Our lopsided home
Sandwiches between
Thickets of sycamores
Abandoned and resembling
A surfaced shipwreck
Was swept clean by the floods.

But we craftily smiled
Like pirates up on their luck
Adrenaline sweeping our veins
Pumping us to search for
Any remaining buried treasure
Because in that moment
We realized we were safe.

Rebuilding was rebirth
And this labeled tragedy
Shook up our monotony
Giving us our badly needed
Second chance.

His smiled showed the deepest sincerity
So I opened up as intimately as possible,

He watched me ink up spotless white paper,
He watched my abstractions take life in language.

When glass shatters
The cracks are instantaneous
Moving at 3,000 miles per hour
And while you moved 30 times slower
You managed to fly a grounded metal container
Into a lamppost with just one swerve
Crushing the casing like a soda can
The cracks were instantaneous
When the glass shattered.

You taste like burned coffee and aftermath
But the rush of your hurricane always sweeps me away
So I’ll be the abandoned & boarded-up house
Shaking but still standing
Ever resilient against the whiplashing winds.

Sarin –

An organic molecule
Used for inorganic purposes
Showering civilians
Effectively icing their insides
Contorting the human form into forced frozen sculptures
Acting as if torture was an art of the highest caliber
An acquired taste reserved for society’s finest
And this was the Michelangelo masterpiece.

Atropine –

The organic antidote,
Shoot up the stimulant to hurdle your paralysis,
Relax the respiratory muscles caught in your throat,
Your eyes team with tears because you’re allowed to melt,
Your eyes team with tears out of profound shock,
Your eyes team with tears because humans forgot humanity.

We walk together
But you always leave my side
When the darkness hits.

I looked under the desk
Beneath the bed
Ransacked the refrigerator
But came up empty.

I lost myself again
And finding me is always
The hardest process.

Maybe I should wear
A bell around my neck,
A fashion forward
“FIND ME” noose,
In preparation for the next time
I decide to disappear,
So that way my soul
Can’t scamper too far off
From my self.

Last time I was lost,
I was taped to the backside,
Of an upside-down penny,
Long forgotten on the sidewalk,
Rusting in the rain,
So copperized,
I was changed.

But now I’m a wearied traveler,
Craving comfort over building character,
And much rather just staple up signs:

      “LOST:  Five foot three female.
       Brown hair and black holes for irises
       That **** up all life in hopes
       Of soaking in the aliveness.
       HUGE $REWARD$ PROMISED!!”

But life isn’t so simple;
Inner peace is a cultivated growth
That sets it’s own pace.

…

So maybe I’ll feel like myself tonight
Or maybe I won’t feel whole for a year
But either way whatever
Smiles and scars my soul stockpiles
Becomes an extension of my existence,
An incorporation of my earthly-bound story.