it’s interesting to think about all the right people who might’ve come into your life at the wrong time.
but then again,
i often wonder if time could’ve saved or wrecked us at all.
maybe from the start, we were destined to be nothing more than strangers.
even if i had been weighed down, glued to one spot,
nomadic tensions silenced,
it seems likely that, still, our friendly smiles and cordial jokes would’ve been
limited, somehow,
by unseen barriers,
by the cruel overseer that is fate.

i think i meant something to you, once.
not a lot, but something.
and now,
now i’m just there.
a solid. something that takes up space.
you still sit close to me,
but not as close as you did when we first met.

and i wonder, sometimes, if i did something wrong,
if there was something i could’ve done, or not done, to change things,
to make things better,
to stop us from drifting silently onto the end of the growing list of tragedies my life’s friendships have been.

but maybe there was nothing i could do.
that thought, while terrifying, is perhaps the most comforting one.
after all, it is better to be left helpless from the start than to be burdened with the knowledge that the stones you threw became part of the landslide.

i hope, maybe, that we can salvage what’s left,
perhaps even grow it into something better.
but somewhere inside, i know that’s fool’s talk.
i doubt i ever meant much to you, anyway.
i always was, and always will be, just another shadow,
another stranger,
another change of season.
i suppose i was your winter —
a barrage of snow and ice that danced in clumsily,
not bothering to think about what would happen once spring came.

i hope you’ll remember me when i’m gone.
even now, it’s nice to think that i cross your mind as much as you cross mine.
but my hopes seldom match my reality.

so, still, i am just another.
watching.
waiting.
being.
i am nothing, and in being nothing i suppose that i, too, am everything.

but i will never be your everything.

and i could say that i regret that,
but perhaps i’m still holding onto that last bit of hope.

always the optimist,
and yet even more so the pessimist.

i thought you might be both, too.
i thought we might find a way to complete one another,
much like how the land completes the sea.

but i suppose i am left the earth without its ocean,
the ground without its rain.

it’s a horrible thing, detachment.
my roots never quite find what they’re looking for in the soil.

i had just hoped you would be different.

(a.m.)

O' Helios'
Back arched in regal Blue,
bows into pillar puffed petrichor
Amethyst warred in the underbelly,
verdant memories of waning night
swore legendary red,
o're musk of organdy
blushed brightly pink
an awakening sky.

Daffodils and dandelions
lean into the chariots wind...
sans the sounds of summer's sweet,
eulogies weep over Endymion's eyes.

Cardinal night, closes his door
morning will sing a yawn
in symphony...
and into
the grey goose dawn,
fifty more daughters
are born.

Once upon a time
he accused me
of finding him marketable,
but I swear,
if I had twelve of him
I'd still keep a dozen.

One for each month of
the year, so when one
wore out
I'd cycle that clout
every other moon.

I am good with life, and life is good with me*

We have battled

shed blood, and puddles of tears
fill the footsteps of our struggle

We have loved deeply

melded spirits lifted above an unswept life
exposing the naked elegance of the universe

We have learned through reflection*

now in evening hours, battered and cut, toothless and bloodied,
looking out and laughing at conquered obstacles

wiser from experience, fear is now friend, not foe
love is embraced as the magic elixor, and learning continues