Dirt, the dust on your
shoes, your pointed boots
that pierce the skin as you
trample over everyone you
meet, this is what I'm
worth to you?

It's certainly how you
treat me. Like a scratch
on your peripheral, just
waiting to be buffed out.
Wiped away without
a second thought. Not
even a hint of regret harbored
in your unforgiving eyes.

What did I do this
time? To upset the almighty king.
How did I breach your
throne? Yesterday we shared
the feast, today I'm left
without a drop of water.
Nothing to quench
my thirst for answers,
for answers to your
endless puzzles.

What do I need to do,
to make myself exist to you?

Love is fragile.
It spins, a plane of glass,
on the pin point of a sowing needle.
Tilting, and twirling, and wobbling.
Unsure of where it will crash,
or if it will crash at all.

My love for you is ever-turning.
It shimmers with a beauty free of cracks.
My love for you is constantly skipping.
A pieced-together, scarred shard.

Love has many faces.
Like masks in a grand theatre show.
Waiting behind the closed curtain,
ready to break free for life's ******.

Our love is deep and wide.
A fire that fills my soul and strokes my womb.
Our love is steady and gentle.
A calming wind that comforts my back.

You can't understand,
why our love is so different.
You can't understand,
why my heart lies romantically with another.

He will always be my one.
Our futures are entangled with one another.
I wish you would see that.
Understand my love for you will never fail,
Just because we're not together,
doesn't mean you're not my friend.

Silence lingers in crisp autumn air
as my feet rebound off concrete.
The uphill journey is traveled alone,
except for fellow early birds
and rare squirrels skittering across my path.
Questioning, I think, if I am threat enough
to keep them from their hunt for breakfast.

Sunlight fights its way through leaves
to flicker across my sleepy eyes.
As if the morning itself is trying to
jump start my system.
Wake me up for the long day ahead.

Finding my favorite perch
at the top of the hill,
I sit to watch campus slowly come to life.
Starting with a squirrel
and his newly found peach treasure,
and ending with the faces
of my unknown classmates.

This is Western, at 8 a.m.

Today I remembered the weekend we made cupcakes. Batter dotted our skin, and we kissed it off each others faces.

I remember falling asleep on your basement couch, curled against your beating chest. We watched movies the way a nicotine addict smoked cigarettes. Our relationship a reflection of blue-light on our faces.

I wish we'd been as innocent as the cartoons we watched in my bedroom. Instead we crumbled like corporations in Fight Club. The irony is a bitter taste in the back of my throat.

All for nothing I fell asleep in my hospital bed. Clinging to thoughts of you to send me to dreamland, until the day I found, that I'm much more prone to nightmares.

It was then I realized our love story was a tragedy. That maybe all love stories were.

My lips feel heavy,
as I watch you fill yourself
with toxic waste.

Disgust bubbles hotly,
but no judgement
will I ever speak.

After all,
I wouldn't want you
to judge me for my
cup of ice against your
plate of pasta. My dark
circles against your
rosy cheeks.

Shaking tremors
make me tap at the
table in between us.

What do you see
when you look at me?
Beauty? Or bones?

When I look at
you, all I ever see
is a life I will
never have the luxury
of living. Mouthfuls of
treasure I'll never
be able to think
of consuming.

When I play pretend,
I always pretend
to be you.

And it's always
better than I
ever think it will be.

Even when the
consequences of
being you fill
my mouth with bile
over a pure white
basin, the memories
are still worth it.

Still enough,
to get me through
another week.

Do you, little child,
Fear your blank slate when nothing’s inspired, but you see a flag
Which paints itself on the face of
Someone else’s moon?

And do you, little child,
Know the pain of a thousand plain feathers pulling up and further
With nothing but hollow bones and
Grey sinew beneath?

And do you, little child,
Realise that the anguish of loss which comes with every edited word
Is bygones is bygones is bygones
Gone by?

And do you, little child,
Understand that a shoelace which appears at first to be two strings is actually
One road to the end overlapping again
And again?

And can you, little child,
Fear more than the dark day’s end, or the eight-leggedness of tarantulas,
And worry instead for the loss of your
Creativity?

Birthing them--
momentous, mind shattering push
they burst through our skull
like a sprouting flower.
Many nurture them,
with wisdom & understanding of how to present themselves...
feeding them bit of thoughts
mixed in a sweet bottle.

They're passed around--
gently, to friends and family.
We are proud--
beaming like Buddha.

I like to play with them,
hold them up to the sky--
showing the world,
I feel like that scene in Lion King!
Ever so gently I twirl, lightly toss...
so they feel like they're flying
as I wind up my arms
then hurl them with as much force as I can muster against the wall!

The slow expand of your pupils
was a synonym for love in
the greatest minimalist sonnet
ever writ.

Over the board, your faces urges 'your move',
I look down at my row of letters
weigh the points
and know you've won.

