If hell is engulfed in fire
as bright as the sun,
And heaven is lit
by a divine light,
Then I shall die with sunglasses.

The walls of your soul that you
  Toil away building;
The windows are dark and the
  Bricks are unyielding...

( Hate, with a hammer, cracks the wall;
   But Love, with a whisper, makes it fall. )

How many times have I told you, Believe?
And then will you learn how to truly Receive.
  For giving is getting -- these two are the same;
  And living is learning to dance in the rain.

Something happened this morning
when I awoke to you lightly breathing.
It was sublime.
My chin rested on your shoulder
the skin so soft on my cheek.
I couldn’t help but kiss the sweetness.

On nights when I sleep alone
it does not matter how many blankets
wrap my restless body.
I wake cold.
Nothing is as warm as your arms.
Like that of a Texas breeze
on an August night.

I can only think to kiss
your unshaven face.  
The kisses are planted gently,
first your cheek,
then your temple,
and your forehead,
when I come to the tip of your nose
you stir slightly,
but I cannot stop.
I want it more then
the ocean waves need
the shoreline to crash upon.

Looking at your face
I smile at the odd way we met.
With a breath of *** and an intoxicated
grin we spoke.
“I don’t like you”
“Yea? Well I don’t like you first!”
Like children picking
on their first crush.
Tying to fight back the giggles.
Our childish ways still
run strong.

In your absence I sit
and watch the ticking minutes
laugh at my uneasiness.
Hours with others
are mere minutes with you.
The clocks envy
our cherished time
and tick-tock more rapidly
when we are alone.
All our time
would never be
enough.

When we get lost in each other,
the way the lonely roadrunner
looses himself as he runs
up and down
the oak covered hills,
it is love at its best.

This morning
when the soft breathes
you took woke me
and my chin rested upon
your shoulder,
something happened.
As the kisses fell
and your eyes continued to sleep;
I realized that this
is where I belong.
Drifting slowly  
into love with you.

I wasn't always so easily discouraged.
I used to bristle with enthusiasm.
I glowed with it.
It didn't matter if the task was simple, or tedious, or daunting, or boring.
As though on rails, I slammed into each and every task with terrific force.

But I got older.
Things that used to come easily grew slippery.
What I used to do without thinking twice, I found myself over-thinking.
I threw the brake. I ground to a halt.
Finally, I became idle. A left-over husk of a kernel that's already been popped.
I drowned myself with doubts. Hypothetical situations that might never happen.
I lived in fear of what might go wrong.

So I began to watch everything go wrong, as though I was helpless.
I was no less able. I was no less compassionate.
But I had grown wary. Of what?
What was it that, out of nowhere, caused me to slow down?

I guess I looked down and realized that if I fell, I would not be getting back up.

When you're young, you have no worries, because nothing is relying on your success.
So you mess up a math problem. You'll get it eventually.
So you botch things with that cute girl who sits across from you. You're young, you'll get it.
Re-assurance, faithfully, unwaveringly. A safety line should I fall.
But I never really fell, did I? So why am I laying down like I have?

Get up.

Get up.

I worry about everything. I worry that I will fail.

I dread what comes, what I can't avoid. But time, and time, again, it comes, and I miraculously don't die when it hits, because I've been bracing for a train-wreck impact, a force that will really, truly, finally, definitely lay me flat for good.

I close my eyes, and brace. But the crash never comes. The silence that was continued to be.

I turn behind me, but there's no train there.

I'm starting to realize, with relief, (with horror), that maybe all I needed to do was step off the track.

I look down, and realize, with a first-creeping then-howling laughter that I was never on the track to begin with.

I look off where the track is. There's no train there, either. Maybe there never was.

Maybe there never will be.

Seconds seem like ages,
But hours are so short.

Time passes slowly
But it all ends so fast

Hearts beat,
Leaves fall.

Wind blows
Shivers run.

Heart stops
Tears fall

Memories left
A ghost to recall.

