Alone.
Left to fly across the Pacific expanse.
An island filled with others alike;
wings yellow, bill yellow
feathers white.
Hundreds, thousands, waiting around
for a mate, a friend.
Years spent making connections
working hard
trying to make something real.
Exhaustion.
Never quitting
eventually noticing
that ones like you are made of concrete.
Blank, dry, cold,
fake.

The roses still flutter in the breeze.
Creating movement between the dead.
The battle is over.

These roses know nothing of the fighting disease
that plagues the kings with crowns on their heads.
The roses still flutter in the breeze.

Roses are crushed by surviving knights’ failing knees.
As they beg to never again be a part of the bloodshed.
The battle is over.

One rose struggles to move with the breeze.
Its petals dance beneath a blood glazed axe head.
The rose still flutters in the breeze.

The serfs will be led to believe
the roses were destroyed to save their farmstead.
The battle is over.

The bloating bodies in the field of roses please
the crowned ones, for they have not suffered with the dead.
The roses still flutter in the breeze.
The battle is over.

“In their greatest hour of need, the world failed the people of Rwanda.”
- Kofi Annan

I have never desired to step  inside  
a mass grave, but the  white marble top  
covering  a  piece  of  the ground like
a  band-aid  on  a     wound    silently
invites me in with an open  staircase.  
The    closer    I    move     toward the
entrance, the more  I am reminded of
hate. The  hate lingers on the  ground
around the grave, humming  a  ballad  
reserved  for  attempted  extinction.  
Machetes,  guns,  and  a­xes  were the  
instruments   in   the    orchestra  that
played the tune of death on this piece
of land.  The screams   of children,    
gunshots      piercing      flesh,    ­bone
breaking    under   blunt force. I enter  
the grave not  knowing what  to  feel.    
My  heart  beats      consciously as  
I control the  flow  of air   in  and  
out of my body,      trying to play    life’s
song   amid the   loud lingering  hum 
 of    hate   that  has   seeped from  the 
 ground above.  The  light   that enters
does   not     brighten    my   feelings;   
 it     only    reveals   the  moments  of
death on the walls which  are shelved
with  skulls,  some with bullet  holes,  
some   with fractures from machetes. 
I    move  through the   thin   corridor    
fearful     of    making   eye    contact 
with the    skulls     for  I do not want to    
stare    into    the     empty     eye  sockets  
to see     individual     death.   Femurs  and  
humeri    lay like  *****  clothes    thrown
into the  corner of a room.  No longer do
they represent one  human. Outside the
light  warms   my   skin   and   directs     my    heart    to    beat  unconsciously,  
my   breath   to   rise  and  fall   in unison
with  my steps. It   shines  upon   a   new  
tune   being     played.   Children  laughing,  
mothers yelling,  hymns being  sung. It  
spotlights   a  beauty of humanity:
Reconciliation.

Snapping an ankle is pain.
The shock of your bones turning alienistic
the pop of a ligament
the jolt of pain that brightens the sun’s light
and turns vision into a graphic novel

hurts

Remembering my regret is pain

The veil of anger I used to avoid the truth
the ways I distorted my feelings
the years of what-if
letting self-confidence become
a lost friend

I’m over you

But the regret and memory hang in
my brain waxing and waning
tugging on my emotions
flooding my soul with a foamy fluid sadness
that drowns my nerves

If I could rub my hands across a golden
lamp and meet a genie I would ask
for a pencil eraser that could correct
there, their, they’re, and the thought of
you and I.

Under a glowing cumulus streak,
baby bumps in the earth
roll in burlap colored dirt
and ankle scratching ferns.  

Behind them,
colored blue
by the haze of distance,
tower rock,

sharp and coarse
from years of turmoil,
look like they’re wearing
tiny white fleece caps.

My mind is almost
silent,
only speaking up to
remind me to breath.

Here I sit,
newspaper in hand,
bite in my in bagel,
watching you,
watching me.
Others around me
go about their business
casually, as if they
are not being watched by you too.
If only they knew.

Your glass-eye
zooms in,
zooms out,
watches me read,
watches me breathe.
It tracks my ****** features,
it scans, and scans,
all day.
I must get up now,
I enjoyed our daily meet.

As I get up,
I pass under you,
and your eye follows me until
you cannot see my face.
But I am not out of your sight,
for you are connected
with your sisters eyes,
as the track me
when I am out of your sight.
Forever you will be watching me,
and don't worry,
I''ll be watching you.

It’s lost now.
Our hearts no longer skip beats at the
sight of each other, they beat in our chests
as if we had never met.
You brown hair will no longer lay on my chest
and warm me when I need it the most.
I won’t get another chance to laugh at
the way you dance when I play
your favorite song.
Our opportunity that grew
from a bond bound together with movies
and restaurants,
and floats down the river
where your smile
made me forget about the town and people around us,
has now withered away.
It attempted to resurrect itself
through the speaker on our phones,
the tears across your cheeks,
and the trails lit only by the moon,
but we knew it never had a chance,
the opportunity was buried under seven feet
of lies and mistakes!
But it’s fine,
there will be other opportunities,
but the one that was so golden,
so glorious,
is lost now.