If I could rip out my lungs here and now
to hear one last time sing like a songbird,
I would die just for that tune.

In debt, I still spend more heart than allowed
and if you're not in pain, why have I incurred
such a darkness under new moon.

But every river at last, must flow to an end
and while my heart bleeds out just like one,
there is nothing for you here.

Ramshackled veins, I feel each one of you rend
as I play pretend this will simply be done,
put to rest, not realize my fear.

You don't quite look like you as your eyes cloud
and like when you couldn't speak, I can't find words.
And all the sterile tools and the palest off-white room
could not make me immune
from the way the walls closed, like a casket. In on me too.

It's the rising of sun on Summer days
where mature branches loll over the vale,
mist like a sea, letting only the boldest
of mountains to breathe above the waves.

With each sway of every frail arm,
made a dancer in the wind's soft gale.
roots dug and redoubled by the sun's kiss,
but it's liminal here, before Autumn's harm.

Do you yearn for the Spring-
for when it all was in bloom?
Is it depressive to think-
of the impending frost's gloom?

As the mist now settles,
choking out my view.
As heaven's frost petals
will soon do to you.

I'll leave, yet I'll return,
a thousand times to this place
each day, each of us a bit bigger.

And still I'll never learn
quite how to grow and to face
my own winters with your vigor.

Swallowed down into these sickening depths,
like a ship too bold for the seas it sailed
before falling, living out hundreds of deaths.

Harrowing, is having a heart that has failed
in so many rights, but still has to beat on
and be beat on like the rocks that waves bewail.

Naive and emboldened you tied your own millstone
and now I can feel it all, your panged breaths.
Shallow and sharp, weak, and like you, all alone.

And there's nothing left of you, nothing to protect
so for what it's worth: You've nothing left to reflect.

Something about the way this valley
can extend and flit the smokey mist
like the winds that pull gentle heartstrings.

Behind gazing eyes I wish so so badly
mountainous strength to subsist.
This frostbitten face yearns for Spring.

Need not, from any well but of your own,
glossy eyes grazing the mountains to find
that winter makes forests seem less intertwined;
only in frigid air is the true tree shown.

Want not, the annuals that come and go,
dark and shade may intrude on shine.
Dig firm these roots, these ties that bind.
And then so, worry not when leaves are blown.

Now heaven does not seem so
close, never singing, yet—
I'm putting will to whetstone
while building on regret.

I saw great shade-casting green built upon pines,
like statues ripped the Earth stretching up to the skies.
Never could you reach, and yet you live to try,
But the heaven and the Earth seem lovers by design.

Billowing clouds, feeding roots that build shrines
that I won't live to see completely arise.
For my own pallid self - or for beauty - heart cries?
They stand so stoic and draped, in flowers and vines.

As I'm lost in the calls of the overhead crows
rained in each fluttering fall of feather delivered.
Drop. Like my once-glossed eyes emptying this soul
and my weighty life into the likewise sobbing river.
Casting out, casting off. Isn't it the same as to sow?
The river does not pause; why then dwell on what differed?

A sad visage — is it that leaves cannot hold snow
only roughened needle may cradle it's cold crystalline,
a fresh-blossomed love as lost as the calypso.
God's chiseled sculptures cast out, serpentine.

The somber minuet, glistening à pas menus upon her face.
Dizzyingly fluttered through cusping sapphire lens
each tuft, each dune of wind-sculped embrace.
Do you know even your warmth harkens her ends?

How could you? Lovingly, lost under peaks of heaven.
Heat of helios as your reflective love soon parts —
no fault of your own, nor allowance of concession.
It was too bright of a burn, your blazing hearts.

Alabaster draped darling, you hold on so tight.
I promise, I swear, birds will sing of your light.