There’s rocks in my shoes
Wet from stepping in puddles
to avoid the strangers beside me.
I forgot socks
My toes bare beneath the leather
Pebbles digging into my soles

There’s rocks in my shoes
Heavy
Stuck
I can’t stop to get them out
Only have to endure the pain
Until I reach my destination

There’s rocks in my shoes
They’ve been there all day
When night descends,
and I am safe,
I don’t take them off
Scared to see the dirt they’ve created
They’ve molded to my feet,
An extension of my insecurity.

They’re stuck there,
But I don’t mind them anymore.

The darkness descended
We couldn’t move
Unable to speak
We just stared back at the nightmare
The hooded figures waiting to come take me
I called you for help, and you answered
We tried to escape the house,
crawling on all fours to gain motion,
Any motion.
Quick sand feet,
nailed to the earth.
They gained on us
You were ahead of me,
and I knew I’d give in-
my anatomy failing me.
I had to wake myself up in self preservation,
An instinct deeply rooted in us all
I write in the dark,
afraid to see the hooded figures again when I close my eyes
Terrified of falling back in.

My thumb has a callas from lighting the bic so many times.
I've burned myself so many times.
I've been burned by you so many times.

I inhale the smoke and let it fill up my lungs.
I stare at the bridge.
It reminds me of the city lights.
It calls out to me.

I feel my blood coursing through my veins.
I imagine myself on the top of a building
staring out into the sea of lights.

Twinkling into my soul.
You're coughing next to me,
not a clue in the world of what
I'm thinking about.

I wonder if anyone cares
what's going on in my mind.
My body tingles
My blood runs around the track

I lay beside the rocks
and let my thoughts drift
with the waves
I close my eyes to endlessly
imagine
the Sea of Lights.

Grief is stronger than love
It's deeper
The love I feel is strong
but grief is stronger...
The feeling of the emptiness of your body
is more palpable than the fullness your body feels when love consumes it.

Love is powerful
It gives you hope and happiness
Love can pull you out of grief
The two are intertwined
Grief is born out of the loss of love

Grief is terrible.
It's a feeling that should
never have to be felt.
Love creates it but
a deeper love can stem from it.

Both are tangled in each other.
Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference...

It's wild, isn't it?
How deep our thoughts can go,
How the thunder storm won't ever seem to go away,
The storm floods out of the eyes,
Happiness is a foreign concept
and a social construct.

People say, "it gets better".
I simply scream at them, "When".
I think you fail to see that the future doesn't exist
It is always the present
But I fail to see the present as a gift.

Society medicates itself
to turn the darkness
into a lighter shade of gray
But sometimes, the color gradates from
black, to gray, to white
in one swift gulp.

Do I have hope for the depressed?
I have to.
I have to have enough hope for the both of us
They cannot see it
I see it for them

Examine the depths of your mind
or don't.
It will be fatal either way.

You're here.
I feel you
You're underground.
I feel you in the nature surrounding your grave

You're ashes now.
It's as if you never existed
only in memory now.

What color are your clothes now?
Are they still blue?
What do you look like?

You exist in the air around me
as I sit beside your stone
I'm the only one in the cemetery

Do you know these other people?
What's it like in that other dimension?
Are you still writing poetry?
Do you know you're dead?
Is it better?
Do you miss it?

I've written to you
I read you my letters
Talking to air that you occupy

I lean against your stones,
Feeling cradled by you
even though it's been years
since you disappeared.

You will always exist
I walk around the corner
to visit another friend.

How have you been?
I'm sorry I haven't thought about you in awhile
I cry
I don't want your memory to disappear

I slowly walk out of the graveyard
Feeling empty and whole
at the same time.

I'm not leaving you here
I'm breaking you out of this "beautiful" place
You're coming with me

We are desperately clinging to the past
We cannot let it go
We clutch on to it with sweaty palms
Our grasp is slipping
We cling hopelessly to the familiarity of the past
But it can't last

We have to sever the grasp
Against our will,
the hold slips
Lost in the abyss of the past.

We must take an axe to our Roots
Nature will run its course and plant our seeds where they need to be
in order to evolve into a stronger, greater species
After letting go, we let the wind carry our soles elsewhere
Soles sink into new healthy soil
We look behind us
Waiting to see the past chasing us, struggling to catch up
But our eyes behold a new unfamiliar landscape
that's ready to take us through a new adventure

We evolve
We yearn for new self discovery
Passion sizzling in our stems
It may feel like a storm, but it is a mere shower that all flowers need in order to grow and blossom.