Nothing is as simple as it ever seems, and nothing ever will be.
You can say "I love you." or "you make me happy" without uttering a single word, and I think that's
the only reason anyone can make it past the age of twenty-five.
I remember being in third grade wishing I was made of steel and concrete and every other single thing that my father's knuckles couldn't break through.
I remember being young and putting conch shells to my ear because then you would hear the ocean, and I remember doing the same to my grandfather's grave, and how his marble tomb sounded like a hollow room with smoke rising upwards through the floorboards, and I see how even at our composition, we are flooded with what we cannot turn away from.
I see the power of finding more in things that you don't really understand, and that even something as soft as a voice can be my sweet tooth.  
I was once told that people are exactly what they allow themselves to be, and are defined by the things that they were given, yet decide to change.
So just know that I feel the time passing like wind sliding down my back, and I am carving softer ways to love you,
I am trying less to know you and more to know why.

Because the way tires leave blisters on the skin of the road when they leave too quickly, is the same way goodbyes scrape arms.
It is easy to devalue our breath, when we live in a world filled with flame, and coal, and ice which are not supposed to be beautiful, but despite their purpose, they find their ways to be.
It takes courage to pray to someone knowing that gravity can ****** your words from the air and bring them right back down to the soles of your feet.
So when we question things like Heaven and wonder if that big blue sky is another bruise on someone else's Mother's arm, we find much more than answers.
We find that people are nothing extra, they are only themselves, some simply more than others.
We are more afraid of a silent and a hushed love than we could ever be of one that oozes too many words, so I will continue quieting the world until it is time to listen.
So yes,
hell exists.
But I refuse to believe it is a place, and as far as I am concerned it is a moment.
It may be one moment or millions of them, but hell is real once you understand that the people who are supposed to love you like bandages that cover burn marks, seem to be pretty good at starting fires when no one is looking.
These are just things I was thinking about on the car ride home after I ran into your Mother in the grocery store.
She said you still walk like there is sand in your shoes, and I realized that being in places isn't the same living in them.
We have bad habits of getting up and taking a few steps toward someone just to say we were there, and I hope you are guilty of
loving me from within the distance.

I know what it is to lose someone
I have felt the pain that sinks
Down your throat and settles
In the pit of your stomach
And eats you from the inside
I am familiar with the process
Of suffering and I know your pain
I want you to know that its ok
That you don't want to move on
Just yet and its ok to to spend
Hours at a time crying in the
Darkness of your room
Its ok if you want to hold on
To the memory of your loved
One and don't you ever let
Anyone tell you differently
But remember that there must be
A time when you get back up
And carry on this doesn't mean
That you have to forget them
You don't have to bury them deep
Inside and keep them hidden you
Just have to realize that your life
Isn't over yet and you still have
A full life to live
Dedicate your life to them if thats
What you want to do thats ok too
Just don't forget that time isn't
Going to hold still for you or
Anyone else
But for now its ok that you're
Taking this time to remember the
One you've lost
*~W.C.

The dirt and the heavens have sat and shown us everything at once, telling about the heart has grown gray hairs on it's brim waiting to be groomed.
I say they are roots, not hairs.
I say all the words anyone can ever spill into you are a rainstorm or a desert and they are going to make you wilt or drown you but either way you are as much of yourself as you can be.
We live in a world that is plagued with shadows that are taken apart by sun beams and sparks of the moon yet they do not know how to stop coming back to our hips like black horses that ride with what we allow Them to ride with.
And they sleep like they know there is a tomorrow, they have courage welded from wind and reverence from the cathedrals of giants that do not know how to be anything less than their very own purpose.
I think of the chapels of light, and the towers of dark, and how there are not even kingdoms filled with both of them, and I am reminded that they love each other too much to be consumed with the presence of one another knowing the world may stop it's dancing.
I hope come to be that way.
That I learn to love someones precense so much I cannot bare to be around it.
Infesting the night or the stars dictating the day as if something that cannot be held is not worth hoping for.
I think of what does not return and what does return, and ask that I have the wisdom to know the difference between what keeps me from seeing, and what has spent it's entire life giving my eyes gifts wrapped in flesh and blood and bone and filled with secrets not made to be kept on shelves or shoulders.
This world is not a child that can lie on your chest in slumber and fall asleep as easy as it wakes up. And I say, there cannot be evil where there is music, and that both what we give, and what we take, are the mosr beautiful thins our bodies can produce and that,

that is what is hidden in between shades of the Earth and her silence.
And from the loss and the blind places of land,
we run.

When we were born, we were asleep.
We may have been ******, and wet, and afraid, but we were asleep.
So we were miracles.
We walked without sight and we learned how to touch each other.
Slowly, like olive oil pouring from an open wound.

