the coolness of the Atlantic hits us like an epiphany

you tuck a willow in my hair

as i taste summer in the air and insanity on your tongue

those nights when we felt like fireflies trapped in mason jars

and we watched all the others follow the lifeless lights of city streets

enduring the foggy-eyed mornings that follow with a blanket on the floor with you

a forest fire ripping through my head

(i loved you)

a bass drop of a song in the backseat of your friend’s car

my heart flutters like sparrows to the sound of thunder

and the sun trembles over the horizon

i know how this will end, just like i know you

but for now we are young

the wind hits our broken pieces and fills the holes

i count up all our mistakes and they seem beautiful

as we wait for the fiery effervescence of violent waves

i hope we remember how they sound when we get old

we let the meaning of everything cloud over us for a while

(i loved you)

broken air conditioners and laughing out loud for no one to hear

and we wonder if we exist at all and i think how strange this is

as phosphorescent waters swish and spill

i scream inside so there is no echo

my sleep took over slowly that night

i used up all my colored film on you

and i found the pictures in the glove compartment today

i love(d) you

Pillow, soft nest of dreams, she slept upon
gorgeous birds embroidered flew
across lakes, blue water fields

swells of seas break, calling swans home
willowy winds sigh, whispers, feathers fly

willow tree shadows alight her slumbering walls
as northern summer fades to Fall

I.
There will be a day, you say,
where the world stops and all that ever was
and all there ever will be would cease.

                                                                     Trust.

There will be a time, he says,
when I will no longer love like how
you built the moon for me, balancing
upon a staircase of wooden boxes.

                                                                    Trust.

You don’t care. You let him weave
with string, then with your soul,
your heart the ball of yarn at the end.

                                                                   Trust in him.

You are a lover. You are a fool.

II.
Light. Soft light and harsh light and lantern lights
and fairy lights and neon lights and flashlights.

Light, like that which comes on in his eyes
when you tell him you want Honey Stars, and
you two spend the night picking at those overhead.
He tells you that when you drop stars into the
Pacific, they become sweet, like honey.

All you wanted was cereal, but you are a fool
one that picks at stars that have long since died,
one that can’t tell a corpse from a sparkle.

You don’t get any stars in the end, except for the
ones in his eyes.

A fool.

III.
This is where you grew poppies,
expecting to harvest the seeds and
crush,
thinking that maybe,
just maybe,
the dust will help you sleep, like the
sand of the Golden man.
You teeter on the edge that separates
wanting and needing,
You walk on a slowly fraying tightrope.

Tight,
        like your heart.
Rope,
          like how you rope
souls into believing you,
how you rope in friends
and demand their faith.

This is where you rearranged
his little soldier boys, where the
ceramic crashed against the wood
and refused to break.

Not like you, then.

This is where you kissed him,
over
       and
             over, because
air is useless without oxygen
and oxygen is useless to a pair of collapsed lungs.

IV.
You hate him. You hate his strength,
how he bangs the table and it snaps in two.

You hate his laughter, scratching against the walls
in tune with your sobbing.

You hate how you have to scan his eyes before you sit,
have to look before you make the metaphorical leap.

You hate how you let him force open your legs,
hate his pride at being in control, and his guilt
for the purple and blue spots on your skin,
like garish children’s make-up,
a clown at the party of life.

You hate how he holds onto your sides till
you hear the crack, and how you tell the doctors
you fell, because you did.

You are still falling, every time he looks at you,
Honey Stars in his eyes.

You don’t hate him. You love him,
that’s why you come back to be destroyed.

You hate yourself.
That’s also why you come back, to be destroyed.

You can’t repair hurt like that
but you try anyway, because the best part of building
is when you knock down.

V.
It is painful, but pain is a symptom of life.
You let him hurt you, let him crush your
bones and self-esteem, because no one
taught you how to love and if it means giving,

then you must be doing it right.

VI.
Wake, from the best sleep you’ve had,
wake from a nightmare, to a nightmare.
He is gazing out of the window, with
suspenders to hold up his pants
and his courage.
Your canines sink into your thumb, as
he turns to you and he says, “Hera,
I love you, but–”

The memory ends there.

Hera was the wife of Zeus,
goddess of women and marriage.
Your parents made a mistake,
more than once.

VII.
You are alone.
Quiet was never your thing, silence the most
deafening noise in the world.

This is your hand, a hand that once
rested against his neck, a hand that
felt his blood pulsing in his veins.

This is your hand and it is green
not from gardening but with envy.

These are your shoulders, shoulders that once
carried backpacks stuffed with Honey Stars
and sour things like love.

These are your shoulders, and even Atlas
cannot carry the weight on them.

This is your heart, and it is red.
This is your soul, and it is aluminium,
his words like sandpaper, polishing
until your soul tears and can be collected,
filtered and cross-examined under a microscope.
It will be reactive with the acid of his absence,
but only for a while.

This is your neck, and the rope feels rough
compared to your memories of his hands.

every poem i was afraid
to write ended with
you.

I finally get what I've dreamt of;
My fingers laced between yours,
A meaningful conversation,
And an opportunity to just be with you.

I took the first step, took a shove
Into your arms, asking for
You to give me some reciprocation-
And that's precisely what you do.

Your feelings and love
Are misplaced, because who you adore
Is not who I really am, more like a romanticized creation
You formed in your head, too good to be true.

I cannot be yours simply because I seem
To mold to what you desire,
To form to your liking,
To be seemingly perfect in your eyes.

You look at me, your eyes gleam
With a long-burning, hearty fire
That I'm alluring and utterly striking;
I am that of which it all defies.

I am not so fit for you, not a cog to your machine
In which we fit together and conspire
To somehow work out kinks, our chances hiking
To the highest peak, somewhere touching the skies.

The Natural World is not so benevolent.
Though, I don't mean that it is malevolent,
but with things like Disease, Entropy and Radiation,
I would say that the odds certainly are not in our Favour.

Yet, here we are.

An act of sheer Defiance
to an otherwise inanimate Reality.
A Being of Reason, Creativity, Interpretation, Intuition and Consciousness
observing the cold assumed lifelessness of the Crystallization of this Epoch of Energy.

I speak not of the benevolent and malevolent Energies
which perhaps permeate and flow through this Reality,
but those, to me, don't necessarily qualify as "Natural" in this sense;
they are super-natural, para-natural, or hyper-natural. Pre-natural, even.

I speak of tangible, scientific, here-and-now "Reality"; whatever that means.
Matter and the Energies we know of that are subsets of it.
Gravity, Electromagnetism, the Strong and Weak Nuclear forces.

This Physical Prison of Godself; like a physical Dream
from which One cannot awaken until Death.
Perhaps not even then? Who knows?
Who are we, who yet live, to say?
Maybe it's a case-by-case basis;
but, in any case, I digress:

The Natural World is a Force to be reckoned with;
it holds the Powers of Sustenance as well as Annihilation
yet we so take it for granted and ****, pillage and plunder it evermore systematically

That's just bad form.

Conciser Reverence
though not religiously so;
merely giving Thanks to
the Forces which sustain us.
Respecting
the Forces which sustain us.

Earth. Sun. Water. Air. The interplay of these things.
The Plants that give themselves to us as nutrients
as well as the Animals that do the same.

The fact that you have a left and a right Brain. A Body and Mind.
That the Sun rises each Day and you're born anew with it in ways.

If we truly give Thanks
for all of these things and more,
our perspectives will enlighten a bit,
and Reality will become wholly Holy;
Holistic:

and we can finally begin, again,

to move on.