I don’t know how I’m going to die
but I don’t mind.
If it was sent in a letter
it’d be left unopened, and marked
return to sender.

I don’t need to know the way
the twists and turns coming ahead
the fraying and tearing of fabric
being fed into the loom

I will know only what is in front of me
and trust the enjoyment I have is enough.

Lean on the day in your hands
because it is the only one like it you will ever get to see.

Now, when she smiles,
there’s some sadness in her eyes

I don’t think you ever thought
how much of your thoughtlessness
would find a place
inside her mind

She’s still kind
and yet I wonder why?

How long can she last
behind her smile?

It’s defiant
a glimmer in the dark
It comes with the tide,
her lonely eyes
There’s still something, there inside
It just took a while
to purify the poison from
inside her mind

Now when she cries
her eyes have changed
She looks past the tears, to better days
Some sunshine still remains
The flame that burned under the shame
under the blame
There are mistakes left to be made
Though it will fade, it will return the same

The shifting sands left room
for her to write her name
She sits among the rocks,
within the shade
Patient in the surety of better days.

The aches of grief never fade, do they?
There is so much more to lose than
your eyes, or the wrinkles from your smiles
So many what-ifs, and dreams, and half-thoughts
Plans and routes on maps before we
picked out all the stops
Colors of sunsets unseen
Days yet to be
That are forever changed by the past,
set in stone.
It is cold to the touch.
The face of a tombstone, the whirls of marble-
is it beautiful?

No, the pangs of grief and lost love,
They come like the aches before a rain
From little reminders or long conversations
that dig a little deeper
Unsettling the sediment, flashes of light as
flickers of memories pass in the mind’s eye
of what could’ve been.

But the stone warms under your touch,
heated by the sun
It does not remain mere soulless bone:

Though the past cannot be changed,
the future is free to be shaped
by your hand.

Days and desires are left untouched, but perhaps
just yet to be seen
If you were only to open your eyes
and look past the tears.

I can taste the salt in my mouth
Sand crunching between grinding teeth
Rocks pressed into my skin, my palms
Grit under my fingernails
Sweat dripping from my brow
Underneath the beating sun

Beating out into the ground
Old past dreams, burying them alive

Waiting to see if they will sprout to life
Or stay under the surface, decomposing
Poisoning with their debris, seeping into my blood
Like a deep infection
Growing roots I must pull out like weeds
Only to bury again

Until it takes
In this infertile soil
Finally growing a scraggly, ugly thing
That will bloom after enduring storms,
Being battered by the waves of violent seas

The wolves will come to dig it up,
Rooting noses in the dust

Keep them at the threshold,
Keep the door shut

Give it time to let it bloom
Trust in the time in takes
To make something truly strong
You must endure.

Making from scratch
The next batch
A new breed of life,
Watching it rise, covered
Yet to be unveiled, revealed
The growth a secret, kept to myself

Self-sustaining
Thoughts remaining
Only feeding into the cycle

Letting the good, and the bad
Wash over like rainwater
I like the smell in the morning

Doesn’t it let the grass grow greener?

Speaking into silent nights,
I step into someone else's shoes -
Walk the paths, late at night
Through cemeteries and past grand tombs.

They fit well, are deeply worn,
From all the readers who wore them before
And we pace, muttering,
Some fast and some slow
Lurking in the murky spaces the stanzas show.

The view is the same and the sun never rises
The eternal evening is peaceful in its quiet.
Ravens caw overhead, our mind's eye marked in lead
It sketches the pavement under our feet.

The path has been walked a thousand times,
More so, over this past hundred years
With good fortune, it will be walked again
By students of writers, and those readings through tears.
We walk in your shoes,
To see what you see
And together we share small moments to breathe.

There is art
In this catharsis

Making beauty
It's cathartic

Words and paints and splatters and strokes
Giving shape to the unknown

We hang our pieces in this vast gallery
With new halls waiting around every corner

Not to be admired, but simply to be
Here we all have our own space to believe