you, it’s me” they say, laced with *******, faces towards the wall, mumbled under breath and over satellite cell phone waves.
     “I wouldn’t care if it was,” to myself, a breeze to say the half-truth, shrugged shoulders, bitterness in the air
     I’ve never been the kind who cares
I’m supposed to let things go as easily as they were found.

I must stop trying to
find the fatal flaw before
my cold feet freeze to the floor
and I become glued in my ways;
refusing to see past
the points that could ruin everything and
I fall into my own trap and
never find happiness
in another human being

Never in the right place at the right moment.
Always a servant to time,
never enough but always too much,
too few minutes to decide
who I want to be
or where I want to go
and I remain in the wrong place
at the incorrect hour
and I'll never know who's waiting there
because there's only so many
ticks on a clock
and time won't freeze
for those who are too early
or too late
and I miss opportunities
to find my fate
and instead rest on the clock's face
left with no choice
but to wait

when one door closes
it doesn't all the way
it is cracked open
in case you want me to
come in and stay
for now I can peek in
and see straight through
to the inner version of you
you can put on a mask
and play the part
but you're the same
as you always were
and until we push it closed
I'll peer into
the door of truth and
she will be the one who's fooled

October ends graceless,
blackout drunk,
singing goodbye in lucid tongues

the season Goddess
greets her favored
November
with a swift kiss

and the leaves begin to drop
to their knees
and beg and plead:  
let November
bring us inner peace