For a while, all there was, was excitement. A trembling in my body and bones, an increase in my blood. Serotonin flooding each neuron and making me feel satisfied with all life had to offer for a moment.

But excitement is a petty lover. She gets bored quickly and tends to seek for more troubling things. First alcohol and then more powerful beings. She pops pills and drinks spirits, trying to seancé the happiness that has left her dry and dead. I suppose I'm always left as the channel.

It's perplexing. For a time, each second last minutes or days; and all I feel is a type of passion while stuck in a haze. But happiness doesn't belong here. This is not where she's known. Yet, excitement still plays, lounging on a pill-bottle thrown and plays these moments for days at a time (or maybe it's only seconds, one could never tell).

It becomes catching. Soon my body forgets how happiness feels but it is intimate with passion. It knows how strong the desire for things truly are. When you see the thing you love, serotonin begins rushing through your blood. But vices never seem to love me as much as I love them. For I consume them. Taking each morsel inside me because if it's left in the hollow of my chest, perhaps it will stay.

But excitement (or is it passion?) is always fleeting.

The cold seems to creep in. It gathers at the folds of fall and sends crisp crackles down splintered spines. Things gain a sense of urgency, the wind whips with more ferocity and graves are left to lay away as they decompose like the bodies held inside, where spooky stories tend to thrive and people wonder. They wonder just when the world began to change. Just when shots began firing in cluttered squares, where man decided that the decision of life was their's, to gather in. Just when did man decide that the grave was home to his fellow mankind. The earth rests in commotion, in question, in fear it hides.

But the world knows. The earth can feel chaos in it's bones and breaths in peace real deep. It sets it's children out on quivering feet and whispers: "find freedom and peace to be what is meant to be." So the world walks. The wind howls and leaves fall softly to the wilting ground as nature crawls and yawns and bows to seek....rest. The streams and rivers flow deep and cool, they set a path for wounds to heal, oceans deep and mountain glen - reminding the sky to set peace down upon this wilted ground, again.

So thunder strikes and fire crashes, a tapestry of sunset skies. Man once again feels life behind his closing eyes, and winks. Winks and sees fresh covered ground, a white silk blanket set upon earthen crowns. Crows hollowed caw is set in rest and heralds in peace that is blessed.

The world sinks deeply into sleep, lullabying softly "be at peace, be at peace," and so the earth rests in hibernatious slumber, and boys become men and begin to wonder what is left for them in a world that has already been discovered.

"Peace, find peace," is all that is muttered. So they keep wondering.

I tend to lay everyday against the yellowed, tile floor looking up at the textured ceiling that wraps around wood beams. The ceiling looking cracked and fractured like a child's bone laying in a florescent cast. I lay there seeing faces against the platform above like angels looking through a fogged, glass ceiling. Gazing down into a fishbowl called reality. I wonder if they ever question what really happens down here. What really tends to grow.

A cool rag placed against a heated forehead, wondering if heaven exists - how long we are left to sleep. Someday we'll know.

Someday we'll know,

Not much happens anymore, ever since you left because you thought death was a better companion then me. I always wondered who it was you were sending notes to. There was never a return address.

It's much quieter now. I'm left alone in this now bigger home. The click and tick of the clock is the only sound that can overcome the silence that lays against the floor, making the air seem concrete so you feel all you can do is creep around this house.

They wanted to take your pictures down from the wall. The ones that took you hours to create. The ones that you spent hours drifting from shop to shop in order to find the perfect frame to frame perfection. I guess photos were one thing that you always had in control. I couldn't let them take them now.

In the silence, it's harder to sleep. It's harder to soak up the darkness that tickles my feet, because even though you no longer steal the blankets my feet are still never covered. I guess we keep some old habits, even when the old friends move on.

My mother is worried for me. She says I spend too much time in this grieving house. She says I need to stop addressing letters that will go unanswered, she doesn't know that I send these words to you. I open the letters and face each paper towards mirrors wondering if you will see them there. I'm told I stay there for hours, but it never seems that long.

Why did you never talk to me?

When one sees death and pulls back the rot, we call this reunion. When the nights are longer, when the moon continues to shine even at noonday and the world wonders just how long it takes for a man to forget his given name, and remember what he really is.

When mushrooms grow out of panicked fingertips and cleave to the sky above while being buried, we call it desperation. When the boy remembers just how deep the earth really goes, and begins to forget that a man needs to breathe.

When flowers bloom right beside graves and flies become the most recent pollinators, we call it coincidence. When a family scatters into every direction of wind and whim, and starts to forget that the earth was where it all began.

That's how it goes and goes. That's why the world is left spinning like a record stuck on a tired lullaby song. We still haven't realized, nor do we care to remember the fact that we have not been here all that long.

the most peaceable places end up under willows, shrouded with angelonia clusters against lilac streams. framed by a clover carpet, granite stones sprinkled across flowered ground. there is little history here, bones buried in grass tiled earth.

terra-cotta ground keep treasured secrets. no one hears any stories the earth could whisper into rose-colored ears. melted, molten, muddied metacarpals, sternums, ribs, and tibias moored against dirtied pits covered over to become unknown graves.

it seems the most peaceful here.