There was a time of peace
Now a distant memory
These battles have left me wounded
Alone and scarred
Here lying on this ground
In the end, I realize
I was not against any other
I was only at war with myself

Growing up I discovered that it is innate
In human nature
To find, seek, or beg for affection.
I stayed silent in order to watch those around me:
Some were good at capturing attention
Like on a warm summer night
And children and running around with glass jars
Procuring fireflies that shine like precious gems.
These children had the talent of keeping the fireflies
Dazzling for days.
Some sought after the coveted attention,
With their baited fishing poles in hand,
They patiently waited in the middle of the lake
And held onto their prize when caught
Until it died when they would go and fish for a new one.
Perhaps a longer, bigger, heavier, more valuable catch.
Some are light, ethereal,
Like a subtle perfume you can only smell
When you are mere inches away from the wearer.
They are sweet and not too persistent in their ways.
I continued to watch
And place people in these categories.
What they all in common, though,
Was selling their precious:
The fireflies, the fish, the perfume.
I looked to myself,
What did I have to sell? To offer?
Anything at all?
Surely I wasn’t as skilled as the lightning bug trapper
Or as patient as the fisherman
Or as fragrant as the perfume-wearer.
Instead, I was the girl
Who would admire the stars for all they are,
But not try to keep one;
Who would live in the now
Rather than feebly attempting to move my watch
Back a few years.
It was then I realized,
My love is not for sale.

When I was born I asked the doctor, how he thought he did?
He recalled,
"Exquisite, it was a perfect delivery."
I rebutted,
"Then why am I still attached to the umbilical chord?"
He snipped me away from the tangling sheathe preventing me from exploration.
I leapt off the crinkling hospital bed paper and onto the goose-bump extracting tile floor.
Playfully bobbing my head as I walked into the world whilst giving the blonde doe-eyed nurse a crumpled note arranging what time I would pick her up for
dinner that night.
--Nurses enjoy being taken care of too.

When I was in preschool my teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up.
I told her, "I want to feel the love of a woman who makes me happy everyday and loves me for being me."
She under cut my desired fate, "That's not a something you can work for."
I whispered in her ear, "I know you have never felt love from another person."
She began to cry.
I told her, "That tears are just water for her soul to grow."
She got married later that spring after the rain had stopped,
--Her soul grew enough to show.

When I was seven years old a neighborhood bully stole my bicycle.
I cried for four minutes.
I was angry for about an hour.
Instead of telling him that my dad could beat up his dad
I began to wear my helmet everywhere I went.
I shouted to the other boys in my class,
"I had an invisible superb-deathly speedy-extraordinary-intergalactic- bike."
Two weeks later that same bully gave me my bike back.
As he relentlessly rubbed his knuckles into the top part of my scalp I thought nothing, but that this is the reason why my Grandpa went bald.
Then he muttered through his wheezing breaths of anger,
"My invisible bicycle was much faster than anything your ***** daddy could have bought you."
--Dad's, they love hypothetical fighting.

When I was eleven years old two airplanes hit two buildings in New York City.
I did not understand.
I asked my teacher, "Why would God make evil people?"
Through her tears she explained to me, "Some people are just born evil."
I shouted under my breath, "People are not born evil...
implementing ideas in the sponge of a youth's mind is what is morally corrupt and evil!"
--Corruption is the first cause of terrorism.

When I was fifteen years old I had my first real serious girlfriend.
I did not understand, again.
I exasperated to my father over drinking our first father-son beer,
"How do I know when I love a woman?"
He nostalgically took a drag of his menthol cigarette and as the smoke made it's way through his nose like fog in a canyon he said to me,
"Whenever you look into her eyes and know that there is nothing you wouldn't do for her, that is love."
Before he could reach down and crack another pilsner I told him,
"Dad I look a little lower than her eyes and that is where... everything I would do to her."
--Hormones are a *****.

When I was twenty-one years old my mom told me I couldn't come back home after I graduated college.
I begged her to give me time. I will make it, I promise.
I shouted in the driveway with all my belongings she had neatly placed for me to pack into my car, "How do I know when I am ready to be on my own?"
She didn't have to say anything for there was a brown envelope on top of my neatly folded clothes; that mysterious folding method all mom's know but I
could never seem to figure out,
"Son, you won't know. You won't know until you are poor, hungry, cold and exhausted everyday from trying to make something of your life. The character
you will build will help you later in life when you have a family of your own. I promise. I am not a tyrant, I care too much to see you widdle away here with me
in obscurity and waste all the dreams I know you have. I love you my baby."
--Mom's, even though they don't cut the umbilical chord...they cut the umbilical chord.

you slept on the inside of the bed
I on the outside
you were cooler
I was calmer
and we talked of everything
but of course - mostly - nothing
you left early in the morning
I slept while you readied

you eskimo kissed my nose
to say you were leaving
and leaving me there
and before my smile reached both ears
you reached the door and were gone
but still there in my head
heading toward my heart