Walk by alone,
or have people by the side.
The picnic bench is one that is relied.
To be a go-to place no matter
the situation.
Put on a red and white table cloth,
have a picnic,
choose your recreation.
Walk over and put your foot on the bench.
Make a phone-call,
or sing in the rain and get drenched.
Have a date see how it goes,
the people who come by change,
but the picnic bench knows
it has nowhere else to go.
A necessity that people are unaware.
Since the limit is six,
lucky seven,
pull up a chair.
Light a candle in this dark summer night.
We have food, a fire pit that is cooking,
a guitar, marshmallows to roast, friendship,
and this picnic bench makes it all right.

Sitting in a corner all alone
Refusing to talk and feeling cold to the bone
I have isolated myself from people
To keep safe from all the bad and evil
But this isn't really me

I'm driving all my friends away
And I know they'll stop trying one day
I'm alive but I'm barely breathing
But I know this isn't really me

It takes a strange courage to submit to stasis
a gentle acceptance to admit to accordance
a small release to move with grace.

It takes a surprising effort to allow joy to enter
to reveal my belly with trust for all the world,
to allow my hangdog face to return to the kennel.

I watch many move in cool hues, violets and blues,
the slow step of broken people, crushed by crushes, worn with work
as the common connecting thread, the rope bright red held by toddlers at daycamp so no one gets lost.

Sadness has become a language, a lingo so powerful that crowded rooms have little else to say. Whomever heralds the heaviest woe wins. Misery begets fine company. I've watched friends form from frayed souls that fate has patched together, I have watched lovers born from mourning.

I'm so tired of weeping. I'm not sad anymore.

I want to throw open every pair of crossed arms I see like shutters on locked windows. I seek the bravery to tell the world how happy I truly am and accept it as something other than a defeat- I want to laugh even though it will set me apart.

If I can light up a single room it will be enough. A tiny sun may feel lonely, but if it burns bright the rest will orbit.

Never will I permit the easy current of melancholy to drown me.

No more will I hide from the beauty of my life.

all roads lead to somewhere.

where?
that i don't know.

barefooted thoughts,
how will i deal with loss?