It's five am in Amsterdam
Far away from where I am
I close my eyes
Let out a sigh
And pretend I'm there again

Grief hit me like a wave
Swelling up on the typically calm shore.
But I don't know if I can surf today.
Regret sinks in the pit of my stomach
Your voice echoing in my ears
Deep breaths, just hold it together
My lips are numb, this can't be real.

But it is.
And you're gone.

Fireworks lose their luster,
Dull against the dark of night.
I hear the cheers, but I don't feel them.
How can I when I just lost a piece of my heart?

Children greet me on the street
Like they've never met a stranger.
No one ever told them they're supposed to be afraid.

I can't sleep
I can't think
Until these words are out of me
But they seem
To prefer to be
Nestled somewhere out of reach
Even when we
Find release
They will haunt us eternally.
Until death brings
Some sort of peace
I'll gulp down these fickle longings.

Walk yourself through it again
You'll get yourself through this again.

Deep breath in
Count to four
Let it out
Go once more.

Remind yourself of why you're here
This day will end, silence the fear

Deep breath in
Count to four
Let it out
Go once more.

Shut your brain off to the lies
Ignore the hurt, numb your mind

Deep breath in
Count to four
Let it out
Go once more.

You deserve life.
You deserve to enjoy life.
Don't let this cut off the only source to living your life that exists.

Deep breath in
Count to four
Let it out
Go once more.

Your shoes were tied
And I realized someone's fingers danced with the laces before you found your body under a sheet.
You have a name
And a family and people who love and care about you and who's lives are now shattered.
Yesterday you lived
And breathed and laughed and made all these memories and plans as though you'd have a day after tomorrow.

But you don't.
Tomorrow didn't come for you.
You're forever stuck in the realms of yesterday
Never more than you were the moment before you breathed your last.

Did you hold it?
That last breath that filled your lungs.
Did you keep it trapped in your lungs, frantically searching your brain for ways to survive them?
Or was it the last of many short comrades, minds racing through faces of those you love and words that will always be left unsaid?

I don't know you.
I don't know your name.
But I know you had one, and that's enough to impress upon me an inkling of what has happened here.
Of life lost.

I grieve for you
And the fingers that tied your shoes and touched the skin of those you love being put six feet under.

I'll never forget you.
I can't.

What was it that brought you here?
What was it that made you stay?
Did you come to find yourself?
Don't let me get in your way.
You're not like most people here
That's how I could tell.
Your kindness sets you apart,
You wear that smile well.
The adjustment must be difficult
From what you're accustomed, to here,
Your courage spoke volumes to me
The echo still resounding in my ear.
Mere moments encompassed our chance meeting
A minute forty-five, at most.
You thanked me sincerely as I left
Our eyes locked.
Yours saying more than your words allowed
And I knew
It was I who should be thanking you.

The weight of reality sits in my chest.
This is all beyond what my mind can comprehend.
How can it be gone if it's still here?

It wasn't perfect.
It left scars as I shed tears
No one ever saw either anyway.

Who am I? What have I become?
Is this all worth this path I walk on?

My pen is a knife,
Bloodletting across pages since I could hold it in my hands,
Since I know what it meant when shapes became words
And sentences became bought.
Now they won't stop
And I don't know how to let go
Again.

Every day is a new dance with grief,
Torn between remembering
And trying to piece together reality.

The pen pierces my heart.
It gushes new words onto paper with every beat
Words my mind and mouth are at a loss for
Words ears will never hear.

Even if they did, they're impossible to comprehend.
I write them anyway.
Just in case there's someone else out there
Crying alone in the shell of everything they've ever known
Trying to convince themselves it's worth it to inhale.

I was just there
It could have been me
I saw the people
Shook their hands
Laughed among their company
I learned their names
Heard their stories
now how many of them are silenced?
How many so grief stricken
They can't figure out how to breathe again?
But I'm not there.
I'm on the other side of the world
Safe, sound, secure.
But my heart is still there.
It's walking those same streets
It's seeing those same people
I saw only months ago.
It's shaking their hands,
Saying their names,
Hurting with them as though I never left.

9.29.16 ©
I sit in cemeteries to center myself.
Filling my lungs with oxygen
While my friends lay under the earth.

What was the world like the last day they knew it?
Before it became their final resting place?
Is there anyone left to remember them?

I sit and lie and fantasize about
The incredible lives they must have lived.
Reality is most were no more than ordinary.

