In the dark hours of the night,
When your heart is breaking,
When you’re losing the battle against the pain,
When your mind is giving up on hope,
And you pray to the God above that He take you away….
In those darkest moments of your soul,
No one is there.
No one is there to hear your cries or heed your calls.
If I’ve learned one thing in the trials of this existence,
It is this:
In those moments when it hurts too much to live, to breath
And tears fall, scalding, down your cheeks,
No one is there.
During those nights when sleep is an elusive escape,
Condemning you to another night of punishing thoughts
And that empty ache in your heart is torn open,
Stealing your will to live, like a black hole,
Snatching away all the lies you’ve comforted yourself with.
Leaving you bare, exposed.
Ripping apart the wound that has never healed,
The wound of all things lost and never had.
The ******, gushing red marks of a wanderer butchered and left for dead.
In those seconds, minutes, hours of agony in which your heart shatters and breaks and comes undone again and again and again
In the pouring, raging storm of your pain unleashed
No one hears the desperate pleadings in your mind.
No one hears the howling screams of your soul.
No one hears a thing.
Because when you call in your darkest moments, no one answers.

Leaves, like butterflies,
dance on the river of wind,
fluttering high.

Don't approach a dog unknown to you
Holding out your hand, making eye contact
You may frighten him
Let him come to you

Don't write a poem uninspired
It won't work out
In good time
Let it come to you

Don't go out there seeking love
Like a child with a butterfly net
Live your life
Let it come to you

If I a wayward traveler
were to rest my weary bones,
I fear I’d quickly find my name
in a garden full of stones.

So I continue trudging onward,
without regard for my direction.
Eyes forever pointed downward
by the fear of my detection.

Carrying the bags of follow travelers
despite their ever growing weight.
My steps harried ever onward
by the fear I might be late.

I can’t see my destination
but I have faith to keep me strong.
I can’t let my pace be slowed
by the fear that I am wrong.

I can’t say I quite recall
even the way this journey started
but I must have held some purpose
on that day I first departed.

So I continue trudging onward
without regard for my confusion.
This journey is about so much more
than my self-involved delusions.

If I a wayward traveler
were to rest my weary bones,
I fear I’d quickly find my name
in a garden full of stones.

I am slowly learning to disregard the insatiable desire to be special. I think it began, the soft piano ballad of epiphanic freedom that danced in my head, when you mentioned that “Van Gogh was her thing” while I stood there in my overall dress, admiring his sunflowers at the art museum. And then again on South Street, while we thumbed through old records and I picked up Morrissey and you mentioned her name like it was stuck in your teeth. Each time, I felt a paintbrush on my cheeks, covering my skin in grey and fading me into a quiet, concealed background that hummed “everything you’ve ever loved has been loved before, and everything you are has already been,” on an endless loop. It echoed in your wrists that I stared at, walking (home) in the middle of the street, and I felt like a ghost moving forward in an eternal line, waiting to haunt anyone who thought I was worth it. But no one keeps my name folded in their wallet. Only girls who are able to carve their names into paintings and vinyl live in pockets and dust bunnies and bathroom mirrors. And so be it, that I am grey and humming in the background. I am forgotten Sundays and chipped fingernail polish and borrowed sheets. I’m the song you’ll get stuck in your head, but it will remind you of someone else. I am 2 in the afternoon, I am the last day of winter, I am a face on the sidewalk that won’t show up in your dreams. And I am everywhere, and I am nothing at all.