Our bare feet danced on rocky grins
and we sculpted the mountains with footprints
until we became the poster children of lost causes.

God glared at our river through cloudy fingers.
They stuck paddles in his eyes
and sent ripples through heaven’s image.

There were skeletal faces in the bluffs,
an unsettling stillness in the trees
and a lethal sense of freedom about us.

Our hazy days brought darker nights
and we ran deeper into wooded revolution
until we became the monsters of a hand-me-down fear.

Natives watch us from the water
with all the same forgiveness of a wanderer,
but knew us with the bitterness of the choice they never had to make.
We saw them as the lucky ones.

We saved ourselves from the white picket daggers
that came with delusions of all-American purity.
You loved me enough to break a little girl’s white dress dreams.

Now we live in the dark chills of runaway fantasies
where thrill turns standing hair into pine needles,
and we cloak our paranoia in smiles.

You and I are inhabitants of an untamed Washington.
We’ll die out here in golden fields by the water,
without ever fearing what we know we should.
I became human under trees and sky,
and I swear I will never go back to the smoking houses.

I know her eyes, I know her eyes, I know her eyes.
I've stared into them for every hour of every day, I've carried her in my heart, in my soul.
I know her eyes.
They aren't the same.
They aren't ablaze.
They are not her eyes.
I've stared at the glassy exterior that covers her eyes, I've stared at the round cheeks and the thin hands. I've stared at the soft appearance of her skin and I regret every hour of every day for all the moments I lose not being able to hold her.
I carried her for months, supporting her until she could breathe and once she started taking those breaths, everything went wrong.

And she was gone.

I stare into the pictures of her for hours every moment that I can but still, it's not enough. it's never enough.
And I regret each and every day that I can't hold her, that I can't stare into her big, round, hazel eyes; and there's a new she now, one who's eyes aren't hazel, one who's skin doesn't look as soft, one who was able to breathe right and still continues to. And I guess it's a blessing but it feels like a curse, because I know her eyes and *they are not the same.

I will write ****** poetry
until the day I lose
the ability to sense,
the strength to feel,
the will to care,
and all memory
of ever possessing
any of the three.

My biggest mistake
was protecting you
from everything --
but yourself.

I want to be immune
To the song that lures
Me to you.
The sensuous pull
That has me wanting,
Needing,
To be in your grasp,
Your hands tangled
In my hair,
Your teeth to my skin.
I want to be immune
To the hunger I feel
For your kiss,
The ache I feel
For your touch.
Because I need you,
So much it hurts.

You were once a piece of me,
now, the 'you' in my poetry.

You are not a 'want', you are a NEED.

And hence, I am in absolute poverty.

You are my most precise definition of deception.