She's a deep breathe of happiness
Or at the very least
She's not sticky with the muck of sadness

I can see it now.
Why you needed them
Your light in the darkness that was my life
Your life vest in my treacherous waters

Baby, I'm the shark.
And the sad fact is
I may be made of fire
But I am no beacon of hope, light, and laughter

It doesn't make you a bad person
To not want to burn for me
Like I burn for you
This is what love looks like for me

But I am certain,
If you ask,
They'll see my shade of grey
and not just your black and white.

I release the smoke in the night,
Not the blackness itself
Think on that, if you will think on me at all.
In the mean time
Know that I finally understand
Why you needed all of them.

I will keep writing until it stops hurting.

Even if it's just rewriting our conversations in my head

Over and over


And over

Since we met,
a day has not gone by



Where I do not think of you.

You're going to be just fine
You've suffered greater losses
Than the likes of me.
Hell, you suffered for me.
It's only fair that I relinquish any hold on you
Set you free from the charcoal chamber of my heart.
I can feel the grates cracking beneath your clenched hands

Run.
Run from here before I devour your light.

Seek the daytime,
Embrace the sunshine, my friend.
No more rainy days
Here comes the sun.
Just for you.

I feel the wanting
as you are haunting...
my lustful, needy...
greedy..
thoughts

I know I really hadn't ought
to think this way
of things to do when down we lay
and about your warm & rugged arms
keeping me from any harm

I'm swallowed by seductive charms
defenseless you're
whispering the sky my name
know of me ...my secret shame
this need...we share?

words said kerning
we're bothered,
....yearning
I  am bare
for you..
I feel a need to share with you
could we face
  our darkness together?

on gloomy tides of stormy weather
is written on the Dead Sea Scrolls
a love of two who seem the same,
shared in us our
heart and souls?
I have wandered far looking...

So should we
take a chance and try
instead of always wondering why?
would we
be any good for one another
a raging fire burning
unwanted things unlearning
Could we
find of pure desire
light the lovers hottest fires?

or flames go out we tamper,
smother?
left smoldering
shouldering our way,
and left...
we never learned
ready to rise
and ready to
.....be BURNED?

Cherie Nolan © 2016

Here in the capitol
of lowercase relations
your drink is holding
yard sales for you.

Among headstones is a table, a lock, a plate of cucumbers
and salamanders (which can be pickled), a bowl of raisins --
a handful -- skating the bowl's concavity,

trying to

become round.

If a condition of space travel was one could nevermore return,
how many astronauts do you think
there'd have been?

More stars in lawschool than the cosmos.

Somewhere there's a story
of Indians singing
instead of pointing and laughing
when the Pilgrims came
and the Atlantic dropped off
into the earth's crust behind them. You see

pickles can't become cucumbers again. Everyone who died
drunk driving in World War II knows that.

But still

ovens dream of one day being iceboxes,
and the ice cubes all know this
and it makes them sweat.

I think I'm falling in love.
Not the cute and pretty kind,
but the mean and gritty type that
you worry is going to last too long.
Will I end up missing your face?
Watch it fade as those memories dim.
There's a reason it's called falling
and not floating nor gliding.

God, I hate falling in love.
Isn't it so peculiarly terrifying?