I've become this
   plain Jane person
Melted into a crowd of
   lost souls
Drained from passions, dreams,
   & individuality
A subject of America
   land of the free
      Home of the NAIVE
to think this is "living"
   to waste 100 years
      never "living"
for objects, &
   replaceable trinkets
Not seeing the uncreated
   memories & unbiased truth
what it is to me was
   more than a nine to 5
but instead I am stagnant
   glazed into the layers
      upon layers of white
   coffee mugs & ceramic

Did I tell you?

I’m kind of quiet… no, really, I am. You should see me around people I don’t know…. Ha, yes, I know you don’t believe me… I talk my socks off around you. But, you’re different. You already know the contents of me… I mean, you may not have read every page in detail, but you get the rough draft. Not many people get that. Man, what a stuck up ***** they say… Miss goody two shoes is too good for us… Not all of us are rich like you they say. Oh, how I wish I was any of those things…it wouldn’t sting when they mistook me for anything but the plains, but instead they see skylines and frosted mountains. I am not as complex, I am not as breathtaking, I am not such a climb. It’s funny. i have it together - it appears from the outside looking in. On the inside, I’m so tired. I know you know this - but they don’t. They don’t see 14 hour days, 98 hour weeks, 5,784 hour years… of on the go, here you can have my time, my peace, my arms, my legs, my soul. They don’t see that. They don’t see me helping the family when they need food that week..and me not eating. They don’t see my sore back, my restless nights, or the loneliness that follows endless hours. I’m the one missing out… and they think I am better than them. If they only knew how much I wished I could be more like them and less like me…. how they are the morning skies… and I am merely a spectacle to their bold colors. They’re outspoken, care free, sociable, …extroverted. I wouldn’t dare say a word. I know even then they wouldn’t get me… not like you do. I just sit back - quietly, watching, listening, absorbing…an abused sponge from one too many passes on the burnt pan. Ha, that’s me. Still giving my all - in whatever pieces are left of me, trying to shine the world. Silly I am. I’m ready to get out of here… or find myself again, and stop smothering my heart. It’s an out of control fire and my day to day has become the dirt. I think if I exhale in a week you may just see smoke pouring from my lungs… I’m burning out. Can you tell?

Today
I will find my heart
where you left it

Today
I will rinse it clean
and
sew it back into my chest

Today
I will buff the scars
and watch as it inhales
red

Today
I will be fully alive

but
Tonight
I will detach it from my veins
and lay with you again

Feeling weightless
And heavy
Feeling love and
Bitterness
Feeling nothing and
Everything
And far too vulnerable

You stood there
In the hills
Looking down at the
City
And I stood there
As the trees
Blocking your
Vision
And when I tried
To speak
You silenced me for
the wind
Shriveling roots
Holding me in
And the ground below you
Started to quake
As the forest before you
Withered away

"It is really beautiful up here" she whispered.

Her skin brightened in the glow of the fading masterpiece of crimsons, yellows, and golds the sun had brushed across the turquoise sky "This is it, this is what heaven is like."

I couldn't hear her, but I could read her soft spoken lips and study her face, which I always imagined as less of the cover to a book and more every word inside. There was not a greatness of a sadness that ceased to mask her portrait. She was all heart and soul, every bit of her.

I watched as her bright eyes change to become more glass than eyes. As if, for the first time, she was seeing life, love, and something more. Something so deep and beautiful that not even Hemmingway or Fitzgerald could even begin to put the prefix of it into thought.

Among the dusting of the clouds and transparent sunset I felt her heartbeat could silence and the lungs of which gave her the life I so cherished could empty turning her flesh a pale blue, and she would fade peacefully into the scene before me.

This very thought frightened me. Too soon would her feet touch the ground and nothing I was humanly capable of, or possibly godly capable of, would ever captivate and hold her so perfectly or turn her eyes as vivid - and there was nothing more I wanted.