I must be humble as
I journey on the arrogant search
for humility

I must be a part of one
and at once all alone;
neither at the bottom
nor the top
of my human family

I must be calm in
my existence
and yet unaware of the
tranquility of my being

I must find balance
while not seeking it
I must be serendipitous
without reveling in my serendipity

I must all at once listen
to my critics
and let their words
roll off my shoulders like rain

To find balance you must lose it
and all the while
be unaware of the balance beam
you teeter on.

Do you know why even the highest resolution cameras don't ever seem to capture the beauty of the stars at night, the way we see them?

It's because we're seeing something more. Something that cannot be frozen in a single point in time or space.
We're seeing the love, and the hope, and the loss, of thousand upon thousands of human beings, over the span of hundreds of years, who have looked up into the vastness of space and cast out their deepest dreams into the heavens.
Cameras cannot capture it, because it is something entirely other than the stars we see. It is the past. And it is, we hope, the future too.

In the silence of the dark
When sense is close to sleeping
I can feel your arms around me
I can feel you breathing
In my dreams where i can love you
In the bright of day
In my dreams where you are not
Two thousand miles away

In the light where I can finally breathe without your name
In the noises of the crowd where there is no more pain
I'll recall the wavelength of the silence that you kept
I'll set fire to that broken bed where we once slept

Like a storm on a distance horizon
I watch you from far under
The lightening fleetingly flashes
But I can't hear your thunder

Does she fill the holes I left?
Did the rain wash it all away
Do you still see the stars at night
Do you think of me in day

I'm miles ahead
But you're not running
I'll wait for signs
But none are coming

You were my family
You were my home
The storm retreats above

When is it time
To give up hope
To let go of broken love

My soul is ragged as the bags under my eyes
As I lay in my silent bed
Forced to let Past creep under the covers
By day I run like the wind away from her,
But Past is cunning
And knows that in sleep,
I cannot escape her.

My heart is as aching as the lump in my throat
As I say farewell to a love that cannot hear me
To he who stands on the very sands where we promised forever
And who once was my soul, is now a stranger.
A year has passed and the love that has kept me captive
Is finally setting me free.

My mind is as restless as my open eyes
Who wish to see with them new places and new people
And open ears who wish to hear the music of distant lands
And a waiting mouth that wishes to speak the languages of many
And with that gift of language, bring together two peoples as one.

My soul is waiting. My heart is anew. My mind is open. My time for my life to begin is now.

Do you know what it's like
to love a boy as insubstantial as air
whose kisses feel as heavy as an anchor on your heart
but whose touch fades from your skin and
grows cold whenever he's away?

Do you know what it's like
to resign yourself to the fact
that he's never really yours
and may never be
but you still love him achingly anyway?

Do you know what it's like
to see the lines of his forehead and the stubble on his jaw and the green of his eyes and the slant of his shoulders
in the dark of your eyelids every time you blink?

Do you know what it's like
to glimpse his beautiful heart behind the walls he's built
for the smallest fraction of a second
but have those same stubborn walls
crash down on you,
suffocate you,
take your breath away?

this oppressive fatigue
pushing, blanketing my consciousness  
watching as numbers swim into ink that
bleed all over the page
and daydreams turn into nightmares
and love is as transparent as fragile glass
when balance is balancing on a tiny pill
and the headaches don't come and go
but swell and retreat
never really there, never really gone
just as you are
never really there, never really gone
I stay as still and silent as possible
but I am
running, screaming down the hallway
tearing at the demons pounding on my temples
crying big salty tears
that soak my face and are lost somewhere
in the atmosphere
I know and have known what it's like
to drown for
days
months
and still be alive.

I don't want to go
Please don't make me stay
I don't know who I'll be
When I am away

The purpose of it all
Alludes me to a fault
I fool myself
Allude myself
Who am I anyway

Has my life been torn up pages
Or poetry in white
Is mentality contagious
Will you get me through the night?

Am I full or am I empty
Am I weak or am I strong
Is this life just one big journey
To find where I belong

Please take me home
and make me whole
I, who cannot fail
I work, I dream, I strive for
A happy ending to this tale

Are endings just beginnings?
Can prophesies come true?
Anyway, who am I?
Perfect, when I'm with you

That magic you found and felt as a child never truly dies. It is always within you, covered by layers of pain and doubt that cling to you like wet clothes after rain. But sometimes you see something as ordinary as a sunset, the beauty of which is so simply extraordinary it hurts and heals to look at it. And you remember; the wonder you felt as a child to look at a sunset like this. The hope and passion and excitement for the present and the future blossoming within you as you breath in air that smells of trees and earth and blissful peace. What ever troubles you is instantly void, whatever weighs you is lifted from your soul and carried away with the gentle wind. The glorious and unassuming beauty of that sunset will give way to the dark of night, but not before it touches your eyes and allows you to truly see again.

