Faces swim before my stationary eyes
Like a school of brainwashed fish
Voices echo through my empty ears
Like chatter of foreign languages
Footsteps pound the surrounding ground
With more force than seems realistic
I'm the only one who's still
The only one not moving
And it's dizzying
How much they move

Her mind was a swirling city
With streets and buildings and stop lights
Woven together as tight as they dared
Bustling people, ideas, swarmed the streets and sidewalks
Pushing to their destinations
None stopped to talk
I was so insignificant
So trivial
A tourist they had been trained to ignore
I sat and watched.
For hours I did nothing but watch
The marvel that is her mind
How it ticked ever on at dizzying speed
A spider web of sprawling streets

You put words in my mouth
In a way I can't spit out
Without the shame and bitterness
Coating my worn down throat

So I bite my swollen tongue
And I grit my aching teeth

In an effort to stifle
What I yearn to say, to yell
That you don't know me now
And you don't deserve to

They were lost in each other
Without a road map out
They would wander in each other's minds  
Tickling their thoughts


Though they were separate stars,
From far away they shone like one
Radiating outward and
shimmering with light
They were perfect together


Torn between friendship and something more
They both eye the line between them
Drawn by their own hands
That now they perhaps regret

Invested in friendship,
Lost without each other
Unwilling to take that leap
Unable to watch it fall apart
So they stay.

Stay.
Until their patience cracks
And neither can take it anymore
Because when he looks into her oceanic eyes
He can see nothing but beauty
And when she gazes through his acorn irises,
She can see nothing but love
And a friendship is hardly sustained
When you crave
To wake up next to the person
You swore to yourself
You didn't love.
And so it ends in bitter longing
And it shrivels in disuse

I: the logs bitter cold and crude
Lumped together in careless toss
Brittle blue and grey

You: the fire passionate full and bold
Wrapping me in consuming embrace
smothering smooth and fierce

Chemistry we have all too much
Our elements attract ferociously
I thought
Thought
Of possible perfection
That your tendrils of light could soothe
My aching cracks
But I forgot
I never fathomed
That fire and wood attract so deeply
Because one consumes the other

I realize I'm burning
Searing heat flows in pulses through
My panicked form
But I'm helpless hapless done
Finished

As I turn to ash and smoke I still admire your flame
Your relentless flame that eats away beautifully at my crumbling frame

I met you in early in the fall
When the winter wind hid
Biding it's time
On the stale summer air
Then the cold overcame
And I saw the bitter wind
Tumble and whip your hair
And I watched as the leaves pushed the
Last bits of color through their stems
Before they gave up
And drifted away in the consuming wind
The months grew long as
The wood supply dwindled
And tempers grew short
Friends snapped like the twigs underfoot
Hope cracked like the leaves
And time froze like the icicles
And you didn't want
To go on
What made you go on?
While I was a twig cracked on the ground
I did not notice how suddenly
Spring had sprung
The twigs and leaves decomposed and
The icicles melted
And all to fuel the flowers
The wonderful flowers that now covered
The ground radiating from you in circles
Racing in ripples to touch everything
With their joy and resilience
It's a mystery to me
How such beauty came out of such
Loss
But it is a beautiful mystery none the
Less  

I guess now I see
That even in
the darkest winter
Flower seeds are there
waiting for the right time
To bloom

I guess now I see
That you need the
Broken twigs and
Cracked leaves and
Frozen icicles
To feed the flowers

I guess now I see
That maybe the season
Wasn't your choice
That maybe seasons just
Happen
And that is okay