But to me, they bring comfort.
In an odd sort of way complex in its existence
What do they have to fear? Their lives are done.

But mine is not; not yet.
I have blood in my veins and life in my being.
What I do with these days is up to me.

I come here to remember
The lives before mine
As well as the fact that I still have mine to live.

And that is a gift
Even when it feels like a curse.
I have something in me these never get again.

The birds still sing.
The breeze still plays with the trees.
I breathe deeply.

The dead remind me why I'm alive.

I used to pull the covers over my head
Like that would somehow keep me safe.
When it got to be too much
I grabbed my stuffed bunny and made my way
To my parents bed.
They wouldn't let anything happen to me

Right?

I'm older now.
And instead I open the blinds and sit on my bed
And stare out the window as the lightning strikes
And the brightness of it dances across the darkness of my room and my heart.

When memories of the things that have happened to me
Creep their way back into my mind
Clouding out everything that once was right and happy
When the rain pours out of my eyes and dampens
The stuffed bunny I still have and hold to my face
Pretending like everything is going to be okay
It's nice to have the weather reflect the storm going on inside of me.
Comforting.
Like an old friend,
Or some sort of reason for the emotions I can't explain.

That little girl is no longer afraid.

Bring on the rain.

You believed in me before you knew my name
but you asked it anyway.

What was the ground like
Before you were in it?
Solid and untouched
Not yet a body pit.
Did it know this was
the fate that lie ahead?
Were there other hopes
than consuming the dead?

Now I’m sitting here
Knowing you’re six feet deep.
The thirsty ground yields
the tears from fallen cheeks.
Maybe after time
Has come and gone from me.
There will sprout flowers
Where my tears used to be.

Then there I will be
Next to you in the ground.
Nothing more than names
On tombstones to be found.

I try not to think of your hardened face 
Of the tone in your voice 
Stabbing knives in my heart
Already bleeding from the day before. 

I close my eyes and think instead 
Of sitting alone under open skies 
Memorizing the placement of the stars. 

I think of rain soaking into my skin 
A cold comfort in a place unfamiliar 
Yet it still felt like home 

I try to dwell on canals and rivers 
Of languages foreign to me 
Spoken as a mother tongue 
Begging me to learn it too. 

I am more than today. 
I am more than your opinion. 
Of how you leave me bleeding. 
Stepping on my heart that's pierced on the floor. 

The tears may cloud my vision today 
But it won't always be this way. 
It can't. 
That's no way to live at all. 

©

It wasn't supposed to be you.
Full of life and promise,
That's who you're supposed to be.
That's changed.

The drone of cheers and celebration ring in my ears
But all I think about is you.
You're gone now.
And I'm at a loss for words.

It wasn't supposed to be you.

This holiday can never be the same.
I'm sure in time I'll celebrate again
But not without remembering
This day.
This moment.
The pain I'm trying to drown until I'm left alone to grieve.

Words can never be a worthy enough tribute
To who you are--were--and what you mean to me.

I miss you.

The air is cool for a summer day.
Kittens play with fallen leaves
As the breeze does the same with my hair.
Everything around me familiar
Burned into my memory.

Small changes have happened over the years
But some things remain forever the same.
The big ant hill at the end of the road
It predates us.
Will probably out live us all.

The atmosphere feels different
As though autumn decided to debute
Before pumpkin spice is released in stores
For once.
I'm not complaining.

I take no pictures.
Instead I open my eyes wide
In effort to take in ever detail in front of me
As the moment that came is leaving
Even as I live and breathe.

Making shapes of clouds that tease the rain.
And to think, I really liked that day.

I broke a promise today.
   Not because I couldn't keep it,
but because I knew I could.

I had nothing left to prove
   And no one to truly care anyway
why, then, should I keep it?

Now I have a secret.
   One no one needs to know
They wouldn't understand anyway.

Four years have passed.
Nine years have passed.
Fourteen years have passed.
Twenty-Nine years have passed.

All these different "anniversaries"; remembering people I used to touch, used to see, used to hear them laugh and speak. Now they're six feet under, kept alive only by memories.

I constantly find myself fighting off that tinge of fear, wondering who among me might be next. Who do I have here today that could be gone tomorrow?