I survived high school by a small crack of glass.
I caught myself  by the pad of my finger tips, on the splintered pane,
after falling off the edge of a world of depression, anger, and pain,
and it was from there I pulled myself up, feeling more alive than I had in my entire life.
Because it was through hell that I walked, feet burning, for the diploma I earned on stage.
It was through spider webs I passed, scratching invisible clinging memories off,
to march tall and strong, toward the future I thought was nonexistent a month before.  
I survived high school by the non-working baby hairs on the back of my neck.
The ones that are supposed to stand up like frightened Halloween cats whenever dangers approaches,
and yet when my danger came calling, laid calm like the summer sun on your concrete drive way
and it's because of this I stand here today, looking into the eyes of your fresh faces, fearing that you too may be walking on coals.
It's because of this I want to pour the knowledge of my journeys into the openings of your skin,
let you soak up my mistakes so that maybe, just maybe, you won't have to make as many of your own.
For there are some mistakes that will never heal.
So when you reach for that bottle, hands hungrily searching for something impossible to find in Absolute *****,
remember that the only thing at the bottom of that bottle is blurred memories.
When your skin gets the itch only a blade can scratch,
stop, drop the blade, and coming running as fast as you can back into my words.
Hear me when I tell you that beneath your skin lies not an escape from this life, but only more of your alive, beating, self.
And as much as your eyes might need proof that you're alive, your chest is always right there below your head,
ready to let you feel the heart inside that makes you such a precious addition to this world.
Feel  it.
Let it's pounding remind you that dropping calories and skipping meals won't solve your problems.
That being skinny, as much of a temptation as it can be, isn't a goal worth losing the breath from your lungs.
Trust me, I know. And I know that heartbreak and loss and hurt are more than enough to make you want to tear apart the fabric of your life and create something new from the threads.
But please know that in end you'll only wind up tangled in the mess,
calling out for people that you've pushed so far away they can no longer hear you.
So instead of ripping through the darkness, know that you don't have to start from scratch,
but merely dye yourself, your life, a different color.
Know that everything you've been through and everything you've seen is building who you are, who you will be, and that slowly but surely you are becoming a work of art so unspeakably beautiful that nothing like you has ever been made or seen before and hold on to that.
Hold on to the idea that this world, and these people, they need you.  
They want nothing more than to see what you turn out to be. I know that's how I feel.
I look at every single one of you and choke up at the thought of how you will stand out as the purist work of art ever imaginable one day.
The kind of art that comes only from a lifetime of living and moving on and starting over.  Hold on to that.
When the world comes to your window with wind and rain, when it tries to drown you in your own tears, and break your spirit with your own emotions, know that you aren't facing the hurricane alone.
I am here, and I know.
I know that no matter what happens, there is enough fire left in you to keep going.
You just have to dig deep enough to smell the smoke.

We are born unto a crown of thorns.
Our tender skin rendered vulnerable
to self-made deities, rambling idols.
Our minds are roped and tied, binding
our thoughts with punishments.
Punishments disguised as pathways of love.

What love is brought into this world, when love is
taught by the bloodshed of others. What people
are created with love made from threats
of searing flesh? When did love become less
about acceptance and more about separating
those deemed worth and unworthy?

Gods of fear curse our world with tainted
versions of love. We are forced to our knees
before the power of an almighty being unknown
to mankind. In searching for purpose, we have forsaken
our freedom. We fall victim to the fears that numb our
brains liked "Grade A"  pharmaceuticals.

If your god is almighty, all loving, and all seeing,
why does he rule without mercy? Why does he
require full and complete submission as the only
pathway to him?

We go to war under the guise of bringing freedom.
Our politicians preach out from mountains our right
to freedom and free will. But when the votes are cast,
and the campaigns are run, we scuttle home to spread the
single most imprisoning ideological mindset to others.

Why fight for freedom,
when we give it away so willing
to a man behind smoke and mirrors?

With a single
glance
you make me sweat--
your sticky breath
dances
melodically with every swagger
of your step.

You chronically
dehydrate  
my thoughts--
ironically inspiring me
to bathe in refreshing
conscience streams
that are not mine.

I want to taste
the salty Sahara sands
between your toes
to feel what it's like this close
to the sun--
concealed by the  burning
Shisha smoke you breathe
with such control into your soul.

For one steamy night
I want to be the wind
igniting--brightening--heightening
those burning embers in your eyes
watching you slither,
as if an ice cube touched your spine.

I want white light smiles
to scar our faces
the next morning,
disfiguring our charred
hearts--
our ashes scattered
by the wind from the burning
building we've collapsed.

Our reality is always
changing.
Turning, wobbling.
Falling apart,
and back together again.

I expect nothing from life.

The problem with
beliefs.
The problem with
expectations.

They lead to disappointment.

To live without ideas
of how life comes and goes,
is to be wise.

Ride with life.
All its steep hills
and double loops.
Embrace whatever happens.
Bury it in your arms
and realize that this...
this is the part of
life that terrifies people.

Because beliefs...they're ignorant.
Expectations...they're irrelevant.
Let go of all the weights holding
you. Free yourself to a life of
traveling. Experience your emotions,
your pain, your happiness.
Let yourself be taken into the
chaotic, peaceful, violent, loving, lying, helping, wonderfully ironic,
state we call being alive.

I am Lauren Pearson,
and I am not a believer.
I have opened my eyes,
and I am enlightened.