I might as well have fallen in love with the man in the moon.
He still wouldn't be as distant as you.
and He'll never show me his dark side.
Don't get me wrong, I fell in love with that part of you too.
But once you showed me your dark side the light in your eyes died.
and maybe I died a little inside too.
I'd have been better off falling in love with the man in the moon.
Like the wolf, I could cry to him all night.
Because I know he'll leave me once it's daylight.
Sound familiar?
Are you seeing things any clearer?
I'd rather have fallen in love with the man in the moon.
But I just can't, because he's not you.

© copyrighted Nicole Ann Osborn

When I asked you to fix me,
You told me I wasn't broken.
But, let this soak in.
I just wanted to know,
If i was still a pretty enough picture to be worth, agonizing over a puzzle.
Even when it's a struggle.
And you have to nuzzle each piece into place,
Kissing the pieces bent out of shape,
Searching for pieces gone missing,
But you can't make a raisin back into a grape.
Yes, I Remember your middle name
And who says we can't celebrate failure?
Don't be sad, we tried, we tried.
When you write your story in the sand it washes away with the tide.
It isn't our fault.
We may have cut ourselves open, But we didn't ask for the salt in our
wounds
Can I still say "we"?
I guess you're kind of done with me.
I don't blame you, Puzzles are frustrating.
they're a tease.
Please, tell me I haven't lost the most important piece.
Tell me I haven't lost
you.

© copyrighted Nicole Ann Osborn

Please don't get me wrong.
I appreciate what you are trying to do,
but you don't send salt and pepper to a starving nation.
I've been dealing with assault of the mind
and inflammation of the soul
in a way no whole-wheat diet or
heartburn medication could ever fix.
I've got all these little tips
and all these little tricks
for how to fold anger up like an origami crane
until it looks somewhat like a punchline.
The flaw in the design of this art
is that no matter how many were made
they couldn't cure Sadako's leukemia.

Perhaps it's an ongoing theme in my work
to shirk all these lies I've been told.
To mold the past into a weapon
to harpoon the future with like a humpback whale.
But I've watched razors sail
across the surface of my skin like a hundred tiny boats
and while I'm making my way in this sink-or-float Earth,
I still have the spirituality
to make a penny feel like more than what it's worth.

I can't make your life having meaning.
I can't give you the feeling you get
on that 999th paper crane,
but I spend my whole life trying to catch
thunder in a wine bottle.
It's just a noise,
and it exists only ringing in the ears
of frightened children
and bringing the tears of overjoyed children
in Africa.