I'm growing up; not growing stronger.
In between the time when 3 men loved me I forgot how to love myself.        
I feel isolated, alone.
I am dependent on a boy who does not see me.
I signed a lease, so I stay.

But my soul...it wanders.
It wakes each morning and stretches its limbs to the ceiling and walls.
It pushes on the windows and bangs on my door.
Quickly I reel it in.
Before the neighbors hears its screams or see the chains that hold it back.
I bury it into me.
I make it lay straight, flat and neat under my skin.
But it battles me.
From my eyes I can see it taunt me in the mirror. 
It weaves my hair into knots.
It whispers pretty things to pull my gaze upward.
But I look down. I watch my feet.
                                                           ­                                                                 ­                                     
I am tired.
We are tired, this has to end.
Maybe tomorrow I'll let my soul win.
Maybe tomorrow we will both take flight and instead of whispering we will sing.
I will look at the sky.
I will loose myself in the stars and I fly with the birds.
I will skip on clouds and pluck trees like flowers.

He slid closer to me and tucked me to his side.
There he held me.
I wish I had a picture of the way we looked.
I believed it then - that this was the hardest thing either of us had done or would do in our lives.
I saw it in the way he refused to look at me.
I felt it in the tears that rolled from his eyes to the hair on my head.
I knew then, at the very end of it all, I had found love.
One so great it that it did and forever would rival all others.

I've looked for it since and found with disappointment and drawn out pain. There would be no replacement.

Since then I have learned to invest all that untapped love into something else. I don't know where it's going but every night I send it out into the world hoping that it finds it's way to something greater than myself.

Without the photo I'm not sure some days. My mind often crosses what I so desperately want with what little I can recall. Preserved is either an embellished or blemished memory. One that I treasure and fall asleep thinking of every night.

I think he loved me as much as I loved him.

The lessons that I have learned from that boy created an unstoppable strength inside me. Completely bullheaded and delusional I continue to reach blindly for that spot beyond the moon itself. Back beyond the stars, to what ever it is that is waiting for me.

It's funny how we use our lives to search for what we've always had.

I think we grow crazy when the regrets of our past and the guilt of our conscience linger too long in the company of time and silence.

Rest well my friend. It’s not the end,
and until then, we’ll just pretend.

That you and I will someday find,
our winding way backwards in time.

The other side, it’s kinda vague.
It kinda makes,me wanna wake.

From this dream I can’t have dreamt
because you see, I’m spent.  

Memories I have kept
have slowly crept
and caused the tears
that I had wept
to leave behind
their slack confines
and cloud the days just like my mind.

I fill our places with new faces
searching for small traces.

Like bits of you inside of them.
Rest well my friend. It’s not the end.

I seem to find myself entwined
and mesmerized by those

whose lives you've helped align.
It seems my love you still live on.

As seasons change, I rearrange
the thoughts I used to entertain.

They, like I have grown from pain.
Get lost with me and let us hide

amid the memories of my mind.
The other side shall call me too.

Starting with the morning dew
and through the setting sun,

someday my time here too,
will cease and be done.

The pretty girl gets what the pretty girl wants
and the ugly chick goes where the lonely people go
and together they wait for the day
when the sun goes down and stays away
and we all
look
the
same...shadows.

They hosted a candlelight walk,
for those willing to say farewell.
The cold was just plain cold, to some unfeeling.

Fires warmed a pair of twin sisters.
The girls laughed and ran on ahead.

Parked and waiting, I hid in my car.
I crouched low and silently shivered.
No one saw me.

You can hide from people.
They are easy to see and quick to dodge.
They are clumsy,
dragging their feet loudly
and complaining.

But people change.

And when they change,
they lose their shape.

They’re not saggy or gray,
they’re not anything,
but they must be something.

We are all something.
Something we don’t understand.

When people change,
they are much harder to hide from.
I couldn't hide and I knew she knew I was trying.

I got out of my car,
and ran to catch the twins that were already gone.