And really, I'm one of the lucky ones.
I haven't had everyone and everything I know and love taken from me with a quake of the earth or a wave of the ocean.
I haven't been stolen from my home and sold to fill some sick propaganda.
I haven't had my race attacked in attempt to wipe them from the face of the earth.
No one has come into my home or school and opened fire.
My house hasn't been burned to the ground for my beliefs.
No, I have more friends above the ground than below it.

I've never even seen a dead body,
Save for the open caskets at funerals.
Swollen faces of friends dressed in their Sunday best.
Bruises on their neck.
Bruises on their face.
Bruises on their arms.
Depending on their fate.

Who knew that their stories would end at
Seventeen Years,
Nineteen Years,
Twenty-Four Years,
Sixty-One Years?
Who knew that their story would finish that day?
Whatever legacy they've built with the time they were given being all that's left to carry on now that they're gone.
And whose responsibility is it to make sure it doesn't die with them?
What does it really matter if it does?

Please know,
Even though the names are countless,
I still pause to remember you.
I still feel the sting of the loss.
It may fade, but it never goes away.

Please know your life is worth it.

The smell of the city is beginning to wear off
Reality is setting into the fibers of my clothes
The monsters are waiting for me
Behind doors I closed as I left.
This skin I'm in is still the same.
I see the world through eyes that
Change color when I cry.
The very eyes that have seen everything I know.
Every terror and triumph
Logged in my same brain,
Filed and put away.
These fingertips have touched worlds both here and there.
Same heart, beating words I can never say.
But now my eyes stay brown.
I don't cry anymore.

The storm I grew to love betrayed me
Thats what I get for putting
My trust in the elements.

The room where pain was my company
The bed I sat on when breakthrough happened
The Blinds I opened so I could stare the storm in the eye
It’s all gone now
Destroyed by the very thing that comforted me.
The same very thing that used to scare me.

No sooner I learned accepted it
I’m reminded that nothing is predictable.
Plans are just guesses at a future we hope for.
Mine went a little differently.

I’m older now.
Wiser.
Stronger.
The rain washed out things I didn’t know were holding me back.

I’m rebuilding myself.
Better than before.
I’m letting go of the past I used to define myself.
Stepping in to the future ahead.

Those unpredictable guesses at what tomorrow holds.

I’m making sense of the mess I’ve been left with,
Holding on to the Hope that’s never left me

I can endure the pain
Bring on the rain.

My nerves keep me from sleeping
I wish I weren't alone.
The house is creaking
My mind keeps thinking
How will I go on?

I know I must sleep
But I'm afraid to wake
Afraid to face what's ahead
Even if it's for my benefit.

This bed is empty
My heart grieves for one I do not know
Maybe if you were here
This house would feel like home.

This road speaks to me again
Like it has in years past
Drowning the sound of voices
With the noises of tires on pavement.
Feeling that familiar tinge of something
I struggle to define.
Struggling to conceal my differences
And stifle anger fueled by frustrations.

I'm sorry, I can't help it.
The highway sees this side of me
Every time we meet.

crack my chest open
like an egg

this gnawing sensation
expelling from my body
like the yolk that falls from the shell
splattering on the pavement
gasping or breath from the speed
it gained to travel from there to here

throw me aside
like used *******

exhausted of worth
after finally getting whatever
it is that was living inside of me
to the other side of my body
making my purpose
more than fulfilled

bury the remains
like a dead old friend

after all, I'm dead
to myself and the way things
used to be and now it's
only reality in front of me
keeping me going until all these
ifs and buts and deferred hopes
finally have meaning

i'm more alive now
than when my body
as it were was whole.

i'm at peace.

leave me be.

i don't need your questions or sympathy
i don't need to waste any time
trying to make you feel better
about something you've
never tried to understand
in the first place

it's my turn
to be selfish

to put a stop to
the habit that i've formed
of tearing myself apart
in order to make other people
feel more at peace, just to have
them move on, happy without me.

on the contrary.
i'm not expendable as you'd make me believe
you're luck to have had
a bit of me to grace
even the tiniest time of your life.

but i'll never tell you that.
because that voice is still in my head
telling me to
remain humble and how my
life is not just mine.

people need me.
**** it up and be there.
try and try again, even if
all you get in return is
boot prints on your face again.

it's worth it.
it'll be worth it.
one day i'll see if and all
of this will make sense
someway and somehow

the pieces will fit together and
form this picture more
incredible than i could
even dream of it being
in my mind now.

have patience.
you'll see it.

sewn back together.
one boot in front of the other.
life as i know it is beginning again.