It's only just words
or the thoughts that alight them
It's only just a kiss
or the love that is created by it
It's only just a smile
or the memory it invokes
It's only just a voice
or the heart that beats for it

It's only just forgetting
that the winds are meant to change
It's only never knowing
if you ever called my name
And it's only just regret
If you ever felt the same

Home is where the heart is, but my home was built in vain.

I can't wait
To love something
Or someone
As much as I love you

You used to be my life boat
Now you are my anchor
You and I were one it seemed
But now you're just a stranger

Take my hand or let me go
Don't hold me by the neck
If love is to remember
I'd rather just forget

Yes you and I've seen better days
I guess we'll wait and see
But until then I won't be sunk
My love is just for me

Leaving bread crumbs for you to pick up
Looking out the bus window hoping it'll be
Your reflection I see
Wearing your old flannel to keep me warm
To feel like you're still protecting me
Like that's something you'd still want
Listening to Molly and wondering if it comes on shuffle
And you don't skip it, let yourself feel it, let those feelings stay a while
And I'll keep wearing this same old trail thin
Cause even if I can't say love ya, I love ya

I leave my love for you in the sun.
I leave my love for you in the gentle breeze that caresses the palm fronds, the way you used to caress my hair.
I leave my love for you in the clouds that kiss the sky, just as you kissed my face.
I leave my love for you in the warmth touching my skin, just as your warmth soaked into me as you held me in your arms.

I leave all of it here, in a place of my greatest dreams and my worst nightmares. I leave it here, so that someday I may return to it. I leave it here, so I can finally set myself free.

I see your face
I call your name
In the safety of my dreams

I hold your hand
And pull you close
My heart tearing at the seams

In the morning light I wake, alone
And keep my silence like a prayer
And when I call your name by day
I know you won't be there

Waiting for boys to become men on the crippled backs of mountains
While sins in the seaside wash away with morning sand
Forgiveness thrums in days like heartbeats
For herself and for him, for her and for himself
Blame and guilt and spite seep away with summer heat
Chicory blooms in the hillside
She waits for him to come home
He wonders if there is a home left to come to

******* and those stupid games
you played with me for so long
I grimace through a smile that shows
when I say that you're gone

And I count the days I go without
straight bleeding out your name
And I strangle every lovely thought
that echoes in my pain

If all is fair in love and war
I'll take my loss and leave
I'm tired of living my life blind
in hopes that you will see

So I'll **** the monsters in my closet
underneath my bed
And I'll burn the bridge of you
and try to heal my heart instead
I'm free -- oh, but freedom feels like chains
'Cause although I left the cage of you
I'm still left with the pain

you ruined music for me
I can't listen to a beautiful song
without wanting to share it with you.

I dread Christmas
because I remember
when you gave me the gift of family.

I can't believe in love
not because I don't think it exists
but because I know it does, and it will never end well.

I don't know how to live a life without you in it
but remind myself every day that I have to
because you are poison, and I'll take it all.

Flashbacks
Is that what you call them?
It’s PTSD
Apparently
But it feels more like dreams
When I slip away
And all I can feel is the exact texture of your skin
The feel of the dining hall paper cup on my tongue
The ginger ale mixed with whatever
The sound of the songs we would listen to
Over and over
Because we loved them
We felt the bass in our bones
The timbre in our lungs
The lyrics reverberated from our throats
Everyone else would find this repetitive
We found this human
To endure through a song that made you feel alive
To let it slip around you like water
As our bodies submerged into one
With no clear end or beginning
Of the action or the thought
When did our hearts sour
When did that action turn evil
When did you touch me and have me turn to stone
Instead of spark me to life
Not willingly, but for survival
Like spitting the poison that once was wine
I remember those embraces late at night
Or in rivets during the day
Our faces turned to the mirror
My body pressed to the carpet
As yours pressed to my skin
And we watched each other
The animal fire in our eyes
The feeling that no one ever would feel this
We would never feel this
But with each other
And never again

Trading time for peace of mind
Thoughts like shards of glass
Slicing through my waking dreams
My wanting for the past.

Don't lead me down that dusty road,
The one that travels nowhere.
For when I reach that deadened end,
I know that you won't be there.

You blur your truths and slur your lies
You look at me with empty eyes
You touch me like a skeleton
This pain you cause will never end

Let me go! Set me free!
I'm sick of this reality
Where you're so high and I'm so low
But I have nowhere else to go.

