The deep caress of a hot and heavy air that sits outside my window
The trees that shake beneath this air and the wind it brings
The thunder rolling over the hills and creeping it’s way forward
And the rain it brings that fills the lands and in pools spilling over
Where the frogs sing their song in the night harmonizing with cicada cries
The summer storms that bring in something to be left unspoken
And the stirring of a bed half empty
I could hear the longing in these storms
Summer slouches in your absence but in these storms and it’s thunder
Your presence is rolling along with it

Down in my bed where you rested so sickly
I wiped my brow and tended to you softly
Lay there the ice cubes on my bedside table
Melting and shifting in its empty glass

My empty palm hugs the trail of your back
Dear, you need some fixing and I can help with that
I’ll turn my cheek when you’re acting astray
And reel you back in with my old shepard’s cane

Darling, the ice is already half melted
Please get better soon, I need you well rested
You hum an old tune and turned your view  
“You put up with me too much, but I don’t want to lose you”

Of course I’ll stay here, I’m caring and cleaning
Wipe the dust off of hearts that are still bleeding
I want you to like me
Whatever it takes to keep you from leaving
And you know I can take quite the beating

Never could I accept my place here
I saw an ending and wept to myself nights on end
To see and turn a cheek is all I could do
I learned to live in your shape
And to yearn quietly when so far away you were
In the night aching was born

Then suddenly the mornings you were there
I melted into you with the heat of Savannah at my back
And you phased right through me
Taking what I had wanted with you
But for a moment I was there
Living in the shape of you
And the aching had quieted in the night
As your arms lulled me to sleep for a final time

Why
A serious question why
Why am I left here with my head buzzing for hours on end
A minuscule rattle not actually there but felt
I’m left starting at a ceiling thoughts no more than blurred images through that rattle
Who can think through that
There’s an urge to move to speak but where does it goes
Where does it leak into and spill outwards
I wonder if there’s a ending to this
The rattle it says the walk into the night
To sit on the bridge smoking cigarettes you’re too scared to buy yourself
Stare into the water for hours and jump if you must
You’ll live you’re too resilient but what if for a moment you weren’t
When you sit and feel the outline of your head
When you lay down and think only of wanting to bleed but you’re too nervous of the next person who will see your body to ask questions to do so anymore
It gets harder to hide, you can wear as many clothes as many layers but he will trace over your skin and make question once more
Why you are left breathing quietly alone and sounds of the air falling in the room are what keep you there still
I didn’t ask for this but I was made for it
Somehow I am perfect here
Somehow is this the apex of what I am becoming and have already become
And somehow I dream a little dream of no longer being this way
But that would no longer but someone I knew late at nights and through the silence of the day
Who would this person become
Would the mirror kiss them softly as they go about their day
The eggshells across the floor would be swept away
But who am I to become that
I’m tired of trying to beat myself into submission of a false pretense of being full
So I’ll lay here once more and learn to be okay with what’s been there longer than I have been  generation

I walk down this hall
Feet clamoring beneath me
With every step
The floor gives in completely

And in this hall
there’s no end in sight
I stay transfixed
Circling all night

And in the time
Dust has collected
And settled in the corners
My paths been corrected

Every step forward
Walking in another
Hole I had left
Deep and retching, like some other

Pick up the pieces behind and above you
They won’t clean up by any means
Asking isn’t a question
A voice is hardly there
You can cry when the task is over and done
When you’re in your room alone again

Am I a chalice?
Is that who I am?
Glory and love pour out
Til droplets on the rim are all that is left
Some would wipe it clean
We shall not thank such a chalice
And what of its source?
Where does the thought lie?
Why are some tongues still dry after drinking more than they could take?
Why does the chalice stay like this?
Where is it making its new wine to fill and give and break once more?

I remember stepping out
Light foot falls weighed down by the white robes that had barely fit my body
Into the water.
I remember the light overhead as I grasped into the palm of another Looking out into the rows of bodies and their faces
Worn from decades of work and existence
Onlooking with warmth and resolution.
I remember the priest
Exclaiming how I have excepted His holiness into my heart and let him breath through my lungs and intertwined with my soul
How that now I can finally saved.

