Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
  Dec 2014 KD Miller
Jon Shierling
Sometimes there are only the small things
left for us to cling to when all else
has receded into the folds of the past,
or the mists of an uncertain future.

Merely a moment remembered perhaps,
or a burning hope for what may come,
but it is in this, the power of the heart
to derive what strength it can,
in which I place my life.

It is always Autumn in that moment
for me, golden leaves falling
and making the raking of them
an almost daily chore.

But I wouldn't trade the trees
they fall from for anything,
their beauty being worth the work.

Nor would I trade the journey
that has brought me here by
so many crooked paths,
painful as it may have been.

It has all been worth it,
every wound and every tear,
all those nights spent empty
and searching, looking backward
and in love with memories.

This is worth all the pain I
could ever suffer, all the money
I could ever make, all the
great adventures I may have had.

This moment, looking up
from raking leaves in a yard
and thinking long thoughts,
to see her watching me.

She was pouring love into her
garden, lavishing it with care
as if it were the height of May
and the plants were exploding
into bloom all around her.

It's overcast today, and quiet,
that quiet right before a light snow,
the first snow of the year a few
days before Thanksgiving.

She told me last night about
a Buddhist concept that I had
some trouble wrapping my head
around, something called
loving-kindness, which I have
been thinking on as we go.

I think I understand what it means
now, when our eyes meet in that
moment during a pause from routine.

I'll have to try and ask about it later
when we go inside and eat supper,
but for now, with us as we are, in this
moment I understand.
KD Miller Dec 2014
12/28/2014
for ES

the dictionary definition of prospect is
"outlooks for the future"
and so this i ponder on a train platform.

once walking between the larrikin
of halls Class of 1903 and Jones,
i'd come across the gardens,

prospective ones or so said the
namesake.
i stepped over the leaves that were

on the ground but not quite
off the branches
read the bronze penny

stained black tablet
the roses and blackeyed susans,
cultiviated by class of 1850

gentlemen farmers
and named as the
view of the sight

filled one with such
good prospects.

now i don't quite know
why the trolly dodger park's
called that

and i've never quite been
so, thinking about it
i'll have to rely on

going with you
but of course
you say the same about the Gardens

so take my hand and follow me
now you have to buy me that book
KD Miller Dec 2014
12/18/2014

months ago
walking to your dormitory room
i had asked myself
had i really taken this spurned summer
romance and spun it to this
thing that only breathed when you
touched it with a cautious finger?
a figure moves while i sit
in an empty parking lot at night in december.
we have not spoken in two weeks
and i think that is ok.
it is funny how
i’d **** for you turns without hesistation
into i’d **** you
provided the circumstances and whether
they are extraneous.
part of the "catch" series (winter 2014)
  Dec 2014 KD Miller
AFJ
When your ex,
Texts you on some..
"Babyyyy where you been?
I miss you and i need you, always feel you like the wind"....

**** you left me though?..
Why'd you even save my phone?..
I thought we went our separate ways i thought that we were grown?..

That's when she calls me up, && i smell it in her tone..
If only she knew, Alcohols a quick escape and not a home..

Shes like..
"Naaaa nah bruh,
ive only dranken just a lil.....
But in honesty,
like really we should go on dr.phil.."

Proceeds, on some..

"i need a ride, whats for dinner, why dont we go visit moms"
playing the Weeknd, on a weekend, its The Same Old Song.

i always pick her up, and drop her off at Katie's..
******, like **** you know **** well she can get this crazy!
Now Katie's mad like, "****, you be her roommate then!"
I'm like, that was the plan but that **** caved in..

Well, this will probably happen again next week, & the week after.
what a long, sad and repetitive chapter..
i mean to most drunk texting is a matter of laughter,
but it leads me to drunk text her back & attack her...

On some,
"Babeeee where you been...
I miss you and a need you, & i feel you like the wind.."

Shes like..we talked about this before..you never hit me up when your sober.

I'm like,
"nor do you, so so so when you coming over?"

She hangs up. .
Happens twice a month.
im sober when shes drunk..
& when shes sober im a chump.

relationship? Or relation-****?
Either way,
Far from a REALationship.

But i guess you can say, at least we speak it could be worse...
by the way, later today its my turn to text her first..




-afj
KD Miller Dec 2014
10/4/2014

noting that nothing
much compares,
i get up in my bra

while an inamorata
lies behind me on the dormroom bed
their dormroom bed

and i look in the mirror
but i do not even think
to look at my face

like they are doing.
they are studying the curve
of my ears

and the way the shoddy
window lights
my browbone.

but they cannot see my tailbone,
because i must always
keep my skirt on.

they ask me to come to bed
i think about it and checked my
missed calls.

i tell them we are cinematic
and they say well I love you
patting the bed.

i shake my head again
cold as i was when we first met
grown cynical.

i do not look at my face in the
five times i get up to observe
the shape of my chest

while they lie behind me waiting
for what?
i only make eye contact

with myself when i am fixing their shirt
in the bathroom mirror
and we look at each other

through it. A hand on my head.
I cast my eyes down to their
shirt collar that needs fixing.


How handsome are you now?
part of the "mariology" series (autumn 2014)
KD Miller Dec 2014
11/9/2014

it’s not a question
of whether or not
but rather how

your crooked elbow
hangs over my collarbone
as you reach for your phone

lying procumbent on wherever
the circumstances have placed
us

whether it is a dorm bed or
a basement couch me sitting up in a cold
sweat
or the red of my sunburn on the white
sheets of my july bed

it’s never been a question of state
no matter where the state
until i’m sitting

staring at the empty space you left
next to me or
in my head.

it’s not a question of legitimacy
with the intimacy in your tethered
voice suggesting otherwise

but i can’t help but despise
wild intricacies of time.
part of the "mariology" series (autumn 2014)
KD Miller Dec 2014
i am the obituarist
and still am shocked when they die
a sort of dull plodding preparation
dressing the dead presents itself in memories
of you
as dead as you.
I loved you,
O, how I loved you! And you to me.

snow covers sod farms, it reminds me of purity.
Sickly i want to burn it with cobalt flame
so that i may wash my torn up hippocampus

with the rain water.
and the question i sleep to and wake up to:

i used to be like the snow
so why did i melt it for you
when i knew i would be washing your corpse with the water?
princeton nj
part of the "catch" series (winter 2014)
Next page