i wish i was a soft girl
the ones you find in movies
with tears of honey
and kindness that warms like golden sunshine
dewdrop flowers with ambrosial petals
blooming with unwavering patience and soft lips

instead i am just a girl
with a chest of steel
and i am angry
that i foolishly keep waiting
for someone to lift the curtain
and maybe see me
as a soft girl too

welcome to suburbia
where numb is the new norm
stay awhile and realize
it's the quiet and never the storm
oh i'm not complaining
i'm just stuck here waiting . . .

I wander through the woods
on a brisk Autumn evening.
Leaves growing crisp with frost
beneath my heavy boots
and light fading faster than
heat escaping from my head.

I stop.

Only the pines boast any greenery.
The rest of the trees' leaves create
a path that I've yet to disturb
with my trudging trail.
I shove knit-covered hands into my pockets
and release a foggy breath in still air.

I wait.

A slight rustle in pine needles is my clue.
I'll stay until my cheeks redden from the chill
and the sky releases snow as pale as my bones.
I'll wait for when leaves are crushed
yet I'm still as stone.
I'll leave now that I know

I'm not alone.

hurt me
and i dont mind

calloused hands
a scrape of teeth
a cutting word
a cutting eye
a push
a bruise
rough nails

hurt me
and i dont mind

nocent talon, gruntlefooted thimbledrinker
the time you cut my palm
and those smooth liquids met

i do not miss you, gaumy goblin
you bit too much, you scratched
and all the acid posthumous

now i sit in a seat most high
his bitten fingers in my hair
my twigs in his

drawn and quartered, honey-cut
my diary dog-eared
but not your pages

I prayed for her.
Please God, if this is the last thing I ever ask of you, give her the strength and hope to surge through.
Please do.
I wish I could take it instead of her.
I wish she didn't have to suffer alone.
But isn't it the things we mind that help us appreciate the things we love?
Still. I hate it when she hurts.

but are you not in all things?
the glory of morning and the peaceful rest of night.
our love is no light affair.
it is the heavy press of storms
and found in the eastern and western rains.
is not each word but a picture frame of my love?
to display it as clearly as a blue sky and an untouched lake.
are you not with me in every moment?
a constant presence
through every sunset and sunrise.
through every hot month of summer and cold of winter.
you are the heavens,
you are the earth.
and happiness is of you, a brilliant
radiant light of all the good in the world.