You never really know how strong you are until you're alone,
crying and forced to pick yourself up off the floor.
That is when you can truly see how big your emotional muscles are
and I promise
they are bigger than you ever thought possible.

There is nothing in the intricate design of the eye that tells us how we are able not only to see the world, but to look back upon it.
Is there a magical element yet unknown, somewhere deep in the vitreous humor, or hidden within the optic nerve that burns with the purpose to seek out beauty in the world?
To capture it in our gaze, to own it for a rich moment or two.
Is there some electrical impulse within this blinking vessel
that projects our delight upon the object of our affection?
We know we love, and yet how can this be so? It does not exist anywhere in our anatomy.
We know that we would risk everything for that enduring answer, seen radiating from another's eyes,
and yet, how can we grasp it and hold it tight, this invisible thread?

Where, in the gray matter and electrical streams and storms of our mind, lies our imagination?
A game of telephone from neuron to neuron sends the fleeting thought
that behind our closet door there may be another world,
where a nautilus is king, and great whales swim the cosmos, feeding on the tails of comets.
But only for a moment do we think, perhaps it is so.
Until we open the solid door, and what we believe,
because we must,
shows us the simple fact of a tidy linen closet.
We believe it, because we must.
For there is nothing in our marvelous jellyfish of a brain that tells us that the world can be
anything
and everything
we want it to be.  
And with that, the World, and all the other worlds
here, there, and in between,
smile at us,
the fleeting shimmer of light in an endless sea.

When the walls come down,
there's that eerie sound,
can't you hear it far away,
pulsating through the airwaves.

Inside broken hearts,
there's a missing part,
no words can fill,
a void as empty as these.

It's a chilling scene,
to see a shattered dream,
lying on the floor,
naked and alone.

There's no mystery,
in the lies we believe,
but we hear them through,
and we let them grow.

And in the end,
we're back here again,
with the walls falling down,
and the missing part.

Once when I was young,* I was told you could swing so high you'd be able to just *fly away.  

   I learned early on
               That not everything we're told is true
               The fantastical can sometimes amount to a pile of plastic bags scattered in the wind
                    The end isn't always happy and there's not always closure
      Punctuations are more often question marks than definitive periods
                And looking for a definite explanation took prevalence over allowing our imaginations to fill in the blanks.
         Play time was replaced with study time,
             And before we knew it, it was time for work
                      We strayed from the playgrounds of our youth,
      Never returning to the top of the slide, we'd hit the ground a bit too hard to keep the enchantment of seemingly endless possibilities going
                                              Carriages became pumpkins long before midnight,
              And the school bell rang before we could finish our fun
                       But to tell the truth, sometimes,
     When everyone else has gone inside, back to the real world, full of logic and banalities,
         I sit on the old swingset kicking my feet
    Hoping it will let me *soar

It was when I met you
That I understood love songs
And
why people dance with each other

I understood kissing
And
why it is the most beautiful thing

I understood why brokenhearted people cry
And why they stay away from everyone
when they heart shatters
because they need their space
to fill it
with the voice of their lover who left,
and the memories
to bring the pieces of their heart together
and to break them again.

It was when I met you
That I understood what life is all about
and
why people stay late out night thinking about that someone.