Hello Tier thirteen
Keep your cages nice and clean
Purse your lips and nod.

delicate
just like
gold flakes,

filled with
an iridescent
sapphire,

so sweet,
honey-glazed donut
instead of a heart,

even a glimpse
of your sunshine

is enough
to keep souls
warm for an entire winter season.

may you continue
reaching your dreams
even if sometimes
it is too far
even if sometimes
it is too hard
may you never get tired
of moving forward

I first met her in a sunflower
feild,
Filled with sunshine and bugs,
In the tall stems,
She lifted up the corners of her mouth,
At everyone,
And me,
I tried to scream at her, and hit her with my soft fists,
But she took them in her hands instead,
And she was running too fast to hear me,
Or even care.

The significance of consonants in my soles
As they crush gravel and dirt eludes me
My tongue is busy shaping words against
The soft palate, perfecting them for later
When we meet and I am caught off guard
By the storm of vowels and silent letters
We communicate with, as though just
Tuning into speech after a long period of static
Words are the low-hanging fruit, so
We grab at them despite the hard shell
Knowing we can never get to the soft flesh
Of ideas as they are before we tear them
With our teeth

I’ll start at the end
With the cobwebs and trees
That sit on top of my bones
Hard though it is
To find gratitude in decay
I’ll choose to believe that
Perhaps the void bears a reason
A ceaseless expansion for which
We are fuel and flame

I’ll start with a name
The familiar echo in a
Boulder-strewn landscape
Where the rain pours and pools
In the grey cracks of the earth
Reassembling the peaks
And valleys of my face
The limbs and flesh
And cheeks I now kiss
Wet with memory

That this is me
The shocked horror and perfection
The mindless dripping
Of each meaningless moment
The ones I loved so hard
The ones I fought so hard
Every hour spent
Anxious for the next
All rushing back to the heart
Flowing backwards
Conjuring up a rhythm
Of blood and dreams
Where now age has lifted

The free form walks home
And home is no longer a place
As it used to be
Now that I see it so clearly
With the wisdom of the stars

She smiles
He smiles
And the friendship begins with a smile