Yes, thank you for the invitation but I must decline. Your arms are less than welcoming. Yet you linger in my stomach, unwanted. It’s the smell of Bud Light on someone’s breath passing by me on the street. The sound of someone’s voice being raised, even slightly. The daunting task of speaking in front of my class when the professor calls my name. Those eyes, all on me. You are a paper cut that won’t stop bleeding, I need help stopping it, but I handle it on my own because I can’t ask for help. The words that are too hard to say and “too harsh” in my book, because maybe they would hurt? Even though I’m being honest, not rude. I can’t even stand up for myself because you make me think I could hurt their feelings. How stupid is that? You show up when I’m in need of something, but I have to ask a stranger for it, so I just don’t. I find you’ve sieged my being and put up walls that are stronger than any wall we’ve ever seen in all of American history. You walk right into the doors of my mind, without knocking. How rude, I must say. This is not what I asked for when I was given this thing, called life. I didn’t ask you to follow me through this forest of sadness that I’ve lost myself in. You, my awful companion, have overstayed your welcome. And It’s not like I’ve come to know you and your wretched name through time. I’ve known you since the beginning of my own. But now? Yes, now is the time that you must be shown the door that you disregarded. I know you’ll casually let yourself in in the future, but for now, your invitation has expired.

I miss her.
Everything about her.
The way her lips purse as she looks into my eyes, and her smile.
My God that smile could make any day better.
She is beauty.
She is grace.
She is patience.
She is love.
She is everything to me.
Her hair.
Her dark mane that belongs between my fingers cannot be touched for she is not with me.
I miss the way it curls in the back.
I miss putting it behind her ears so I can see her visage better.
My hands long for her skin.
I yearn for the time that I can intertwine my fingers with hers and never let go for as long as I live.
This world does not know what a lovely creature it has inhabiting it.
The world is so blind to her and what she has to offer.
I must say that anyone who crosses her path must be ready to receive such intense grace and beauty.
For if they are not, I’m not sure they could handle her.

Oh Gabrianne, you are my rose.
My sweet, sweet rose.
A rose whose petals do not wilt.
A rose who bears no thorns, only new buds.
For you are always blossoming.
You are always growing.
And my dear, you are growing into the most beautiful rose I have ever seen in my entire life.
All who look upon you can never just look once.
You bear that much beauty.

She.
She is beautiful.  
I can never tell her that enough.
She doesn’t believe me every time I tell her.
And that’s okay.
That’s why I’m here.
To tell her every day.
Every hour.
And every minute.
Because I know that it is true.
I know that she is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever come to know.
She is the type of woman whom you can just look at her, and forget everything you once worried about.
It all doesn’t matter anymore.
She’s taken those burdens and thrown them away just with her eyes.
My God.
Those eyes.
They’re like the sky.
But with no clouds.
Blue.
Blue for miles and miles and miles.
Never ending, blue.
They are the ocean.
They hold so, so much.
So much that no one will ever be able to discover everything that may be hidden deep in the waters of her eyes.
But no matter, that’s what makes life interesting.
They are my blue pens and markers and my blue shirts.
They are blue butterflies and painted blue nails.
Absolutely everything blue.
And they are beautiful.  

How could I ever tell this woman how much I adore her?
How much I love the way her hands feel on my skin…
How much I need her kisses…
I’m not sure I ever will be able to tell her how much.
There are just not enough words in the English vernacular to express how much I love and care for this woman who walked into my life just two short months ago.

This lovely creature.
This divine being.
This gorgeous woman.
This woman is truly a Godsend.
And she continues to be.
She makes me remember why I live and breathe in such a treacherous world as this.
She makes me remember what love tastes like.
She teaches me to know what it’s like to love myself.
She teaches me the meaning of a healthy relationship.
I cannot thank her enough for that.

I miss her.
Everything about her.
My sweet, sweet rose.