Hello
Where did you go?
Is anybody home?
I have nowhere left to go.
Arrows pointing me this way and that
Contradicting themselves.
Directing me right back to where I am.
What was the point of that journey?
I sat right where I was
Picking blades of grass as I sort though
Demons, reasons, dreams, reality
What is me and what is heresy.
Accept what is and move on, right?
Maybe left.
There's nothing left but questions.
And confusion.
Have I lost you yet?
Maybe you'll find me on your way back.
Then again, maybe not.
Vapors don't hang around long.
Every ghost town needs just that.
Allow me to oblige.
For now, I'll just lay here in this grass.
Hum a little tune.
Pick the flower next to me
and watch it die in my hand.
"I once was lost but now I'm found.
Was blind but now I see."

You have a name that they write songs about
Your life made sure of that.
Even more solidified in the way you died.

Did you know you would be next?
Have some sort of feeling?
Your eyes have nothing left to cry.

I'll pick up where you left off
The future not soon forgetting the past.
I'll make sure of that.

My scars are stories only I know.
This is me
This is who I am.
Not just what you see.
I can tell you what happened
But you didn't live it.
There are key elements missing
That no one else can know.
Take an extra second
To think through others humanity
Before you write them off
Or judge them too harshly.

I am flesh and blood and bone
Just like those around me
And so are you.

My pen begs me to write
Doesn't quit until it's satisfied
An addition;
Calling for me to commit this sin
Yet in this, I find freedom.

I hope you can understand my random bouts of classical music and writing and deep feeling.
Of things I can't explain but that encompass me wholly.
Of illogical mumblings about impossible things that are so real to me.
And now I sound crazy.
And maybe I am.
But I can't imagine me without these things.
It pulses through my veins, begging me to keep living.
To rectify all those who have endured before me.

This isn't just me, but about all those who have lived and died this way.
Who could have given up, but didn't.
Who faced hell and walked or ran or crawled through.
This is about carrying on what they fought so hard for.
This is true humanity.
This is what it means to live.

Your good intentions are killing me.
You're pouring affection over my head
I wish I was dead--I'm drowning.
Pointing my toes as far as they'll go
In some hopeful attempt to reach solid ground.
It's nowhere to be found.
Surrounded by your misunderstanding
I have nowhere left to turn
It's hard enough silencing the voices in my head
Shut yours up. I've had enough.
Just let me live.
Take your emotions out of it.
Life is uncertain
Love me enough to let me go.

I listen to my heartbeat
It gets me thinking;

How it's never stopped beating
Even when I wanted to quit everything.

How much we take for granted,
Like the feelings we can't see of the ones we love.

How everyone has one
And everyone's will stop.

One day.

This muscle with refuse to work.
Blood will stop circulating
My lungs will stop filling and emptying again.

Some days I hold my breath
To remind myself I still have the luxury of breathing.

Once my days are done, that's it.
No more sunrises, only that final sunset.
The world as I know it will end that day
Yet, it keeps spinning.

Poems will be written
Songs will be penned
People will move on and remember again
When that thought in the back of their mind
Breaks through to the surface
No matter how hard it was suppressed.

That memory will fight
To be remembered.

I'll fight for that next sunrise.

I'm your somebody
Waiting patiently
Until you find me.

I long for days I never knew.
Memories as fresh as if they were my own.
But they aren't.
I didn't exist yet.
Reflecting on the days I've filled with memories
feel like nothing more than fairy tales.
Or nightmares.
Depending on the day.
Maybe that's why history and memories blend.
Maybe this explains the odd connection I feel with the past.
Maybe not.
Maybe I'm just crazy.
Blurring the lines of who I used to be
With stories of people I never got to meet.
I forget what's mine.
Forget mine are real.

Life has become bitter sweet.

In a world
Constantly trying
To turn you to stone,

Stay silk.

Hushed tone voices drone on
as my foot shakes to dispell the nerves
Beginnings are always the hardest part.
Fear tries to slide into my mind
As I fight it off with lyrics of my favorite song.
If I don't belong here
I don't belong anywhere.
The present is not what past me expected.
I'll keep fighting to survive
And hope the fog begins to fade
As the days continue to turn into years.
Maybe future me will look back
And remember present me's endurance
And feel encouraged.

You will get through this.

I have many things I don’t deserve
Yet I look forward to the day the pain stops
And the anxiety ebbs again.
I hesitate to wish away these days
Because they could take the good things with them.
The very thought of that possibility
Brings tears to my eyes.

