i am
the sky,
and you,
a sunset.
i know
you are
fleeting,
but i'm
begging you
to stay. nobody
knows how to
appreciate me
without you.

My life is an
ever
changing shadow
of blue,
a hazy smear of
  what looks like
a galaxy
carrying on
above you

I've been looking in the mirror
these days
and smudging my face with
my hand
so I can look
like
my shadow
looks when she sleeps in
the sand.

Within the four walls
Below a roof
Busy with play of words
The poet is aloof.

The sky is breaking low
Pitter patter rain
Capture they must the flow
Of drizzles soothing pain.

Outside on a stretch of green
Drenched to the bone
A man with cracking skin
Hoeing from morn.

The toiler is tasked to ****
Paid by the hour
Must earn the precious quid
Whatever the shower.

The poet is lost in the toil
To grow his rhyme in shower
The **** works fast the soil
Growing hope by the hour.

I don't know if I can see this through
Lately I've been having seconds thoughts
Never had any regrets
But maybe this was a mistake
I don't know how many disappointments I can take

there was the sun.
brighter than anyone could believe,
passionate with its fire.

and the moon.
a sentimental romantic,
with a wild shimmer.

the moon lusted the luminescent brilliance of the day,
the sun fell for the vivacious spark of night,
and soon the two fell deeply in love.

now the sun had a fate,
a generational inevitability,
of an almighty “solar eclipse.”

solicitous about the phase to come,
as the vibrant colors of blood red
occupied their minds

fret none, said the sun,
for i rise and set for you, my dear,
perhaps the “solar eclipse” may not transpire at all.

but it did.
and the moon did nothing but stand in the way,
as the sun relished in the luminescent glory.

and just like any crossing of paths,
the eclipse came to an end,
and they went their separate ways.

After my mother died, my room was filled with roses.  When the flowers died, my room was filled with their sweet, rotten stench for weeks on end; it sunk into my pores and into my DNA and years later, I still smell like dead roses.
                                                 My sister confuses this smell with dead lilies.

A bouquet of red roses was placed atop my mother’s coffin as it lowered six
feet down into the earth.  After the roses died, I wonder if my mother could
smell them like I did?  I wonder if she still smells them, or, more likely, how long it took for the roses to disintegrate into dust like her?  

We don’t talk about the body after death because we don’t like to be reminded of how vulnerable we really are. In high school, a boy asked me to prom using roses and lilies that were all different shades of reds and oranges and yellows like fire.  Lilies like funerals and tombstones and formaldehyde.

I don’t think he meant to remind me of death.  I don’t think his intention was to place me in a casket similar to my mother’s with its pink padded walls.  I don’t think he realized that’s where I went when I saw his basement covered in bouquets of hellfire.  I think he meant the roses to be romantic,

but I looked at them and saw my mother’s putrefying face, saw her intestines eaten away by savage bacteria and bugs, saw her eyelids drying out and peeling back like black and dead and withered lily petals.  Embalming does not prevent decomposition, only prolongs it.  I have embalmed my mother's
memory in the shape of a teal notebook.  I cannot tell if it has
                                                                       begun to decay or not.