Your eyes were extremely green today.
I noticed that because
They literally glistened
As you stared off, zoning out.
And your whole face changed.
And in those moments,
You were extremely beautiful.

In Kohln, a town of monks and bones,
And pavements fang’d with murderous stones
And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches;
I counted two and seventy stenches,
All well defined, and several stinks!
Ye Nymphs that reign o’er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
   But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine
   Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?

As I blow out my 18th candle;
My only wish is that my mom was here to cut the cake.

I sit at my window pen in hand
staring at blank pages, willing them to speak, to whisper something of my frustration and shatter the silence within.
I curse the ink that blackens my fingers as it flows without ebb, skillfully scratching out the mundane, the lists, the cards, the endless to do's, only to  become as mute as my friendless tongue when feelings threaten escape.
I struggle to contain all that I feel, all the loathing of all that I know and all that I am within this small form. The threat of drowning a reality and sometime solace.
Emotion unknown chokes my soul as fear cages my heart within it's cold clenching.
This art was my voice, my passage to sanity. Now ticking clocks and glowing paper mock my troubled mind.

While I wonder at the point of it all.

dad left
for his second tour of duty
on my third birthday

mom kept
a jar full of jelly beans
on the living room coffee table

every night
she gave me one to eat, saying
"when these jelly beans
are all eaten up,
dad will come back home"

sometimes
i would sneak another,
to help dad come home sooner

one night
the phone rang
and i watched mom
wipe away a tear
as she filled
the jar
back
up