I look on that softly
How my eyes have seen
The rigor of the world and the disparity fallen on me
I was once something new and unscatlhen
But now here I lay with crosses packed tightly away
And sing with the voice of a heathen
In the pool of my backyard
I dip my head below
And feel the ghost of a palm that once held me under

Yes, you can call me
Yes, I know well it’s late
I’ve stayed up just incase

Spent my whole life waiting
On something, on someone
Drop a plan, ignore a need
Set aside time for you

I sit staring at a clock
It’s ticks align with my breath
Each exhale is a moment closer
Until you might beckon

A life built on waiting
To love something smaller
A life made for waning
To love and to falter

There are times I wish for It
To yearn and sit idly as it envelops you
Seemingly and without actual presence
Like a hot, drenched air that forces its way down your lungs
There are times I dream for It
Only in fragments, sometimes clear, sometimes fractured
Parts are always lost, it hasn’t been whole for quite a while now
To force yourself to try and salvage the aftertaste
The things that I would do for It
To the past I would unwind and the future I would create using the thread
I don’t create a divinity but something is created in me
It is a blood, It is a silence, It is profound wanting
Vestigial in thought, mutating forever in ways that can be masked and hidden in plain sight
The things that I have done for It
For a control, For an overwhelming peace creating by a thunderous desire for something
It is something of an unnamed nature, omnipresent, and on the tip of the tongue, but unspoken, It has It’s dominion
Or so I believe

There’s a cliff and I stand on it
One foot proudly waving in the air
I’m stuck there supported only by one
In time the cliff will crumble and reseed back into its mountain
And will I fall?
Or in time will they come again, mining away at the rock behind me
Not a choice I’m making but simply waiting
Waiting for the valley below to be greener
And for the sunrise to be perfect
There is that day that exists in me
Will something ever sprout below?
Will something beautiful ever belong here?
Who would know such answers?

How does it feel
To think uninterrupted?
To pace your breaths even without a thought?
To not have your own destruction at your foresight?
There are times I wonder why the stagnation has never left
I see the changes on the faces of others
I know how to push and pull at reactions but from my mouth the same phrases spill each time
To think you finally found someone who will understand the drone of why you were born dying
Why you can no longer function and why at night you see walls bend closing in on you despite all that you know
To think you found someone who will absolve you of judgement
Who won’t leave when you inventible bring yourself closer to an ending
Who may not understand why you are stuck why change never comes
Why you were born hungry
And why it is you’re living while dying

There’s a reason, clouded by clarity, for my mind being built in stacks
And it’s been deforming and I’ve been contorting, trying to pick up any slack
Search for an answer but I think pasted her
Found it in each hand that caressed my neck
I know I will falter but something keeps me stumbling back
Because I want a loving and I need an angel

What a stressful evening he had kicked my teeth in and I’m just bleeding out
I told you by morning you’d think I’m boring
Search for an answer but I’m sure I pasted her
Shoved her til her all bones had been cracked
Because I want an loving and I need an angel
And I know just what I lack

Please move from the shower
I’ve been waiting and awfully long time
Here in my room just outside the door
Cracked open light seeping through a darkness
Humidity is higher now a days
It seeps into my pores and I shine like the setting sun ablaze
So I stand here waiting to wash my self of this
Of all of this filth and all of this day that comes down into my bones
But no you stand at the shower door for hours
I wait here for over and hour
I think to myself, why am I here why am I angry
Why do I need to shower so much my thoughts cannot move from this even though all I want is sleep
I care naught of your troubles
I just want to shower

Tender child, what was pulling at your strings?
Thoughts like a cicada’s summer calling
They swelter in the damp heat
And the buzzing unnoticed by others, faded into a white noise

Garden rose, are you scared to lose your thorns?
Far too distant to be surrounded by the thick air that sits heavy in your lungs
And exhaled with the same force as the sun reigning above
Summer it slouches in your absence

I wait
I sit here and I wait
And the waiting is never over
New leaves grow grasping at new beginnings
New fog that drips down the spine and slides soaking into the ground
New leaves they don’t wait for more
New leaves they are born wanting
Soil only has so much of it’s spoils to share for those too starving
The wilting they now feel again
To curve at corners and fall tethered down
New leaves newly fertile soil I dig my feet into
And I sit there waiting
Again and again for something more

