What makes origami beautiful,
Is not what paper its made of,
But the folds that define it.

Snap, snap
Against my wrist.
Snap, snap
Escape my twitch.
Snap, snap!

And I’m gone.
Slingshot, catapult, trampoline,
Snap. Snap.
Pull me back
Towards safety, baby
Snap, snap.

Something coiling
Above my stomach
Snap, snap:
Start to plummet,
Feeling nothing
Snap, snap:
Try to regain
All but chest pain
Snap, snap.

Begin to wonder
As I fall asunder
If this safety net
Hanging on my wrist
Would do me any better,
Apart in my fist –
Snap! Snap!

Don’t think these things,
I tell myself,
Snap, snap,
I hold myself
To my routine,
Snap, snap,
To keep me sane.

She was night when I met her.

The hills beyond bathed in moonlight,
though she seemed to hide from faint starshine
sheltered and hidden: wrapped in a mystery cloak
woven from fibrous shadows and dyed
in the deepest part of the ocean with midnight hues
untouched by the constellations.

She was summer aurora soon after her night.

I took her hand into the dewy field,
we reveled in the damp and softened earth
and the stars blossomed: points of bursting light
fixed among the twilit blue-greens
like the blinking bulbs of fireflies
who floated between our heads.

She was daybreak after her sky turned aquamarine.

The stars hid themselves under our feet,
the sun appeared on our horizon
and painted our faces in pinks and oranges: her hand
so soft and gentle, slipped from mine
trailing warmth against the flesh of my palm
where her fingertips kissed my skin.

She was high morning when the sky’s pinks faded.

I cradled her face between my two hands,
pressed kindnesses into her cheeks
and turned our noses to the sunshine: her celestial smile
played notes on her lips,
singing lilting aria in a rising melody
as the light radiated warmth across her face.

But now she is a rainbow in refracted afternoon.

She gleams in every color now her cloak is shed,
red in heart, orange in grin, yellow in mind,
green in energy, blue in veins, violet in spirit: but most of all
she is soft pink, pale white, and baby blue,
a harmony of hues
which she had kept hidden under her cloak of night.