Renegade crows
swagger ashore
lifting unlucky tritons
high into the whirling
wind, dropping them
to the rocks below

shell is rendered
to fine dust
revealing the mollusk
vainly hiding
in the fissured whorl
of what was once

Home

now a splintered chamber
with no exit  
from which to squeeze
into the minute space
between falling
and breaking clean open.

I act, I react—
I did not impact your life the exact way you did mine.
You attract me.

I act, I react—
You were the one fact
I could never forget
and I was abstract.
I know I was only there to distract you
from your other lover
who did not love you
as much as I.

I act, I react
and I follow the path
that subtracts
you
from
me.

A ghost town.
I can't describe it any other way.
The street lights are still glowing even though the sidewalk hasn't kissed the feet of anyone that wasn't just passing through in a while.
I don't know how to draw it out as anything other than abandonment.
The only one left is me, and I am not the best company to the hollow hallways and broken buildings that were left to fend for themselves.
Trust me.
I'm trying to describe it the best I can, but I have no idea how to portray the quiet of an empty home.
This ******* town is full of people, but I'm the only one.
I'm the only one who writes eulogies for the ones that are just passing through.

Each curl of conversation
stills my tongue, half-sentences
stranded in the mire
of biting reason

words silently form
protests, defenses
reasons and intentions

worthless to ears already fed
with the insistent conundrum
accompanying every attempt
at reconciliation.

some people already have a view, a light over the horizon.
their feet are dipped into an ocean that holds many of their secrets,
but they become bored with the mundane & seek more meaning to their existence.
perhaps someone else's ocean will taste differently.
perhaps they'll finally learn how to swim.
willing hearts & open hands accept these travelers because maybe they're an adventurer just like me.
but really they're just passing through.
they only want to experience new flavors, to swim in unknown seas.
they need to escape but they'll never leave.
cowards perhaps, to temporarily give up the comfort of the river and sink into the oceans' depths.
but the ocean is not quiet & neither is the wind.
she will shred your sails & sink your ship.
she will not forget how you stirred her waves into a tsunami and left her there to drown.
when the night becomes indifferent, seek change first within yourself.
you will never find light in another if you do not love your own hands.
do not take arms you know you will eventually let go of.
do not awaken hearts you cannot call your home.

and so we go on. and the ocean waits alone, for the next light on the horizon.