There are times when I'm overcome by this feeling,
That I want to die before I turn 30.
I don't know why I've become so fixated by the number,
Maybe because it's just over five years away,
And five years flies by in an instant
Without me making any progress with getting better.
My life stopped existing at 16,
So I still have this childish, biased view of age,
Where anything anywhere close to the halfway point
Of the average life expectancy feels 'old'.
I'm just so afraid of blinking and realising
I've missed out on my only chance of youthful enjoyment.
And there are people in their 30s who climb Everest,
Who jump out of planes for fun and who travel the world,
So I know it's stupid.
But it feels like five years from now
I'll be wrinkled, with cracking bones and a stomach
Too weak to swallow adventure.

My daughter sleeps to the sound of the ocean
softly, gently rocked
forth and afar into dreams and nightmares
a soft static blanket
the assonance of water

My daughter sleeps
to the sound of an ocean that she has never heard
a loop of imagined waves that have
never wet her feet
she has never run screaming and laughing
from the imagined horrors of seaweed, foam
Tangaroa’s arms enfolding her

As my daughter sleeps, I cry
as salty as the swells she’s never seen
in this landlocked room
slowly falling from my cheek
to land on hers
a soft saline baptism

As my daughter sleeps, my thoughts fly
wondering how I can fill her
with the awe that something as elemental
something as capricious
something as beautiful
can exist in this tattered world

but still, my daughter sleeps

Memories come upon one
Like a sneaker wave
Dragging you under
And up into the spin cycle

Many moments
Many names
Many times through memories
Unchanged

The deepest loves
The most painful hurts
Never to be unchained

Emotional visions
Briefly three dimensional
And rushing back out
Into the riptides of
unconscious seas

It gives one pause
To remember
And believe
it really
Happened to me.

like an ocean,
you appear to be warm
because you reflect
the sun's light
but truly
you're so cold

like an ocean,
I can't be quite sure
of your depth
until I have dove in
and sunk
to the bottom

The wishing well has done its part

Now still its water's lie.  

The reasons for the darkest nights

Come as the Dawn draws nigh.

When I was fifteen, there were only three more years
until I could leave.
I numbered the days like some people count calories
or steps
or breaths
onetwothreefourfivesix
counting until there was no air left.
Out of breath, out of step, out of line,
one more time;
try a little harder,
push a little faster,
be a little better, a little stronger,
smarter
sweeter
tougher.
Braver.

I'd spin in circles until I was dizzy,
around and around andaroundaroundaround
before starting all over.
Out of control, too fast to ever really stop.
And then back to the beginning again
where I first began,
reduced to less than nothing,
just a slip of the person I'd hoped to become.

When I was fifteen, life was a game
where there were winners and losers
and then people who didn't ever quite make it.
Neither a winner, nor a loser,
neither a hero nor an enemy,
just nothing at all.

I ran around, afraid of everything,
hoping if I ran fast enough, whatever was lurking in the shadows might never catch me
consume me.
I ran until one day, I slipped and fell down the rabbit hole,
past where anyone could see
or hear
or reach.
I fell through the cracks I sidled around everyday walking home from school,
books in one hand,
memories in the other,
clinging to both for dear life.

I was just a sprig with dead leaves and a damaged stem,
no petals or blooms,
flowerless,
my roots growing in the wrong direction, defying gravity.
Empty hands reaching up into the air,
grasping for something to pull me back to earth,
push me forward into the world.
Desperately searching for something to believe I was enough,
believe I was worthy.
Believe I wasn't a mistake,
a surviving **** in a blossoming garden.
Hoping.

When I was fifteen, there were only days
weeks
months
Every minute accounted for
yet all forever lost in one sleepless dream,
in one fell swoop.
Time lost, standing still, forgotten,
my watch the only thing keeping each day from running into the next.

I am not fifteen, anymore.
I have found my roots,
my time,
my place,
It's safe, it's home.
There's hope.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Time is not forever,
but neither is this.

It'll be okay.
You'll be okay.

Up North, by the Russian border,
It gets so cold your breath
Freezes and floats to your
Feet in a fountain of
Sparkling microsmithereens.

Sibirians call it
Whispering Stars.
I swear on my name it's a
Sight beyond description, with

Northern Lights coiling like
Mating snakes
On a sky so full of moon and
Stars it's almost alien

Above you.
Easiest peace.
The sound of Gods
Meditating.

Silence itself opens its
Quiet eyes and looks into yours
Like a living abyss you look down,  
Looking back.

The purest of Existence's
Everythings.
The now cry in
Snow Crystals.

Zen in

Frozen.