She carries constellations on her arms. Visions of light in points on skin that tastes like milk.
Cascading upward to visions of heaven and hazel eyes, like caramel sunsets.

This one a kite.
This one a compass.
This one a whisper.
This one a secret language.
This one is a sacred thing.
This one. Right here. In the center.
This one is a single star that feels like North.

I will be fluent…

And from the start my boyish heart wondered
what your lips taste like stained red with wine and dripping with poetry like honey.

Haunting stanzas in the pauses between the notes of your voice.

These days we all need to carry a phoenix on our back.
These days we all need to be reminded that we can rise from ash.
Like high tides and crashing waves. Furious and poetic. Serene and powerful.
And at your core sits the eye of a beautiful storm. You are mighty. And mysterious.

You are serene and powerful.

And she weaves her hands around those strands of time gracefully. Casting spells like ripples, carrying outward, unaware that the pool stares back, jealous of her reflection. Her candle is lit.

“And what are you conjuring?”
“Subtle magic of the ancestors.”

The divine sits slyly in the moments between the moments. If god exists, it must be right now, with your head on my chest. Your hand in my hand.

The red and fiery windswept canyons make me think of her. And I. Earth that has accepted the kiss of fire and blushes the length of mountains. To crash against a sky so blue you could drag your knuckles across it.

And in that breath, I watched her take between the sips of wine, I felt that old and timeless ache become the days behind.
The moon is high now. The stars have danced from her arms to the satin sky, and some have even chosen to live as the shine behind my tired smiling eyes.

Tomorrow is dawn. Her smile will sing the sun up like an ovation. Cracking the horizon open with potential. And we are forever changed. Facing that horizon, eager to see what may lie beyond it.

I predict laughter. And adventure.

Perhaps I do believe in magic…

I was just in
6th grade
2nd period
English class
And bored
o u t  o f  m y  
m i n d
When I heard
The dreaded words:
Group Project
Nightmare fuel
For any Introvert
Awkward
Anxious
Silent
Were the 3 exact
Words
Describing me.
And poetry!?
We had to
Write it?
With other people!
I’d always though
That poetry
Was rather dumb
Just meaningless words
Being thrown around.
A simple chore.
Our teacher saw
Our dismal faces
And laughed.
She quietly said
We could choose
Our groups.
I practically
Ran to the desks
Of my two friends
A girl named
Beverly
With an everlasting
Smile and a boy
Named Dylan
Not afraid
Of anything
Or anyone.
They are both
Still my best allies.
We were facing
Our biggest challenge
Yet-
To write a poem
About the feelings
Of an inanimate object.
And we chose
A shadow.
We spent half the class
Arguing about the font
We used and ended up
With Comic Sans
We used the other half
To gave it the title
“The Outcast Shadow”
Our 4 stanza poem was
About a lonely shadow
Hoping to someday
Escape it’s human captor.
The poem
Wasn’t exactly
Mind Blowing
Average, at best.
But by the end of the week
I had fallen in love
With the stanzas
Lines
And fragments of words
I had fallen in love
With Poetry.
I had finally
Discovered myself.

In the marshy wald von Teutoburg
Varus took his men
To quell a slight rebellion
Well, so it seemed to them.

—————

Three legions Varus took with him
Anno domini nine.
The woodland dense, so swampy
That they had to march in line.

—————

And with him rode Arminius
Chief of the Cherusci.
Equestrian, citizen with respect,
A knight of Rome was he.

—————

This Arminius whom Rome trusted,
He’d served her well for many years,
Went forth to lay an ambush
That left Caesar shedding tears.

—————

Hampered by the close terrain.
Drenched through and through by pouring rain.
The legionnaires, unknowing snared
By vengeful Gauls who, long prepared,

—————

Three legions with their eagles high.
Pushing through to make their way,
As rain pours down from lowering sky
And in the gloom those legions die.

If what you love
Can't **** you
You haven't found a reason to live