Oh how I heard it in the nighttime
Soft waves that breech the sea and fall onto land gracefully and with the will of thunder
I stand there taking it in
Miles ahead it is black
In there is the beginning and the end and all you feel is a fear but you stay standing ankle deep
Could you not bare yourself to move?
Could you not take yourself from the cliff you now stand on?
An oceans shelf ahead year by year reaching closer to you
You came into the water knowing what it was becoming
What comes forth to the quiet beach at night
And the faint hiss of the foam and the unseen creatures whose presence caresses your being
For what in the night slumps in the corner of your vision waiting for something more?
And if you look forward into that ocean, is it really there? Will it crawl on its hands and knees to you?
What is worse in the end
And no matter how many times you ruminate it coming for you
Your heart it lunges forward at the image
Unstill like the water surrounding

Who am I to say goodbye
When you’ve gone and lost your mind
I’ll be sitting waiting for you to crawl to me

Down back to hand and knees
I just want to hear one “please”
I’m tired of waiting, yearning for something to come

Why did you cry alone that night
When you could have found that light
Leading towards the stranger I’m slowly becoming

What did I expect
What should I have expected
To no longer be still in my longings
And in understanding of my thoughts
I thought for a brief moment the stars shown dimly
Above a dying soil, above me
I could trace with weak fingers the pattern I believed was coming to life
Vivified and here to whisper the secret words I once desired
I trip along the cobblestone
kicking up dust and scuffing my sole
Patterns unthreading in the night
I lost my place once more
And I am unsure of what’s above me
So softly they glow to me and caress me as you do
But blue is the night and the density of their warmth is uncompaired to yours
You fill me with something temporary and under the same sky with fresh air touching your skin
I know you don’t look at me the same without the blanket of a empty square room
Can I do better?
Is this a question that I am even allowed to ask myself?
It fills me with something that not even stars can sooth in my nighttime aching
Everything is okay, everything is happening as it should they would whisper to me
But you deserve better of me
I deserve better of myself

He lays back again for the third time that night
"How am I here, again?" he would ask himself
The sweat the sinks deeper into the pours and drips down into his mouth from above him
"I think I like being here
I ask for it, I agree to it
Isn’t that enough to convince myself?"
Why would he come back under a different intention?
He should have tried harder to listen to himself
And the uncertainty that lies there
Are you fulfilled, young man?
Is this who you are?
Under disguise of young woman
But you couldn’t tell him that could you?
Your chest is sore but you know what you are
But it’s only you

I wish
I wish for something more
I call to it
I sing to it
I hold it tight at night when it’s scared
I dream a dream for it to meld into all it yearns for
When it is sick and unfit for the world I look into it’s eyes and say it’s beautiful
I lift up its chin it keeps burned underground and I wonder why it never looks back beyond reflection
I know it isn’t right and I know it is ending before it’s started
I know the dreams I dreamt for it were of grandeur and I tried to force reality there
It was failing and crumbling but I picked up stray pieces that kept chipping away with each step
You can’t keep up with that
Who would subject themselves to that
You can sing to it at night, whisper in its ear as it drifts in your arms
It’s fine with taking but how dare it give
Those on empty look for full hands not yet taken
And will clean up your mess, licking off fingertips
You’ll have to clean yourself off later
And start over when the sun rises
And call to it once more
This time you will bring water for a parched tongue
But it’ll never drink from your palm where it lay frozen last night

In the night sleep does not tend to me
An emptiness lies in its wake
It begins again and then there's nothing
Surging nothingness but breathless it does not leave me
And then guilt takes its place as I recollect on it
On what has left me to what I am today
And how word by word
Step by step I got to this very place
And how I should have seen it coming
But how transformative this is
How I become angry
I am left alone sitting in the dark and angry
A festering rage that blinds me while I stare endlessly at the wall as if it feels what I am
As if it can understand and tend to the pyre
Offering nothing but nothingness I try again each night
And maybe once it will be different
And it will all make sense