you turn pain into love
it hurts me now
safe within your strength
I find my peace
to know that you are with me
propels my steps
a candlestick aflame
and then I see your work
a constant
within the lives
of every point of contact
the sunbeams shine
a vessel for your kingdom
she shows me how
I've never known a child
who follows so well
obedience, my reminder
for your glory I see her thrive
an overlooked example
how its not enough to survive

find your humanity
when the world gives you every reason
to lose it

How many quiet corners to hide
I am hallucinating
I wanted to test it
Five days before I felt again

I pick a number
And then I attack it with color
Clean lines but aggressive strokes
Repeat repeat repeat

As a rock in circulation, longing for self-revelation
In equilibrium with a world
Of green hues and ethereal blues
A smattering of milky way white
Clouding my perspective
Your presence,
a late yellow sun with a warm hello
I only see darkness
Certainly, light radiates from somewhere
The moon, surface deep with dents and craters, I
a lackluster comparison to thermodynamic creation
The energy you spawn, I merely respond
Our existence in tandem
The age of the earth
Irrelevant
Yet I revolve
and you evolve
Changing, shifting
day to night, new beginnings
A hazy sunrise and fresh dew mornings
Birthed as night gives way
Perhaps, a therapeutic realization
But stars still exist
As a hundred billion crises  
Screaming from their unnamed existence
longing to be as original as the moon
Saturn after all, has 62

hello ebb
mystic waves with
a rhythmic crash
off sandy shore
spring forth
bubble and oxygen orbs
foam and burst
gurgle up
toward the crest
little silver sliver
spoon in mouth
maybe this will tip the scale
a numbness captivation
from sensory deprivation
hum bliss
barely on board
I am here

if I could inject this feeling into my veins
rather than half-hearted attempts made in vain

waiting for its grip to take hold
on the other end of the phone

instead the buzzing silence
he asks me to hold

hold on, waiting
he hung up

I'm hung up

My face becomes a watercolor
the patterns swirl
with your every word

Smear the lines of temporary beginnings
I’m unsure where to start
My journey goes on and on and on
but yet
I’m unsure where I start

I turned right
And she was left
But we grew up
Down the same cul de sac

Sometimes I hold my breath
And squeeze and squeeze until there’s nothing left
To fight the empty nothingness
And create some of it myself
Because cuts turn to scars and scars turn to questions and permanent problems that never go away
To let go means to bare open
All of a lengthy list of insecurities and poor decisions
That I am in the making
So I’m quiet until confident
But falsely secure
In who my words and lips reach
Out to anyone and everyone I meet
Hoping
But instead blindly trusting each and every one to stay
Away they push
Not with passion but
The gentle turn of a page

I told a boy that sometimes
I like to watch a rom com
Or play sad alternative music
And have a good cry
Sometimes I just want to feel something
He hugged me and asked if I was okay
Two hours later he ended things
And sited the girl with the red silk sheets
If I had known
It would have always been no
But I’ll play another rom com
And turn up the music
And cry alone in my room

Take crayons to the corners of my world
Tell me what I am
Expand my edges
See what I become
I have never felt so small
Let me move you
I’ll show you where to put the lines

I once kept a cage for my words
they were living things
now I spit them out
like lofty paper airplanes
thoughts amok
flung aimlessly into drywall
inanimate anticipation
sputter and flicker

My limbs form Jacob’s ladder
The first rungs
seam to fold and bend
I wish they could fix me with silk ribbons
Life is stacked
They can’t all be wrong
I would fall
Another notch
Wring and worn out

Captivating
Humanity cages beauty
Birthing limitations from dawn’s first breath
Enclosing the soul within a body
Holding it close
Calling it life
freedom limited to the jurisdiction of bone
Trapped from retiring to the spirt realm
Instead to play homemaker in a decaying compact
Glimpsing out the windows

All I want is to go home,
but the last thing I need is to see you.
So where does that leave me?
The parking lot.

look down on everything intangible
"its a good thing you're pretty"

ones who love me don't know me
still unloved by those who do

its you, its you
its always you
why can't it ever be something else?
someone else
anything
everything
but you
always
and for never

the absence of kind words hurts less
than the presence of harsh thoughts

he says
to the midnight curtain above
but I just stare
onward and upward
at the lone tree top in the foreground of
the Blue Ridge skyline
laughing in its majesty
a lingering effect of the sun's disappearing act
I think its absurd
but maybe even more so that
I had never jumped in a car
down the highway racing the moon
to park in a field
and listen to the gurgling waterfall we were too late to hike up
so instead we stopped
and climbed on top of the car's hood
sharing a plaid sleeping bag
warmer than any other blanket I've felt
headlights catch my breath warmed by cocoa
but if I'm surrounded by stars that shine so bright I can see our smiles lit up
then who cares if I never see the sun again
I'll fall asleep on the car ride back and wake up to another night

your authority--
power to command the storm!
is my only aim

a single moment
and suddenly I am here
perhaps all at once

She tells me we wouldn't have known any better
if we had stayed
our hearts would have known nothing greater
imaginations longed for nothing more
and aspirations happily contained within
the boundaries of our existence
ocean and the mountains
two hours in either direction
we could have never left
yet now my bones ache with a secret sense
and I feel at home in my older skin
only after tasting the freedom of the unknown

Turbulent cumulus find a free form
Mostly my mood, clarity mist
And match your atmosphere
To the internal ecosystem within
The most magical thing
A natural world has to offer

Covet the whispers
they seep through the walls
Unbeknownst
who she talks to
Bear secrets
not for me
Only shadow selves
and glimmers
of shining stars
stuck on dimmers
Covet the whispers

memories leave an impression lasting
longer than the ones who made them
I carry years worth of dead-weight
a state of mind
prepackaged into something
far from beautiful
talented at shape-shifting objects
I can drop nouns
boxes, things, people
perhaps my being

My room contains two windows
but light only pours in through one

I hold my breath
counting off
as laden eyelids fall prey
behind enemy lines
my psyche hides
complacent to
lend an ear
alert to the whisper
of biting truth
so subtle I barely feel it prickle
but it is there

the sun erupted from the skyline
spat sunbeams into the valley

and scorched trees with amber, auburn, alloy orange
a grounded autumn rainbow

quiet fog exhaled over a placid lake
and bordered the wall of an angry tree line

crinkled leaves floated downward leaving branches
bare as dead limbs outstretched in praise

mountain spine laid in jagged ribbons
once ****** from Earth’s chiseled core

cut into the horizon’s curvature
larger than life, and twice as wide

its a heaviness
like muscles tight after
sixty minutes of cardio
inside my lungs
removed from the heart
pounding
but empty
in an cavernous space
large enough
to echo through the void
the accelerating thud
that holds me in its claws
clenching then releasing
me into nothing
I am pieces
my soul
longs for an occupant
and beams
like a neon
sign that flickers
"vacant"

You wouldn't say yes
because things were
"Only temporary"
But that’s a sad excuse
for staying in something
so permanent

chimes jingle in the breeze
melancholic motion
going through
wind pipes
the bottles sing
eerie sea glass filters
green
build up wafts
a warmer thrum
of restless air

the way he said "we"
made me think that I
could be something more

tell me how we go
say it is self destruction
I'll take you with me

opinions are like papers
read and then graded
I'm closest to the people I keep furthest