I’m in a contest I can’t win
Or even come in second.
My bird has flown from the streetlight arm
And taken promise with it.

Another lands and then departs
To mock my hopeful prayers
The sky teems with symbolic fowl
But I can’t suss their meaning.

A big one flew straight over me
But I can’t read its message.
Was it promising good health
Or telling me it’s sorry

That I’ll only get just what I have
To get me through tomorrow
And if I am not strong enough
The game will then be over.

Why are birds the messengers
In answer to my pleas
They send me signals I can’t read
And I walk on in darkness.
ljm

19 stones in the satchel I carry.
Some are huge and lots are small.
I hoist them up each morn at dawn
And stumble through another day
Looking for a place to put them down.
ljm

Your scent.
I could swear this is your scent. Why is my heart racing ?
Maybe im scared to see you again.
Scared you’ll look at me like I’m worth existing. That i won’t be able to pretend i don’t love you anymore.
Because i swore i moved on,
But you still visit me in my dreams.
I swore to myself you were gone,
Because i can’t admit that for 3 years, 156 weeks, 1095 days, and 1576800 minutes my heart still memorizes the rythme of your name.
I see you from now and then, and i could recognize the wreckage i fell for.
I see you but i can’t bring myself to accept that my absence is just another regular day to you, but your absence -
Your absence bruises me slowly, deadly.
you breathed air into my lungs when i felt as if im suffocating, and you nurtured the fire in my soul when my light went dark.
I find myself ordering your favorite coffee instead of mine.
I find you in everything beautiful, like the world carries pieces of you within it.
I find you, reflected in the softest, most breathtaking moments, and i can’t do nothing about it. So i just smile.

don’t always
understand you
incomprehensible
beautiful
woman, you     ..

the newspaper
spread out

like a tablecloth
obituaries

on one side
comics on


the other
the dead

smiling the
comics tragic

black white
gray world

made of
fuzzy dots

an obsolete
medium ready

to line the
bottom of

the song
bird’s cage

a nightingale
whose love

call goes
unanswered

I was a glass—
Crystal, maybe,
Or whatever you’d call it.

But I shattered on the floor—
Or was thrown there,
I’m still not sure.

What I do know
Is that all the shards
Are scattered,
And I am gathering them,
One by one,

Discovering
What I’m truly made of.