Month of January,
My words wander through
Your snow to gather
Crystalline Icycles and fragrance
From burning fires.
Come Winter, my love,
The grey days of chill
Warm the heart,
A blessed scape for holding
My lover drifting in white days,
The flakes fall as you approach
And form a memory,
Frozen in my eyes as though
The season were brought upon
Just for this moment.

Look, in my eyes,
Yours,
An angel walks in the snow
So that the cold sun could
Shinedown upon you,
Cotton and your rose petal
Cheeks, smile at me as
You shiver and kiss the crimson
Of your lips,
The season of Winter,
A reason to hold you....

Night, that old sinkhole
of the soul, climbs
the dark stairs of despair
who knows what the moon
is thinking behind that one-eyed
stare clawing his way through
the pines outside my window
carrying bootblack in a blanket
when it's colder for shining shoes
that go with my black suit
and the red rose on the pillow
I burn before the morning.

A sprightly snail crawls,
etching a message as it moves;
cryptic conundrum.

There's a sea I sometimes find myself treading in,
Sometimes steady, sometimes drowning.
It's hard to stay afloat at times,
And I hallucinate people on ships sailing past me,
Not a care in the world, and I hate them;
Every imagined smile hurts like inhaling the saltwater.
But the worst thing is the monstrous shadow beneath the waves,
Huge and treacherous with eyes like emeralds,
It wants to swallow me whole and drag me down,
Into waters so deep that all becomes black.
And worst of all, when I hear that leviathan's rumbling roar,
I sometimes think it's coming from inside me.

Love is a word
like a sword
that has worn
out its scabbard,
a lonely *******,
or a red rose
that opens alone,
a dream that lingers
for too many seasons
and passes in the shadows,
furrows in the dust
on a bannister,
a rock in the garden
of lust,
an empty place
at a table,
a ring on a cobweb
in the rain,
a long hair on your bed,
a nail in a blank wall.

is crosses. we used to think xisses.

stab the needle .                  threaded.



stitch the cross, tie at the back three

times.                                                 cut.



start again.                 cover the surface.



it takes time and patience to be  brave;

to face the consequences, to be         so

bold.



the calculations are seven.   full days of

stitching.



xisses.                                                 crosses.



sbm.