It has been a year
and I say that too tired to stand--but still I trudge on.
You were once a vine with white flowers
and now you have become a treacherous maze.
And I walk through every curve
dodge every overhang--trying to find you again.
Saying, "I love you."
calling out, "I'm here for you."
But your branches get bigger and your leaves grow thicker
I'm searching for you and while I do I stare at some blooms, they like little memories of our past.  And I become more focused on the past than getting out of the thicket
And I am choked like a ****.
As I am strangled and I am losing my breath I think to myself
"How could I be a **** when you said I was a beautiful flower?"
"Why would you take away my breath when you promised me a life?"
And by how you leave me I see all I needed to see.

Sometimes when I miss you, I forget you are gone
When I see my love I give to others
When I see the extra mile I give
When I press on through my own emotion for them
--I think of you.
I catch myself turning for your face to find only memories.
I feel you touch my shoulder after every smile I make.
Now every time the world grows colder I will remember those last words you said to me
Your hearty laugh
your serious scowl
the gallons of black coffee you drank.
All seem like distant mirages that used to calm me so.
You've taught me to strive for better
that I can do more than love
And then you taught me the hardest lesson of all
--loss.

I knew you never loved me
By how you left me.
And I knew I'd never love again
Because of how you left me.

Snowflakes scraped underneath fingernail tips
When the charcoal was pressed harder.
As often as the cheetah runs with the crocodiles by the nile
They do not look for each other.

As often as the bees sing
Only once could they muster poison and sting
With a clockwork, shelter and carpentry of honey.
The fruitness of a living body.

The sound that gets lost in the woods
Gets lost and carried
Flying through the whispers between the branches and twigs.
All the creatures are all but lost
Yet the striking fur
Shocks
Hunters into firing hot shells across
and the falcon fell.

A shouting cull
The silence that meant that wildly blooms have been collected.
A bouquet was calling the passing hours
Wrapped in the scraped white spirit of the wooden towers.

It is written about the Father's judgement and how it harms
but one thing I've always noticed is the Son's love always follows.
For you are my sunshine, my only sunshine
--and it's not just in the song that I see your love.
I have grown you from an apple seed in the frozen winter ground
and you have brought spring to my heart where I thought permafrost had set in for sure.
You are my greatest gift
and soon my greatest pain
but I would endure every second and bleed out every vein.