My heart is pounding in my chest, but I can’t feel it. The only reason I know it’s pounding is because I can’t breathe. I can’t feel my heart and it’s scaring me half to death. Why can’t I feel the thing that keeps me from dying??? Oh and where is my mind? No one knows because it’s always lost. My marbles were never mine in the first place. So how on earth could I lose them when they’ve already been lost? It’s a mystery to me. My feet have left me as well. I don’t know where they go sometimes and they take me to places I’d never thought I’d be. My ears have fallen off of my body and I can’t hear a thing. I pick them up off the floor, and stare at them in my pale hands. My eyes blacken and glaze over, deciding to quit working just because they feel lazy today. My lips become one, refusing to open and speak my already lost mind. The divots in my skin disappear, and I no longer have a fingerprint. I cannot be identified anymore for my fingerprint is gone and I can’t feel anything I touch. Who will know me anymore if I am not me, if I don’t have what makes me, me? My legs have forgotten how to be straight, and my knees buckle under my melancholy body. My lungs shrivel and wither like a dying rose, gasping for sunlight and air. As for my voice. I don’t have one. Where has it gone? Only God knows now.

I used to look into the night sky and gaze at the stars.
I'd wonder what it would be like, to touch one.
Or to be up there, floating amongst those beautiful ***** of fiery light.

But tonight, there are no stars.
And I ponder about where they've gone.
I wonder how each and every one of those great specks in the sky seem to have dimmed and died away.

And I sob because of this.
I scream into the dark void of what is night, demanding that the stars return.
But they don't.

They don't return and I can't touch them.
I can't wonder what it'd be like to be floating with them.
I can't lay in the tall grass and try to count them when I can't sleep.

So, I don't sleep tonight.
I just lay still, and will them back into view.
Will them to fill my vision and mind with amazement and thoughts of complete awe.

But they don't return.

The anxiety of it all strangles me, and I can't do it any longer.
I have to shut my eyes and breath.
I can't keep worrying about this.

After what feels like an eternity, my eyelids flutter open.
And there they are.
As if they never even left.

All of them singing their songs to me.
Each one telling its story.
And my heart finally can stop beating so loudly in my ears.

Tears well up in my already wet eyes.
But this time, these are joyful tears.
Because my stars once again fill my mind and heart with wonder and contentment.

I bite on your words as if they were a glass capsule filled with cyanide. The poison fills my body and rushes through my veins. In an attempt to get it out of my system, I wretch onto you with words just as poisonous. Blood drips from my mouth that’s now riddled with shards of your absurdity and hate. It tastes utterly awful. But I couldn’t get all of it out. It lurks in my being to this day, and I loathe it. Sometimes it hurts me more than other days, and others it feels as if it’s gone. But it always comes back one way or another, slowly killing me.

The moon understands me.
He’s been there every night and listened to my secrets, thoughts, and cries in the night.
The pain of the past has been dampered by his glowing smile.

The stars know me as well.
Their eyes twinkle as I gaze into them and tell them of my days and happenings.
Sometimes tears are shed and sometimes there’s a happy glimmer in my eye.

The dark void of night has also been an acquaintance of mine.
I want nothing but for it to come on nights that I feel the pain is too real, but others I never want to see the sky darken and end a marvelous day.

But daytime. Daytime is another story.

It can be my best friend or my worst enemy.
These days, I’d say my friend.
Day gives me a chance to be what I am meant to be.
To inspire and to grow in and through my experiences.

Daytime gives me hope now.
A calling to do, and to create.
I want to drink every last drop of light and let it shine through me.
I want to take day by the horns and kick ****.

Didn’t really know what this writing was supposed to accomplish in the beginning.
But now I do.
It’s a reminder to myself that I will not be taken advantage of by the sorrow of pains of the past.

It’s also a calling to do better.
To be a better person and to not have those nights that the moon and stars know my pain all too well.
To never want to the dark of night to come because I’m too busy being a light for others and myself.

I am me. And I am ready for the future and what wondrous things it holds for me.

My best friend of 15 years is sick.
He’s dying whether I want to acknowledge it or not.
He’s sick and I can do nothing about it.
He’s got blood matted onto his paws and on his mouth.
Mucus and more blood pouring from his nose.
He sneezes up so much blood on a daily basis.
It’s getting progressively worse, and all I can do is sit here, watch it happen, and take him to the vet.
This little boy isn’t so little any more, but he will always be that in my eyes.
He was and is my best friend.
He’s helped me through hell and everything in between
He’s my Ray Ray….
Some may say...he’s just a cat.
But he’s so much more than that…
So, so much more...