Dear previous flame,

For whatever you may feel, know we are mirrors.
For whatever insecurity you may look to cure, through searching hard and unsubtle in the profile I choose to share,
Know that I’m a shadow, searching hard through a shared room that was yours before it was mine—
Looking for any sign of superiority, a crack in the impenetrable armor I built for you.
I know you’re my reflection on the outside looking in.
You’re his past but my potential future and the empathy I feel runs deeper than the credit you’d dare give me.
The truth is I see you in every girl who could remotely fit your description, despite knowing your exact image.
You are not a threat, but a curiosity nonetheless.
Because after all, any record broken is only as good as above second place.

He offered a watery beer,
with a **** green half moon shoved in the can.
It tasted odd and was paid for
With the promise of conversation.
—The unspoken trade agreement that nothing is free.
Though strange he wasn’t a stranger and I thought (and there’s the problem)
See I thought I could gleam
A litmus test of jealousy,
After all you were there with me,
When he asked to buy me the drink.
But you were water,
A perfect neutrality that betrayed,
the indifference I’d been ignoring.

Brown jacket, chase it up the rocks.
Afraid to slip on the moss and fly without wings down the side.
Or is it lichen?
There's the sea, or bay or ocean.
It's salty, that's certain from the taste of the air.
Back down the hill through wet trees.
Everything is wet.
It's misting ice.
And radiating grey.
Chase the jacket, don't get lost.
Chase the
Wet haird and feeling wild, thoughts are finally scattered
and it feels like we're alive.

Forget Portland and Austin and Santa Cruz.
Those famously strange places,
where the tourists gawk at local weirdos.
Here is not there.

Here is the place of advice such as:
“When life gives you meatballs put a wig on a dog.”
—True story.

Here is the place where:
“With all good things in life you just have to wipe the bird **** off.”  

The place where steel and marble Confederate ghosts,
watch the wealthy renovate their westward homes along a cobblestone road.

Where paintings are propped to rot up in alleys,
and buzzing twenty-somethings on their way back from a show,
shake it and tilt it and carry it home.
—Gilded frame and all.

This is the place of painted concrete where walls are canvases,
and red bricks pop out of the ground,
the tree roots poking through to trip you.

Here’s where the People’s Beer comes from Milwaukee,
but we replaced the R in ribbon with here,
and sell it by the caseload when it rains and when it’s Tuesday.

Where young people go to find themselves getting lost becoming someone else,
remixing history to not admit naivety,
before they’ve been sandpapered through experience.
        —To a core.

This is an ink-stained but not splattered place.
Where lines are careful, permanent and abundant,
and on Fridays can cost 13 bucks.

Here is the place where people roam like that restaurant rabbit:
listless and nomadic and stuck.

Where there’s a wild streak in its heart that follows the tracks,
and cuts the city in half.

This is the place that Carvers itself out into cultures,
and you can be from the Bottom,
or proud to be a Rat.  

Here is where you night-drive over the bridge,
see the skyline and feel restlessly content.

Here is home.
—For now.

Gaia slammed the door and threw her phone across the room.
Her lover Humanity has done it again--
                  and again, and again.

That broken mess of a love with so much baggage,
it makes the raunchiest Olympians look like Astrea.

All night out, and Humanity ruins and disappoints,
                  once more.

Gaia screams into a pillow of earth in frustration.
Uranus thinks she's melodramatic,

But how can the Sky sympathize with the Earth?
And how in turn can the Earth fall so wholeheartedly,
                for a destroyer?

Who once more in turn, tries in vain, but will never
understand the complexity of it's own round habitat-lover.

So Gaia is left confused and hurt, though Humanity swears,
it never meant to hurt her; break her into pieces,
and turn from a collective of voices to Narcissus himself.  

               She sighs.

Perhaps next week will be different?
The texts between the two so hit or miss and fickle,
Only Fates could read what lies behind the tension.

An Aletia moth flits in and out the window,
and suddenly the butterfly poster on Gaia's wall feels pathetic.

An imitation of her own work.

