reaching what you feel is unlimited potential,
trusting that you’re the main character of
your story—
you’re disavowed by actuality.

there is more in believing, trying, doing—
you are love and light and concise metaphor.
sometimes salt-soaked irreverence
in the face of reality. Scraping,
laughing, yearning.
All that you’ve accomplished with a smile
and full heart is yours.
You are inadequate and whole.

Thrums the bee waggle-dance in a haunt of Indian horsepaths,
Or the shaking leaf one second past the strike of galloping rain
/ Parsimonious lightning, thrifty in its jagged stalks
Against this night of heavy-hearted oaks /
Then the hay-fringed bale of sleep, rolled into a valley of slowed breathing,
Through parting cloud-diabolique, poison-peers the wet toadback of Autumn,
Glowing moon-gristle in the bosky wolf’s beard with its wireframe of teeth.

when a deep love grips you, you don’t mind—

you savor it and say thank you.

it takes you by surprise and suffocates you, hand on throat— callous, stern, kind.

at first it scares you, then comfort envelopes. possibility emerges.

you cough, your lacquer-coated, oak-like lungs tapped dry and somehow full, heart still deep, and thoroughly unsure which way leads home.

you’re still whole and never won’t be, but something tells you there’s another piece out there.

the hand on the throat; the shrapnel in your lungs; the serenity behind a contented chuckle at some half-assed joke.

all the same, it’s real. and you know it. and it won’t leave you, even if things don’t end the way you want.

it’s been said that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I want to say it’s true.

cough as much as you need, ask for a drink, and speak deeply and honestly without losing yourself.

Too many poems have rough starts to grip you but lack the heart to keep you. Each is a piece of someone’s soul. The cliché holds steady and you’ll contemplate it, but who gives a ****?

What we gather from them can’t quantify the sacrifice of being honest to strangers who’ll focus too heavily on your syntax, your line breaks, your cadence.

All the same, it matters. We choose to struggle, share, overcome, and it’s deeply un-unique— yet we always find a way to make it ours.

I want this medium to reflect what I’ve always been: present, flexible, deeply sad.

Maybe one day we’ll finish a sentence without pausing first to see who’s listening.

night slept when she spoke,
creeping  back into its ceaseless
void.
day paused with envy
at her brightness.
the winds whipped
as she moved, and caressed her.

heart aimed at sunset,
she set herself
to become the beauty
she felt around her.