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Amanda Brader Oct 2016
Eight thousand feet into the sky
I feel like myself again
I can breathe the air here
There’s paint on my arms again
Where it belongs
Perpetually staining my skin
Seven thousand feet into the sky
I leave everything behind me
I am free and calm and relaxed here
Music harmonizes with my heart and the mountains
The sound the wind makes as it caresses the trees
Six thousand feet into the sky
I am as tall as the towering trees
And I’m looking down their vast frames
The world around me spins a moment
I experience the same feeling you get when you
Stand near a lot of tall trees and look up
You lose your balance and you’re falling
But you’re not, you’re fine
I realize I’m not just as tall as the towering trees
I am one of them
Five thousand feet into the sky
I am in the fog, the fog that’s kissing the trees, trees, trees,
And the road ahead is fading into smoke
I am a bird's eye
Staring through the fog at the trees and beyond
An eagle's eye
I can see well through the fog
Turning
We’re dancing a duet- we’re doing right now
In this car
Three thousand feet up
Coming down off the mountain and suddenly we’re
back
                  in
                                      ­          Civilization
Amanda Brader Aug 2016
When you left you took my heart
And I let you
Because I thought it would be easier
Not to care
But it doesn’t work that way,
And without it I am so dead inside
My body is a skeleton
Filled with crumpled leaves,
Hardened flowers,
Distant emotions, and fading memories
They subside like tidewater out to sea
I feel nothing, am nothing
Not even a ghost
Just a barely breathing being,
Dying six feet under the surface
Amanda Brader Nov 2015
Do not condemn me
To the life of a flower
I’ll think it’s a gift
I am beautiful, gentle
I smell soft and sweet
You’ll gaze at me
Like I’m the most romantic thing
As if I mean so much more
That what I am
Just a flower, a rose maybe
It’s not important
What’s important is that you tricked me
Because I’m wilting
My beauty is fading
And I smell like nothing at all
No one gazes at me
And I’m left alone with the realization
That no one mourns
The death of a flower
Amanda Brader Oct 2016
They all blame the medication
I blame it, too
But they don’t know
It’s what’s keeping me alive and killing my soul
Erasing memories
Gnawing away at my thoughts
Murdering my emotions before they’re tangible
How long can I survive this valley of dolls
The horizon is so far away
The meds, they harmonize with my demons
Threaten to take everything I love
In exchange for my life
Amanda Brader Dec 2015
Everything these days is about ***.
Our culture is a graveyard of copulating corpses,
and nothing means anything.

Sure, everyone says they're looking
for meaning in a godless and corrupted world,
but hardly anyone tries to find something real
in someone else. 

They let fear of rejection,
abandonment, or heartbreak hold them back. 

Love is unending, unparalleled, underrated.
We're all dying anyway, what's the harm in
being vulnerable once in a while?

Death and *** somehow always go hand in hand.
Maybe it’s because they're in love.
Death is patient; he has all the time in the world. 
He appreciates life more than anyone possibly could.

What if Death isn't an abrupt, agonizing conclusion?
Perhaps he simply leads us through a passage to some afterlife.

Death has seen everything;
he's seen beauty and suffering,
love and loss.

But he's intrigued by the concept of love.
While it often transcends our comprehension, he understands it.
He's a hopeless romantic
in a sea of violent, sexist, gun-obsessed sharks.

*** is amorous, enigmatic, gentle, and compassionate.
She's not the vile disease everyone sneers at in guilt-ridden judgement.

They teach their children to grow up feeling *****,
to despise themselves
for wanting to understand her, as if she’s a sin.

But she knows she's not a perverse thing,
she's a symbol of love everyone's destroyed and disfigured.
So she's damaged.
But she feels things more strongly than anyone else.

She is a connection between people
desperate to survive in a wasteland of intolerance and indifference. 

Death is perpetually wandering the world alone.
He’s afraid of anyone getting too close, to let someone understand
and embrace the depths of his chaos.

He’s unrestrained, a free spirit who has never needed anyone,
and doesn’t expect to. Who could ever love death unconditionally?
He disregards his own emotions, reacts dispassionately to avoid trusting anyone.
He’s numb but ultimately knows he doesn’t have to be.

When she looks into his eyes she can see decades of devotion, despair,
sanguinity, and hopelessness, and it breaks and mends her simultaneously.

So, Death and *** are undeniably drawn to one another.
Eternal fugitives hiding together from a decaying world full
of ignorant people who are disgusted by them, to avoid persecution.

They are complete opposites, but they balance each other out.
Death is a realist. He’s optimistic, but not because he has nothing to fear.
He’s aware that there is so much to be afraid of,
but he knows love is a risk worth taking. 

*** is an idealist, a cautious optimist cursed with depression.
She's obsessed with the expression of art and beauty, ardor and humanity.

However, she knows all too well the pain
of heartbreak and loneliness, and it often consumes her.
She is constantly used and abused, and her trust is worn thin.

But she gives everything of herself,
loves blindly and recklessly,
because she knows a life without love is a life
hardly worth living.

*** and Death can never die, they are
immortal lovers enduring the deterioration of the planet together.
Amanda Brader Dec 2015
My body yearns
For respite
In these sheets, my sheets
That smell like you
A new scent, yet
Somehow already familiar
If I close my eyes,
I can almost feel your arms
Around me
Protecting my tranquil,
Slumbering frame
My heart
Finds rest in your hands,
She doesn’t even notice that
She no longer resides
In my body
She’s a few blocks away
In sheets, your sheets
That smell like you
Amanda Brader Feb 2016
My soul is restless
She longs to part with my body
To be rid of the darkness that shackles her
This skin is not my own
Only the scars are familiar to me
Sometimes I wonder if I’m human
Or am I a melody
A lullaby softly sang to a sleeping child
Escaping maternal lips
A whisper of light through the branches
Of dying trees
There is poison in the air here
I can’t breathe
There is so much hate in the hearts of men
And it breaks me
Let me reach out to you
Feel every part of your existence
I’ll tremble in the vastness of your soul
Let me breathe in your air
It isn’t toxic
You are as much a part of this earth
As the dirt and the trees
When you cry, is it a rainstorm?
As you shake with fury, are you an erupting volcano?
Under the surface
There is a whole world inside of you
This planet is dying
Let me explore the one you hold in your heart
Please don’t be afraid of me corrupting it

— The End —