Its starting again
I can feel it wrapping to claws around me
Squeezing until I can't breathe
As oxygen escapes my lungs
I feel the world going dark around me
I can't move
I can't speak
I.Can't. Breathe.
Im falling into a pit of darkness
And no one can help
Because no one even knows
But it is happening again
And I fear that this time
This time when I hit the bottom
I won't be able to climb back out
This time,
The darkness will consume me.

“A woman needs to find a way of creating boundaries that is not a violation of her instinctual feeling of wholeness.”*

daring like a ballerina
simple as a peach orchard
she loves me like a daughter
from the height of wonder
I look at her with innocence
like a mother
I teach her how to stare in the sun
to see flowers of light
the fragility of colours
and how stories happen in the dark
the hardest part is letting go of knowing
reinventing the smile
words stand there not pretending
tangible, waiting to be broken
here is everything letter by letter

cruel and demanding
like a song, like a perfume in autumn
“I lend you my fairies,
you lend me your arms”
silk embraces
uncracked choices
I follow her into laughter
She follows me into tenderness
little exchanges, attunement, failures
when to draw a line
when to plunge into circles
store fat miracles
a grasshopper is coming in
propelled by the infinite desire

“you don’t have wrinkles, mama”,
she laughs
a bird came to nest in your heart,
don’t frown, mama
let’s yell to scare baubau
"should I make it yellow?"

every day she’s mapping my honesty
giving me her burden of childhood
and we found ourselves raw and dreaming
in between hearts

There are many "you's" out there, on the highways, byways, freeways. Those that put others in harms way, excercising their egotistical need to be "first in line", "head of the class", so to speak; "**** the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" is their rallying cry.

It makes no difference what "YOU" are driving, old vehicle, new vehicle. Perhaps an overly powerful pickup truck, or an SUV, that makes YOU feel IMMORTAL. Ice, snow, rain, dark of night, makes no difference to YOU. Inconsiderate, rude, careless, makes YOU, dangerous. Today is no different, its "all about YOU." Speeding, weaving in and out of traffic, no need for signals, tail-gating,  trying to get that vehicle out of YOUR way, because YOU are being "INCONVENIENCED!" YOU, don't care! For this morning, like any other morning, "its all about YOU."

The lights are a bit glaring, as you begin to emerge from that state of unconsciousness, laying in that hospital bed, wondering where you are, who, and why, are those strangers standing around you.
They are the doctors, nurses, first responders, investigators, preparing for your reaction when you're told that the brains of your spouse and children had to be scraped off the pavement with a snow shovel.
You should be proud of yourself. For today is truly,
                                              "All about YOU!"

copyright: richard riddle April 03, 2015

You enjoyed it,
Do not lie,
You had fun playing with my heart.
You threw me around,
And then smiled and laughed
As I fell apart.

Ruined minds
And stained lives,
All caused by you.
I hope that one day,
Your destruction will cease
So we can all pull through.

How does it feel
To lie to the ones
Who love you for "you"?
I hope you feel guilty,
As it is not only we,
But they who suffer too.

Thin music played as we danced uneven
circles around tempermental light flickering,
a bonfire built lopsided in the metal bowl--

you handed me a glow-stick then broke yours,
shaking the torn end so the liquid spattered
your hair, head, shoulders, and the grass,

dew-wet around your mud-stained sneakers.
You reflected the constellations overhead--
mirrored as they were in your backyard pond

when we went night-swimming with silver
fish ******* on our toes. We spent the night
discussing first impressions and each other--

you admitted I was your kind of person
even though I thought you were weird,
too short a boy with too high a voice.

I soon learned you were a hurricane tied down,
and you convinced me I had not once been less
than spilled starlight--that’s why my skin

glowed beneath fluorescent lighting, untouched
by the sun’s aggression burning freckles,
cosmic dust dappling my nose and cheeks.

You said: “It’s always been the way of man,
born as living mirrors for nature to see itself.”