Your blood covered me like the love you once had for me
I felt its warmth at first
but it faded
and left a dry and cracked shell of what once was

I felt the soul leave the body
An emptiness left behind
A maddening loneliness
forced upon me

You made me do it
I had no other choice
I tell myself you're just another sacrifice

All my dreams
Are black and white
Colorless meaning
While I'm dreaming
Featureless faces
Claw at my flesh
A man?
A woman?
This dream is a mess
All I see
Are Cold black eyes
Frostbite burns
Between my thighs
Lost in darkness
another nightmare
I look for a savior
But you're not there
No knight in shining armor
To whisk me away
No tattooed prince
To save the day
Just me
Alone
In a twisted state
Fetal position
The shape I take
You'd think I'd know better
At this point in life
My dreams
by no means
resemble real life
Metaphors always
scramble my brain
I try to decode
Just to stay sane
Awake from my slumber
And all I can think…

Why can't I dream
In tangerine?

608

Afraid! Of whom am I afraid?
Not Death—for who is He?
The Porter of my Father’s Lodge
As much abasheth me!

Of Life? ’Twere odd I fear [a] thing
That comprehendeth me
In one or two existences—
As Deity decree—

Of Resurrection? Is the East
Afraid to trust the Morn
With her fastidious forehead?
As soon impeach my Crown!

A friend

Is there when times are bad
Comforting you in your need
Never turns you away

They help you smile
Share in the joke
But not at your expense

They never hurt you
Talk behind your back
Or leave you on the floor

They not use you
Take from you
Never to give back

They show you love
With a growing bond
Walking beside you

Never in front
To take the lead
To take over

Never behind
To laugh at you
To kick you down

But beside you
To help you up
If you should fall

So look to the right
Then look to the left
You will see the truth

Countless friends
On each side
Smiling with you

So love your friends
Wherever you may go
They will stay with you

Skies like sheets of shale
floated above our pretty heads,
shedding fat drops of rain
upon an unseasonably warm
December day in Michigan.

I broke free from your grip
beneath our shared plastic umbrella,
ran into the yard
and spun around six times,
arms outstretched like an albatross,
face upturned to the miles and miles
of unbroken grey clouds.

I stopped and called to you,
fly with me.
as my palms turned up
and reached for you, involuntarily.

You laughed, staccato,
and your ambiguous smile
was nothing more than
an ugly daguerreotype
set before a landscape
of compassionate trees.

I'd rather not get wet,
you said

and I think
I've always resented you
for that.

Leave things better than you found them.

That's the only way
to make the Eden manifest
we've too long denied
ourselves and each other.

I told you that I missed you
as I grew nostalgic for things
that were never mine
in the first place.

Memories committing verbicide,
bringing to mind your voice
singing love songs in the moonglow,
and censoring the ugliness
of those words you really said.

I told you I missed you
because the words were festering
in my brain and filling my lungs
with air too heavy to breathe.

I told you that I missed you
because I've finally figured out
that all of your little injustices,
all of those things I should've called treason,
don't even begin to match
the chasm you left in my world
when you left.

You are missing from me
and I am a ghost without you.

I told you all of it,
déjà vu bitter on my tongue,
and I blinked as the words floated off
into the space between our lips.

Too little, too late,
you said,
*your love
is only ashes.