if you don't want me no more, that's fine
i'll tear out my soul and leave it behind
it's just a small piece of me left to remind you
of all of the promise you left behind you
perhaps one day you'll open your mind
and realize that logic is not how you find
the things you want most
your eyes, they blind you
see with your heart and use it to find who
it is in this world that makes your light shine
whose heart and soul are with yours entwined
let love surround you, engulf you and bind you
and one day the passion you seek will find you

I am enough.
I am enough.
I am enough.
I am enough.
I am enough.
With or without you,
**I am enough.

this is not a poem
but my heart hurts so much
and I'm not sure what to do

Dear J,
   I may be at a loss for words half the time, and the other half I might have too much to say, but I can almost always say this; I love you. I have felt fear and I have felt bravery and I have felt loss. I can look pictures of us and I can recall everything we did that day. I can listen to videos of you and I can tell what you felt. And I know that you didn't think I was paying attention, but I knew how you looked when you thought something was unfair. And I knew the look in your eyes when you saw the light just right in a sunset and you knew that nothing could ever be recreated quite like that. I felt the same way about you.
   Wherever you are, know that loving someone isn't a matter of feeling something or not feeling something. It's a matter of knowing what you're feeling and when you need to let go.
   I think that people know that letting go involves unfurling your fingers and watching something fall from a great height. It's the act of following that objects downward motion that gets to us. That once it meets the ground or whatever surface it is deemed to hit, it's gone. What was there is gone. And once you think about that you think of what could have been there. That one last touch, that one last feeling of bliss that comes with knowing that the moment you wake up the sun will be shining in rivulets through fingers that tangle in hair fresh off the pillow. It's sad to know that nothing like that will happen again.
   The sun won't shine the same way. Instead it may simply fall. It won't cascade, it won't flow over the edges of noses or smiling lips. It's the same way water may lose a stone from a riverbed and from there on after it doesn't run quite the same way. But another stone, another pebble will fall in place because replacement happens.
   I guess what I'm trying  to say, is that letting go is letting someone else take a spot. In order for something else to happen you have to let your joints move out of their grip and unfold from their hold on something that wasn't meant to be held by you anymore.
   Sometimes you have to let them land somewhere new.
I only hope that it's somewhere even more beautiful than before.
            Claire

Laying here on the cusp of sleep
I am visited by visions of the young man I once was
What happened to that beautiful boy?
I miss that overwhelming positivity
the naive idealism
the undying spirituality
he was fearless in many ways
I am not that old but that boy is
a million miles away
and all that's left is me
in my body's shell that has gone hard and stale.  
I could learn from his example
But I survive better now...

You lose a job
the lover you tied your life with drifts elsewhere
the place you grew root seems not home anymore
the days are vacuous and nights a crawler
your head echoes with the deafening groan

I deserve no love, even from me.

Surely it’s the worst portrait you drew of yourself
and an erroneous one.

The job was filling your purse but emptying your purpose
the lover was no fairy but a fair weather friend
the home was only a harbor you anchored before sail.

There’s a world at your doorstep begging your attention
withering without your love.

Pick up and hold them to your breast
see how quickly unburdens your chest
your spirits soar.

From thence you would never cease
to love yourself from the core!