Perhaps next week will be different?
Perhaps Zeus will vow celibacy,
perhaps the sky will fall into the sea,
and we'll all be mercifully crushed in between.

But what crushes is reality, and as Gaia falls asleep,
the phone lights up.

Humanity: "Drinks again next Thursday?"

The same empty connection repeated ceaselessly.
One generation on to the next until the last.

And of course Pandora's curse,
keeps Gaia suffering through them all.

"So, what do you do for fun?"

Oh, I write ****** poems in my spare time
that I intend to one day read
but know I'll never stomach
the bravery
required to re-evalutate my own work.

Casually composing garbage and wasting perfectly good paper.

As a ginger, I'm inclined to say fox. I've always had an affinity for those cunning, red canines.

But if it's just for a day then perhaps something a bit more adventurous. I suppose I would choose to be a cheetah.

Fastest land animal in the world, agile, and speckled.

Nobody messes with a cheetah. Not because they’re so hulking or intimidating— just more fascinating than terrifying.

We travelled to South Africa once, my family and I. As a tribe we chased wild creatures down with cameras in jeeps in a raucous yet hushed thrill.  

The cheetah was one of the few animals that eluded us. Perhaps having never seen one up close is partially what draws me to them.  

Mysterious, as well as evasive, with an "I don't give a ****" attitude.

They only eat every so often because catching food is such a feat. When they do hunt however, it's one of the most spectacular things in the natural world.

It's why places that sell tv's show footage of cheetahs running in slow motion over and over on a dizzying loop; demonstrating how clear the pixels are in the plasmas. It's mesmerizing.

Their feet move too fast and fly over the dirt, honed in on whatever poor gazelle or kudu they're after. If you're a cheetah that is your body, your thin bones, your rapid heart and beating paws that make you move in such a blur.

To be a cheetah for a day is feeling and knowing the difference between machine and muscle. Humans have found ways to fly, and people regularly move faster than a top speed of 75mph.

But how sublime it would be!
To be solely and purely responsible for that unparalleled speed just for one day.

There was a little blue book,
with red ribbons that pulsed between pages,
And black and purple ink that ran amok across blank paper.

Little-blue was filled with poetry,
It flowed freely from the mind onto parchment,
So naturally that it was like respirating. Vital.

Happy poems about the radiating sun,
The changing of the seasons and nature,
And of course about love. Above all about love.

Then something shifted, as these things tend to do.
And Little-blue lost its pull and comfort.
Ribbons tattered, ink distorted and splashed.

Somewhere between a city and a starry sky,
Little-blue was tossed out and left,
Maybe for someone new, or perhaps just to rot.

I don’t want you back.
Instead:
Give me back every compliment ever given,
Every whispered time I uttered that four lettered word,
And meant it.
Give me back the hours together doing nothing but enjoying each other’s company.

I want those instead.

Because if I had them back…
Then maybe I’d be willing to give them,
to someone else.
But you have them.
You have them all.

Every night before I leave,
A parting kiss before we sleep.

Murmured words in my ear,
I repeat my question so you'll hear...

Will I see you tomorrow baby?
Always the same answer..."if you're lucky."

And I always am.

There are so many words that struggle silently on the mind,
too scared to become sound waves so they’re strangled somewhere
between thoughts and windpipe.

I want to ask so much from you but asking too much from people
Is how you make them scatter and run an evasive pattern fastest from you
Because no favors are free.

Sweet nothings are all I want to hear from you,
Like the ones you used to whisper to me when you still felt challenged,
When you were trying to win me.

Well win me again, because I think you’re losing me somewhere.
I can’t stomach this feeling of being somewhere on your priorities list,
Wedged between the laundry and the dishes.

I hope you all see the hashtag
#WEplayfor24
Wear pink in her honor,
Put ribbons on your doors.

Yes people do die daily,
Life is fleeting this is true.
But to take away the best of us
...leaves you wondering what to do.

It got quiet real fast last night.
Not like usual where the people outside the walls screech until 2am when they finally stumble back to their respective beds.
It must've been too cold for screeching and wandering last night.
Because it got real quiet. Right around 12.

