A distraction,
that always seems to be what I am considered.
A tool, a punching bag, a balancing mechanism,
and mostly,
a light bulb.
If I go dim even for the briefest amount of time chaos breaks loose,
but when I am shining,
when I am truly, truly glowing.
No one really seems to care.
But what am I to do?
Sitting here without rest
growing darker as I hover over others’ lives
They are allowed darkness
Allowed to rest
Their “concerns” for me
Are only so I can continue to shine
For them

The sun fell swallowing the garish light of day,
As the creatures of night came out to play
They were of all sorts, all shapes, all sizes,
But to one accustomed to their dance, there were no surprises.
But young Thomas did ignore these nightly friends
And drifted to sleep shunning the beauty which no one comprehends.

The skeletal folks, with wide eyes and graceful tendril
Did love the small boy, and sent him many dreams oh so tender
This night was strange, something amiss,
And a vile silent creature did slide out from the shadows
For young Thomas was placed in bed without his mother’s kiss.

The poor dream senders shrieked not knowing what to do,
They broke their oath to keep hidden and entered the room
They called forth to their dancing friends outside
All entered to guard the young one in stride

The silent creeper, was of a darker world
In his eye crept shadows, in his tears only blood,
He remained unseen to the human eye.
Muffling Thomas’s screams and cries
His bony arms stealing all the boy’s sweet thoughts
Tying innocent minds into painful knots.

With little success the boy’s twilight defenders,
Did claw and pull at the monsters limbs, attempting forced surrender
But to no avail, in a final attempt, a haggard frightened being, cradled,
And he left into the night as that was all he was able

The others ran after, as the monsters’ fiends leapt up from hell
The night creatures fought and in vain they did yell
For they were outmatched but joys must prevail!
Thomas’s family must not face the fate of dreams gone stale

The frail creature whisked Thomas away to a beauteous place, fairy dust
He worked away the dusk, to be rid of this distrust
But this night could not end, for the hellish beast
Took away a bit of Thomas’s light, just the smallest piece

Thomas, poor lad, brought something dark
That lives on in him, rooted in his soul,
Best love your children, show them, and mark,  
Before creatures of hell, not night, do take him whole.

I like walking in the cold on a stormy winter day just as the clouds darken and the sun turns golden and just before the little gingerbread houses set their lights a twinkling; it gives me an excuse for the constant chill I feel. So I bundle up as if it stops my chattering teeth and step out, my head watching the ground, my feet following the curvature of a path I've walked a million times and I try to stop the shaking. Not only of my body but of my tired mind as the furry veils of my eyes close. I notice the cracks in the road, and the gutters filled with rotting vestiges of life that once hung on these trees that now stand cold and gray against the even grayer sky, their roots begging for warmth just as my toes are. I heard a foot step startling my dazed thought about the cracks and I glanced about wildly to see what it was, a man walking a little brown and white shepherd with no tail, with A lit cigar in his mouth. I return to the road it was now curving just slightly to the left, it was hardly noticeable. I can smell the cigar smoke that man left behind just faintly drifting about in the air. Cigars have a sweeter smoke than cigarettes and thus were no quite as appalling, and the slightest bit *****.  It was in that moment I realized once I leave this moment of my life; I will never truly be alone again. It’s definitely an odd thought, to be concerned I will never be alone again as I abandon my friends and loved ones and yet it rang true in my mind, whether I was on ship, in the barracks, eating, even renting a home away from the base I would have a roommate of some sort whether it be a husband or a comrade.  I may never get to watch the cold winter ash drift down across my feet as the fall out of nightmares consumes the world.
I drifted from the road to a gravel trail. Instead of cracks I watched the moist pebbles drifting below me, their pattern was random, but it seemed to repeat. A little pink one always drifting just a few inches to the left of the others I was observing. On my right the bushes, all bare with yellow branches forming the mangled orbs that most bushes of the sort seem to form, melded into a wide stark white fence with gaps displaying the empty river below. I know the cliff there was a couple feet at most but as I watched the drifting pebbles the burred grass made it seem like a few hundred causing me to stumble and look away from my pebbles. I felt the cold stinging air float in and out of my lungs and listened to the gentle beating of my own heart, it’s tempo near matching that of my feet. A gentle tempo like that is not often found, the unique beat of one’s own heart has a sort of soothing rhythm and mixes with the cold wind rustling the naked branches if trees, a chilling melody was formed.
My trail drifted into concrete which drifted back into the dark chip road. Cars tend to speed up this road, I don’t know why, it leads up a dirt road into a neighborhood, there’s real no reason to go so fast, but it happens all the same. I hear one approaching and flinch as it goes by, absorbed in the cracks in the road I could never know if it was planning to end me or simply passing by. The lights are beginning to be turned on now but they are barely visible, their twinkling was futile against the lingering gray daylight yet they persisted. On this road I constantly had to trust that there were no parked cars and that , when it bent away from me, that I was just crossing a cross road. These roads are so interwoven that each one can form a loop with other, this endless circling adds to the bleakness of the cold evening, and even the gray skies do not change that blistering heat. And as I step under the same apple tree I've stepped under thousands of times, I was glad I wouldn't be alone anymore.

The land lies in wait
Moist with the dewy air
The quivering knot in her throat
Grew dryer with each breath

With every step her hands shook
Her aching bones protruding from her flesh
Her pale silvery skin broke
Drawing color forth into the night.

She felt, she saw,
The color dropped from her hand
lept into the earth
she saw and she knew

she puled that thread from her hand
and spun it, quilted it
her bones shook
and a blanket, she draped around her shoulders.

It engulfed her black icy feet
Melting the gray around he
And the color spread.

The muted noise of the forest grew unaltered
The soil received its warm red rain
And the world was new.

I want to give every lost person in this world a star
And lay it neatly in their hand, telling them
“Look up to the sky,
This is what you’re made of,
You can shine too if you try”

I want to take my friends up in arms,
Take them and protect them, telling them
“I’m here,
I always have been.”
But I get an awkward squeeze

I want to take you to a mountaintop at twilight
Before the sun rises, showing you
The world glows,
and every soul provides that
But I can’t, and we stare into the distance,.

I try to shine,
To glow
To protect
To lift people up when they’re down

I am insignificant,
My attempts are met with one word answers
As the stars slip through your fingers unnoticed

But your outstretched hand remains
Beckoning me up the hill, telling me
“You are significant to me at the least,
I know the world glows,
Without need of protection.”
And you lay the