I do my best to appreciate
The things that bring the smiles to my face
While I endure through the things that break me.

I have you but a moment
A fleeting breath slips through my lips
As you slip through my fingers
You're gone as quickly as you came
My eyes are open
Searching, waiting.
Hoping to see you
walk through that door.
I'll slip back into your arms
Next to your heart
Your hand in mine
Where we belong.

I know I'm safe, but I wish I felt it.
I feel like I'm lost.
Drowning.
Sinking to the bottom of the lake
But everyone assumes I'm fine because there's a smile on my face.
I convince myself to stay quiet.
I don't want to be a bother.
Is it too much to wish someone would see it without me saying anything?
But they won't.
The one thing I'm good at is faking it.

My heart is heavy
Same as before
Vaguely familiar
Yet nothing is sure.
Fear keeps lurking
Waiting to creep in
But how can I be sure
That there's no truth in it?
I keep my pen moving
Across any page I find
It keeps my heart beating
And fear far from my mind.

I grieve the day I breathe my last and
can no longer see the way the
spring sun shines through trees and
dances through the grass in
so many shades of green.
Or how it brings out the red in your hair you
always swore was there as the
wind tousles it across your face,
getting caught in the corner of the
smirk you can’t hide.
I’ll miss you being mine.

There are creatures inside me
Thrashing and squirming
Eating away bits they fancy.
Redefining who I am.
Invisible to the subtle glance
Silent to those who question selfishly.

But it’s there.
Growing.
Progressing.
Screaming so loud I can’t ignore it.

Just because you choose not to see it
Doesn’t make it any less real.

Ink soaks in to paper
Wherever I tell it to go
Evidence of my existence
An extension of my being
The abundance of my heart.

May my life be a story worth telling.

I had a dream the other night
That I was dead, but still alive
Planning the songs to be sung at my funeral.
I woke up feeling empty
Like I'm missing something
Turns out that something is you.
I hate when I have to say goodbye
That voice in my head asking, "will this be the last time?"
I don't want to waste any moment I have with you.
Please excuse what you don't understand
This is all part of a bigger plan
One day all the facts will fall into place.
What we have now is reality,
We are both alive and breathing
I'll try not to dwell on the days to come
When one is here and one is gone.
Just make the most of the days we have.
No regrets.

I long to hold a secret.
To have a place that feels like home,
And know I never have to leave it.
There's glimpses of it all around
Feelings I can't shake,
Moments I can't explain.
I cling to anything
Remotely resembling
All these invisible nudges
Whispering,
Telling me to hold on.
That it's out there.
It's real. It exists.

If you give up, it can't find you.
Keep searching.

I cry a lot.
I don’t write much.

My pen is heavy with words that want to be written.
Fingers aching to guide the ink across the page in hopes my heavy heart may become a little lighter.
No amount of ink could fill enough pages to shake the heaviness that haunts me.
What's this I speak of being haunted?
Surely someone with a smile of sunshine knows nothing of the sort.
There's no way I could know of such darkness.
Right?
Believing this would be your demise.
My entire life is a battle of dark versus light.
Most of these are fought in silence.
Why speak of them?
Not many want to hear a story of such sorrow.
I'll just write instead.
Immortalizing my story to those who care to read it.
Instead of forcing it upon ears that let it fall to the floor.
I refuse to ***** my speech around.
Not anymore.
I run my fingers over the words spilled across this page.
They are as real and alive as I am.
This fight is real.
This pain is real.
And soon the victory will be real.

I️ draw red lines
To silence my mind
Breathe in deeply
One step at a time
I’ve gotten this far
I️ can keep going, still
Even when I️ don’t want to
I️ will.

You can’t see the way the sunlight
Casts shadows across the page
As my hand draws the lines
To make these sentences.
But that doesn’t make it any less real.
You can’t hear the way the song
Plays over the coffee shop
Speakers, hardly recognized by
Fellow patrons over concentrated
Furrowed brows and steaming milk.
But that doesn’t make me avoid feeling it.
You can’t smell the mix of
Espresso and the cologne of
The man sitting across from me and
Be taken back to that day in March
Playing in my mind so vividly.
But that doesn’t make me crazy.
I couldn’t ask you to even try
To begin understanding the slightest
Bit of what makes me who I am.
Yet here I am.
Living anyway.

Hey,
Stay.