And we opened our eyes.
We looked for something to pray to, we looked for something to turn carpetburn and ****** knees into
blessings, unaware that heaven is not so quick,
and demons are not so hesitant.
We built Summer with a love that could not last.
We grew shade, not emerging from us,
but shade from glass and brick and
the shade that was beside us did not seem so great.
And we gave names to bark, and water, and gravel, and seed, and grass, and it was good.
And a few years later we held out our hand and we touched flame, and we touched mineral, and we touched machine, and bullets, and even stars, until we became everything that we only knew from our skin and our vision and we became less than what we were supposed to be.
We rode the sun to our palaces.
We loved everything as if it was dark,
We loved everything the way you would love something that didn't want a reminder.
And we saw this as good.
And we wept for the things that are simple.
And we wept for the things that were not so simple until
our eyes became coasts and we did not stop weeping.
And then we learned to jump.

so i get this idea sometimes
that you enjoy being coy
when it comes to me
to conjure momentary spectacle
& make me wonder
if you paint catharsis
on the doors of a home
you've never lived in
as a memory of our first night together
because i do, i remember you
beaming white on blue
speaking softer than any storm
i ever knew, i often think that maybe
you live that night in your mind
when your pillow is cold
& you can't sleep, it makes me wonder
if you do as i do, and rewrite three years fictionally beginning with a kiss somewhere
maybe a balcony or a quiet car
on the sand or in a sunlit grove close to your home but always a familiar scar on the maps we know we know by heart
i wonder if sometimes
the idea of me loving you is too real
and if it teems under your tongue
to stay observant but distantly intrigued
if by this distance you think it safe
to get a dog and pass time
on the couch with a journal & some wine
what i really wanna know is if your fingernails ever wish to have my skin under them
or if they would boast
about winning a war with my headboard
i wonder if you can imagine me
meeting your parents in your apartment & shaking your fathers hand
as a first of many calloused palm readings
and if you know that i trembled before them
how insignificant i had felt
to not know their daughter
in the way i had envisioned
how i picture such poignant moments
so tangibly sharp that sometimes
i replace  my memories with little stories
i tell myself that i can't count on two hands
the number of times i've seen you
& that i don't feel like a crater
when i recollect our collisions
i want to know if you still find madness
in the words that have always been about you
i wanna know if your imagination of me
looks more like an anniversary or an obituary

i had a dream we were holding hands in a blockbuster video store.

everything was made of wood.

i had a dream we drove across country
and stopped at a bridge to stare at the sky.

your hair was brown. your hair was draped over the passenger seat.

you held my hand again like you meant it.

i was a window for your fingers.

i was something else while you pointed at an airplane
and stretched your body to it.

you thought you’d never get so far.

i hung out in a mall parking lot while you became the stars.

when i woke up the longing still wasn’t gone.

This is not a love letter, but I have to get something off my chest since it seems you have decided to make a home out of me.

You live in my heart and my head, and hopefully one day in my hands.

You have taken down the boards I had blocking the sun, and you have dusted off the blinds. I think you were just trying to prove to me that you can make light touch even the darkest corners of me.

You have painted over my stained walls from past lovers. I hope you cover every inch of me with orange, I want to be your favorite color.

You have fixed my broken pipes and all the shattered lights and I am breathing again. You have fixed every broken floorboard and I promise I will not let you fall through.

You have patched up my roof and weather-proofed me, and I swear I will keep you safe from any storm that comes your way.

You have dug up the dead flowers in my garden. You have trimmed my dead leaves, but please remember to water me.

You have created a home out of me and I hope you never move away. I promise the neighbors are nice and the neighborhood is safe.

If you ever plan to leave please just burn me down, I don't need any owner other than you.

I don't know your favorite tea.
I'm not sure how you get up when you're knocked down.
But I love the places you take me;
the shivers on my spine when you're around.

You've never told me your favorite color
or the things that break your heart.
I'm praying to God there's not another,
the thought of being without you is tearing me apart.

I don't know a thing about you,
but I'm already falling for you.
I don't know anything about you,
but I know I've gotta have you.

*~ m.w. ~

this is a series of brief letters to the pieces of my body

dear body,
we don't always work together very well,
but i swear i am trying.

dear hands,
the callouses and crescent moons in your palms
will not be for nothing.

dear knuckles,
aren't you tired of painting yourselves black & blue
every time words fall short of the fire burning behind my sternum?

dear feet,
you know better than to follow roads that lead to dead ends.
there are better places for us to go.

dear eyes,
you have sunken so far into my skull
it shocks me you see anything at all anymore.
you're fixated on shades of gray
but i promise the world will regain its color soon.

dear knees,
stop crawling.
this broken glass is from his bottles.
get up. no more blood.

dear shoulders,
it was never your burden to carry. let it fall,
and try your hardest not to feel guilty.

dear neck,
his hands will never make a home here,
and you are worth more than one night of empty bruises.

dear spine,
stop waiting to be warmed by fingers
that would reach for another body if they could.

dear tears,
do not waste yourselves.

dear ears,
you have been filled with ghost songs for too long.
stop listening for things no one is saying -
it will make life much simpler.

dear mouth,
i know these secrets have been threatening to break my teeth
but please do not open your gates. i am not ready.

dear skin,
we have never been close friends.
i am sorry for the scars.
i am trying to learn how to be comfortable in you.

dear mind,
if i could wish you into an etch-a-sketch
and shake you clean of these bad memories i would.

dear heart,
i hope you can forgive me for being so careless.
i feel how tired you are. rest is on its way.  

dear body,
you will one day see a grave,
but it must not be by your own hands.

- m.f.