In the late hours, when life tiptoes around the stillness
The silence speaks volumes, screams to be heard
It carries to every dark corner and crevice, echoing in the emptiness
Awakening the shadows where your ghost lives
You visit me in the stillness
The silence
Remind me you’re always there
You come to me when the rest of the world
Is quietly sleeping
Busy forgetting
But not me
I wait for you
To let you know I remember
Wait for you
To let me sleep

People ask who I am
What I'll become
Who I hope to be
What I hope to be
I am who I want to be
I store the parts of me I like to hide
Right here, in plain sight of strangers
Who just take me as I am

Our friendship went up in flames
Because I set it on fire and watched it burn
And now my eyes are bleary from the ash,
Pained from the duration
Blood shot
Open for hours? Days?
Reading and rereading the words
It makes the most sense to just erase
What’s left to hold on to?
All the other casual reminders that used to lay about
Are now relegated to a small space
On a high shelf
In a less-than-often thought of closet
They don’t seem strange-
Those empty spaces
Time has erased feeling off the walls
Or they are so used to comings and goings
They’ve fortified themselves against impermanence
However, their blankness traps me in-
In with the essence of you
That lingers
Like the smoke

There is the time of night
When the world feels still
The loudest noise is the rising of the moon
Or the flicker of the stars
This used to be my favorite time of night
Like the pause when an orchestra shifts from warming up
To playing
It’s where the world keeps its secrets
Those few hours
Before the shadows on the wall fade into
The warm golden rays of morning
Those fleeting moments
Most people spend wrapped in their sheets
Languidly tossed among their beds
Clinging to their dreams
I sit and linger
Patiently waiting for the dark to speak
Wanting to hear the secrets the night has to offer
But those moments share nothing
The blackness remains silent
And I bide my time
Waiting for the sun