It was a graveyard and overcast sky
and I sat with book and accordian in hand,
hearing the world with its screams
swallow up around me.
The people whom I had loved and lost,
Papa with his silver eyes
Mama her sharp tongue and tough love
Rudy whose hair the colour of lemons
and questioned why, the living and dead,
worlds apart, yet both did not have a choice.
I stood and screamed so that everything shook
the burning rubble and ash and dust
willing my words to bring it all back
but it did not come, and my breath rose in gasps.
Death had looked me in the eye and said,
“It’s not time yet.”
I would shut my eyes to the world
only decades later.
I will understand that there was hate and pain
there was sadness
but even more so, there was love and joy.
I will know that the people I loved had reason
to kiss goodbye
whether it was their own hurt
or saw it as a necessity,
but they were never truly gone from me
always somewhere nearby,
in the thick and thin
frail and worn
of times.
I would learn
to forgive Death that day.
I will understand that
and I will be hurt,
but I will be okay.

~

Not all deaths are sad.
Some, meant to ease their own pain,
Are called freedom.
While some,
Meant to ease the pain of others,
Are called love.

© BT

Things that nobody talks about:
The desperation of loving someone who doesn't love you
How the sun feels warmer when you've spent a year being cold
The feeling of weightlessness after crying yourself to sleep
When he stares long and hard at you and smiles softly, making your eyes feel shy even when you are not
How people who used to exist in your orbit still take chunks off of your surface, even when you've taken so many hits you hardly exist.

Things that nobody talks about:
Even when you've moved on, even when you've found someone who loves you more, even when you've discovered better things, your skin remembers things best forgotten.

My heart is dead
no, I don’t have one at all
every time I start to feel something
my mind constructs a new wall

No one can break through it
but so many have tried
and the closest voyager
may nearly have died

Poison soaks the bricks
like a rabid dog’s mouth
the uncontrollable leaking
kills many without a sound

If they passes the wall
and do not fall ill in return
the next obstacle will surely
end with them burned

A 10ft wall of flames
threatens those near with claws
reaching closer and closer
and scorching them raw

If those flames were extinguished
for a split second of distraction
they could trek one step closer
to the main attraction

After poison and flames
fail to protect my castle
the final test must work
to prevent total disaster

Cerulean seas splash against wood
and spans across the land like a highway
within the depths of the waters
lie the souls of the wounded that can’t fly away

Bones and shattered hearts
line the base of my security
with a step into the water
the next will be history

And yet only one has
made it to the center
Only one lover
could truly understand the endeavor

But, alas, as expected
she perished as well
A ***** trap triggered suddenly
launched her far out of my hell

So here I sit
Upon my throne
Safe from my feelings
But all alone

the lights move
yellow along
the curves
of your face

soft voices
wait
in the rising
fall of your chest

briefly our shoulders
touch

in sleep
your hand
flutters like
a dying bird

I rose to
the setting sun,
dove into
an indigo sea,
and let the ink
wash me clean*.