And it was the kind of quiet that makes you both tense and relaxed.
Afraid to move or you'll disturb it, but calm in the middle of it all because silence is rare.
In fact there's no such thing.
Everything makes noise,
When you roll over, the wind, the lone car that drove past, and your breathing.
Especially the breathing.
It's noisy in it's own quiet way just a vital in and out that keeps you alive.

Lungs like attention, they like to be heard.
Even when they're not shouting angry profanities, or cheers, or whispering I love yous...they make their gentle in-out whoosh. Reminding you that you're alive and that's
a splendid and spectacular notion

Never drink to distract yourself
It always ends in success.
But once you remember what you were trying to forget,
You have a crash
There is a burn,
A sting of memory.

And there's no forgetting
What's been singed inside your head.
Those times between sheets,
And kisses and fond memories.
Permanent are these for you to keep,
Despite desperate attempts of forgetting.

Everything is blurry except those mental pictures,
Even Milwaukee's Finest can't drown those primest
memories you have.
And everything ends in the singular thought...
I wish. You. Were. Here.

We've replaced
"Once upon a time"
          with
"I once read online"

All eggs were in one basket,
so no wonder you're reserved ever since they broke.
Shells are messy and hard to work with.
She gave you eggs the last time. But I'm not her.
Let's not give each other eggs.

Let's give ourselves bread instead.
Because all your bread in a basket sounds warm,
picnics in parks on sunny days warm.

Or fresh out the oven still steaming hot.
Frosted and sweet, or sourdough. All your bread in one basket,
there's so much to work with.
Even cold bread, and stale bread.
Because at least when molding bread falls out
of your metaphorical basket you can pick it up
in one piece and put it back.
Or make more. You can fix it.

Eggs aren't that easy. They shatter. They're messy.
So my dear let's not be eggs. Let's be bread.

"It's ok to cry just don't let them see."
Words my mother taught me.
She never told me who "them" was supposed to be.

So I assumed them was the world and built up walls.
Not to push people away,
just to protect myself-
from unspecified dangers and risks.
Like heartbreak, and heartache and being breakable.

But brick by brick you're crumbling those walls.
Without even trying, there's no force at all.

And I feel like Jericho,
where suddenly I'll be open...
And what if I get burned too?

Dogs are odd funny creatures,
they're big and small with all sorts of features.

And every once in a while,
if given a smile,
They can be the very best teachers.

Everything makes you wonder if you're good enough,
if you measure up.
But your standards are impossibly high for yourself.

Bars you can never reach,
but you stretch.
Stretch yourself so thin...
Just to get to it anyways.

Now it's time for the comparisons to stop.
To pull yourself back together and,
unstretch undoubt, unhide.

The best anyone can ever be is happy with themselves.

When it snows and the wind blows fast enough
that it doesn't look like falling anymore
                just like static on an old tv.

And it sounds like a whooshing of someone exhaling,
exasperated after a difficult day.
There's the occasional wail,
               interspersed among these sighs.

Like someone had their heart broken.
The screaming winds accompany sharp shards,
they pierce exposed skin and remind you of that
fairytale.

The one about childhood sweethearts,
and the freezing of hearts,
and the rescuing of boys.

The frozen glass makes the physical pain match
                     the sad sounds which is an eerie
                     sensation.
Like nature wants you to know it's hurting and suffer
with it too.

Not all leaves move with the wind.
Maybe because the others are too trampled on to move, too ground into the earth. Or maybe they're too stubborn and cling to the pile afraid to fly. But some let go.

They get picked up and carried and see more of the world. Loneliest. Loneliness is the price of worldliness. Ironic isn't it? The more you see the less time you have to connect and stay connected.

I'd still rather fly. So next breeze I feel I'm going to lean back, open up to opportunity and let myself be carried away.

Aimlessly through cornfields flying
        quietly and simply listening,
to conversations
to music that's not mine
to laughing and memories being made.

Going no where but not minding.
Numbers fade from importance
         and the dials behind the wheel don't matter.

Only the dirt, the road, the growing dark,
        no destination,
        no worries about going back.
Changing sky, and the people you just met
        but are certain you can't forget.