Don't look back, the past is a dark place so keep moving forward,don't look back even when it's lurking shadows call  your name.

Yellow dust on a bumble
     bee's wing,
Grey lights in a woman's
     asking eyes,
Red ruins in the changing
     sunset embers:
I take you and pile high
     the memories.
Death will break her claws
     on some I keep.

Dear reader,


It won't be long before they electrocute the trees with candy colored Christmas lights. Soon everything will be gone: memories, glances, the year. Every thing will dissolve into nostalgia and our lives will become more patchwork and less hopeful. Soul-crushingly sweet our smiles will be, as we watch that disguised meteorite crash into our existence.

Her name was Reno. Her dad joked he named her so because she was the result of a gamble gone wrong.

I could see the stitching around her eyes start to falter, as tears slipped out like a young nineteen year-old girl, running out of the back of a double-wide. Away. Away from it all. Leaving her father, the mechanic who could only fix things with his hands. Running through a field as shimmering as her nails, touching the tall grass with her short fingers.

"I'm not trailer trash," she said, "I've just had it rough."

Reno could see things others couldn't see. Frequently she painted wrecked cars, and I asked why, to which she explained, "Some accidents are allowed to be beautiful."

I fell for her the way her jaw drops after one of my inappropriate jokes: quickly and with such joy.

She had the same answer to when I asked if she liked movies and if she missed her mom.

"Of course I do, Josh," she looked at me and smiled, "Hey buck, have you ever seen True Romance?"

A woman after my own heart.

We watched Christian Slater shoot Drexl, and, like a bullet to the chest, she placed her hand over my heart.

"My, oh my, are you sure that rib cage is big enough for that thing, Mr. Haines?"

She looked a little like Patricia Arquette, but identical to Michelle Williams.

"Are you aware that you look like Michelle Williams?"

Reno ran her hands up my legs, across my torso, and held her hands at my jaw,"Are you aware of how good of a person you are, John Mayer?"

"Ah, yeah. I've gotten that since high school."

She smiled, looked down and up at me,"No, the part about you being a good person? ...You're the drawing on my wall."

I didn't know what that meant.

"I had this drawing-so terrible-it was of the sunset on our hill in Welling Valley," she looked into me and down, while smiling,"Anyway, the sun would kiss the grass every evening, and one day I thought I'd draw it and keep it in my room. When every thing got ugly with my daddy's drinking, and when he beat me something awful, I wanted something to remind me that the light sometimes goes away but will always be back another day. You're my light, Josh. You're the next day after nineteen years of cussing and drinking."

We made love on my bed, as, through the window, the sun bathed our bodies. Her body was a sculpture and her voice was as soft as her lips. I was terrified.

Pulling her hair back, she stood at the foot of my bed, naked,"Are you scared of little ole' me? You look as white as a ghost."

"No, I've never felt so alive... You're so ******* beautiful."

Reno and I lain in bed while Parks and Rec played on the television. Her index and ******* walked across my chest and stopped as she asked, "Josh, have you ever been in love?"

I touched my fingers on hers, studying them with my eyes, and then I looked at her, "Yes, once."

"What was it like?"

I thought I'd feel pain but instead I smiled, "Fantastic, fleeting, and always a little out of reach."

She cooed, "I can't wait until I think I love you like nobody else."

"Me too."



Sincerely,


Joshua Haines

"Be happy." They say.
I can't.
"At least pretend to be."
Why?
"Because no one likes a sad person."
*Oh

“My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains”
my mind as I sit in my overgrown grassy field.
I lie back, and look at the last rays of sunlight,
glimmer across the green leaves of the trees,
that creep up behind me in their sneaky ways.
My head is throbbing as silent tears slip down,
unseen by anyone other than the stars in dark,
my pale cheeks, and my messy, knotted hair.
I curl up in a ball on my side in the blackening night.
I hold my arms tightly around myself, desperately,
trying to keep from completely falling apart.
My choked sobs echo in the woods that reach,
comfortingly, out to me. I am tempted to go;
to climb into my favorite tree, settle in my place,
and just lie there forever-until unconsciousness
becomes my lonely eternity. Animals, insects,
and bugs are dead silent while I cry myself to sleep,
in the soft, caring grass, and my final wish,
before I go under, is that it hadn’t been him;
it hadn’t been me, and that everything would
be back to normal, and it was nothing but,
a sad, frightening, horrible, impossible dream.

There is an cry ever once in a while that suddenly dies down. The tears have vanished away. The battle wasn’t over,their just wasn’t any fight left. There is no way you’re able to be richin gold in reality your nothing but dust waiting to be blown away.

The dark colored clouds block your eyesight. You wonder where did you go wrong. Your filled with so much despair you can’t find peace within yourself. Your useless, alll you’ve every wanted was someone to love. But in the end who loves you in reuturn? Who hears your cires when your abandond  and worthless to yourself?

The mystery doesn’t fade not does the pain crumbles. In the depth of solitude the most outrageous thoughts allign inyour head. Just the thought of a blade slicing through your skin, you begin to  feel whole. You cut deeper to endure this lifeless pain.

Thoose sleepless nights you prayed for help and shelter maybve even love with some type of appreciation. I’ll wish to be stricken blind then to see myself commit such a crime. I’m a prisoner of my own thoughts. Pacing back and forth wondering when it’ll stop.

What happen to a sudden grace , a personal place let alone to be treated as a shut out disgrace. There is no love. I dread having the memory of living once more,  to feel like thereis anything that can’t be done. Who’s crying out for you? Nobody cares enough to even scream your name.



Your nothing but dust waiting to be blown away but then your only human.

Every step I take makes me downfall. Every inch of air I breathe makes me disgusted to be here. I can’t bare captivity. I can’t seem to redeem myself from what was taking from my grasp. The opportunity awaits me to be free . So I’ll walk with me while still perserving my soul

The battle I’m facing has come to an end. This passion for death has suddenly descend. No more weeping sorrows of another one’s untruthfully borrows. No more escaping thoughts as though they intruded my pain and made them linger on further.

Who am I to hold on to the past these dried up tears and this red puffy face. Every one looking down at my misfourtune. Well look again im slowly risen and gaining my purpose. No more saying to myself that this was meant to happen.I’m made to be strong and live by faith.looking in the eyes of the ones that denied me, betrayed me, and mislead me.

My past shall not lead me nor misguide me into the wrong path. Nothing is more unbearable then fighting myself. I’m not alone anymore. I shall love once again and be treated as a human in the end.

I have found my purpose to succeed I am more than what you believe but I am only human you may accept me or be left over in my past in the dying end. I’m only human and no one is perfect.