The lights are so bright today
Demanding, glaring, intense.
Our squinted eyes unshielded,
Unprotected from the fluorescents,
Those too bitter in our throats.

But I’ve created a place here
Comfortable, subdued, dusky.
I’ll show you how to be home,
Right here as the stars glow,
Made of light we cannot feel.

For a split second
I see beauty
Rain dripping from leaves
Tumbling and trickling
To the ground
Glistening gleaming bright
A glimpse of a rainforest
And then it’s gone
and it’s
just
cold rain.

I enter the Forest.
Trees tall and broad and fierce,
Branches whipping the storm above.
I want to nap, I say,
Just ten minutes of peace.
The trees accept,
If grudgingly.
I find a bed of sticking brush
And sleep.

When I wake,
It’s different.
The wind is soft,
The leaves are slow,
The sky is sweet,
The trees are smooth,
And I feel
Wonderful.
How long did I sleep,
I ask.
The trees respond,
A hundred years.
They whisper,
Voices soft,
All have forgotten
Your pain,
Your silence,
Your slice of life,
You are dead
To them.

But to us?
You are alive,
For once.
You are home,
At last.
And we?
We will protect you
For always.

Are you out there?
Are you waiting for me?
You are the match to my wick.
Are you reaching for me?
Are you longing too?
You are the beach to my waves.
Can you imagine that?
That you would be
The yin to my yang?
I think of home and it is you.

My soul has found home,
Let down its bone walls,
And received the life’s blood.
Philos is reborn within us!

Is this my true emotions?
Or a facsimile
Of what I’m supposed to feel?
Don’t call this a con,
Until you see the accidental,
Unintentional falseties.
I flash expressions.
Hate, love, melancholy, mirth.
Don’t call me an actor,
Until you experience
The screen that is my face,
Sometimes a mirror,
Often a warped glass,
But never clear,
Never a window
To my true self
Underneath.

Oh, how I’m glad
To be born inside
Within my own body,
Instead of outside.
Here, my eyes can’t see
The flesh under my decor,
The scars below my shirt,
The soul beneath my body.