I feel invisible
Yet you claim(ed) I am the air you breathe
And perhaps like air I am always present,
But presently forgotten

The heaviness of your hush is crushing me with empty blows
This silence leads me to wander down a path cloaked in a heavy mist
That whispers harsh truths such as:
Our hopeless, fictitious, drawn out infatuation is like
A library book that was checked out last March
You underlined and doggie-paged the first few chapters
And then left it on your shelf to collect dust all of April and May

I foolishly kept begging you to finish the book
Read the last sentence
Take time to skim over the epilogue
Please
Find your way to the back cover

I foolishly ignored your “I can’t”s

And now it’s late August and our love is long overdue,
In the opposite sense of what the phrase typically means

I write with angry lead because
I am too stubborn to admit I just filled a trash bin with tissues
And that the cuffed sleeves of my flannel
Are damp like grass’s morning dew

I have so much more to say,
Although I cannot find the words
To say anything more than



You should’ve written.

Because two weeks of nothing
Was enough for me to realize that you are just a passing breeze
Seldom present, presently becoming something of the past.

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes.
On the mask is a smile.
It’s always different. For every person.
With our heart’s torn and bleeding, we smile.
We numb and we hide and we pretend.
That everything will be okay. That we'll be okay.

We just want to hide our fear.
Fear of never being good enough.
Fear that no one will ever love us.
Fear that we won’t love ourselves.

It’s amazing, isn’t it?
What we can fake with a smile.
It hides our injured soul so deep.
That no one will ever know how broken we really are.

We say it over and over, repeatedly tucking away our hearts.
We don’t want to have it broken. Not again.
We act as if nothing is wrong,
That we are not breaking,
That we are fine.

They are such fools
Believing us so easily.
Can’t they see our pain? Our tears?
Are they even looking?
Is the smile that we wear too perfect?
Why won’t they notice?

No one ever thinks we’ll fall apart. That we’ll break.
But we do and sometimes that’s good, but not always.
There are times where we wish we could just break down
On someone’s awaiting shoulder
As they comfort our pain.

Don’t forget to get away every once in awhile,
To lose yourself in a book
Or in the woods behind your home
Ride your bike into the sunset,
Sit on your front steps and count the cars passing by,
Lay on your roof and gaze up at the night sky,
Drive along backroads with the windows rolled down
Listening to nothing but the sound of rushing wind

I hope you take the time to be alone,
To sort through the cluttered shelves of your heart

I hope you take the time to be silent,
To close your eyes and just listen

I hope you take the time to be still,
To quiet your mind and experience the beauty
Of simply Being

In a world that tells us we should always be
Connected, on the go, and doing something worth sharing,
I hope you know it’s okay to
Disconnect, slow down, and keep some memories
Between you and the moment you shared it with.

She walked across rooftops
collecting dreams from sleeping children
and placed them safely
in the nest of the arms of the stars above

She is the music in the silence
and the words and hope
in every wish and prayer

She taught fire the art of poetry
and then set the sun ablaze
and let it drift off into the sky

She carved the moon from the moody sky
and taught it the language
of melancholy lullabies
and then pinned it to the night

She is part

ocean and mist

   sand and shore

    mountain and river

      breeze and wind

       leaf and branch

and is in everything
  that is beautiful about love

If you are lucky you might hear her footsteps
gliding gracefully over your roof
and in dreaming you will see her smile
and in seeing her smile you will know
why the stars glimmer and shine

She took my hand and followed me
through the trees,
under the archway made of ivy
(flanked by pristinely carved hedges)
into the vast, open field
which met the ethereal red sun
on the horizon.

We sat in the fresh grass,
cool in the evening air.
All the while we stayed silent,
just admiring the untouched space.
Each blade of grass before us
swayed gently,
tantalisingly...

Time had stopped
but everything was still living.
Still moving.
As if this place were not included
in Time's perseverance.  
I didn't want it to be,
it was too important to me.

It occurred to me then
that it wasn't this place
that I valued the most at all
It was this moment.

And I captured it.