I love(d) you, need(ed) you, you ke(pt)ep me safe.

I called you monster out of love
Now I say it through your hate.

If you're wondering if I still think about you

I do

If you're wondering if I still dream about you

I do

If you're wondering if there's anyone else

There's not

If you're wondering if I miss you

I do

If you're wondering if I still love you

I do. I always will. I made a promise. A lifelong commitment. I love you, and I always will.

You were the total eclipse of my sun;
Then you were my sun;
Then you were the death of it

And all the stars shone brightly
In the darkness
That you'd left

The great thing about darkness? The darker it is, the more stars you see.

But I can’t find you in the dark.

You are surrounded by an icky bitter feeling.

Your associations are uncomfortable, tepid, foreboding, terrifying.

Your silence, your indifference, grates upon my bones and rips against my heart and tears apart my resolve.

My resolve. Resolve?

I have it. Had it. It waxes and wanes like the moon, directly corresponding to how well I can squelch my love for you that day, deep down to the very pit of my stomach, where it bubbles and festers like burning tar.

I hate you. I love you. But I HATE YOU. But I don’t. It’s not YOU I hate. It’s this dark, tormented, drug-riddled, anxiety filled imposter that has become YOU. The one sitting at the bottom of his sad dark hole, impervious to the light shining down on him from up above.

The light on which I’ve wasted endless energy to find you.

The light that’s going out.

When I see you, it’s always in my periphery. I cannot look straight at you, into your eyes.

You are blurred, smeared across my psyche, a beautiful work of art incinerated into mockeries of char on the ground.

I want to save you. I want to beat against your chest and scream in your face. COME BACK. COME HOME. COME OUT. SEE ME. SEE ME. SEE YOU. LOOK AT WHAT YOU’RE DOING. LOOK AT WHAT YOU’RE BECOMING.

But I can’t. I can’t save you. You don’t want to be saved.


My light’s going out. I still can’t see the stars.

Your face is imprinted on my mind
Like the sun behind closed eyes
Do you feel it?
That smolder; that simmer in your gut
That tells you that just a glance is not enough
I want you taste you, know the flavor of your skin
I want to know the frequency of the world you’re living in
I see the parallels between us and know they’re true
But how it’s hard to start something like this from something new
I want to scrub my hands over the stubble on your cheek,
Stare into your sea green eyes and make you weak
I want to know you as a soul and as a body and as a mind
I want to be the girl you wanted to find
Can you feel it? In every day, every passing hour
The magnetism, the spark
The flame that won’t turn sour
Maybe it’s an illusion
Sand swept away by the sea
But I can tell the fire in you
Is aflame by the spark in me

you never
really loved
me

only the
idea of
me

At times when mirrors are strangers and freckles under eyes and on hands are shadows or dirt

In depths when the heart is a void and the earth is a slippery place

In places of hollows and dark are more recognizable than the light that you see and the voices you hear

In worlds where memories lie and whisper you home once again

Where did I go? What love is this, for no one and nothing and perhaps not even me

The past and the future and the present have no boundaries, and mean nothing to me anyway

I’m lost, but who is looking for me? If not even myself?

There is music in me
Bursting, aching, leaking
I'm singing involuntarily
Crying like an addict
Who hasn't used in months

History repeats itself
Over, and over, and over
A father is always farther
How many times
Can one dad die

I try to strum the chords
But my fingernails bleed
I try to sing the words
Out of my wasted vocal chords
But this rotten, useless music
Was his to pass down
And mine to drown in

A heart that feels too much
And can't beat a single time
Without bleeding on his hands
Dripping in his eyes
Always blind to see
The pain of this consuming me.

The summer sun shines on your face
And I can see you smile
And I feel like the luckiest girl
To be holding our hand for a while
Half the time it feels like
I'm the one to hold your heart
The other half it feels like I don't even know who you are.
And I,
When push comes to shove.
And I,
It's heart to see
Invisible Love.

Sometimes I dig in the past
Like toes in the sand searching for the cool damp of the ocean’s kiss
I want to feel the things I felt before
See the memories like movie screens across my eyes
The love that I shared
With each and every shining constellation
Some brighter than others
But pinpoints in my sky
The homes that I had
The comfort that only exists in the caverns of my mind
The joy and the sorrow and the blinding hot pain
The mistakes and the triumphs and the life that I’ve made
It all considered, I’d never change a ******* day
But what day was the best that I had?
Which life was the one that was bad
Who’s kiss was the one
I should of held on to
Whose soul was made
Of the same parts as mine
In the end it’s as insignificant as the seconds that pass by without my notice
Nothing at the time,
But everything in the end.