you picked me a rose
and all you saw was beauty--
all i saw was death

you asked me why i no longer danced
but you never noticed that
you no longer sang my song

what do i have to say
to keep the zebra stripes
from falling off and leaving only white?

what do i have to do
to keep the herd of restless rhino
from stampeding you?

what do i have to be
to get the giraffe to come and eat
from our acacia tree?

peace is less than me
and more than you
but we are almost free

I thought I saw you

before I saw you.

I thought I felt the wind

grace the back of my neck

like

Whispers tempered with speeches,

waiting. 

Those, thoughts that played against my mind

Like a memory that served purpose years ago.

You carried through me like the river.

In and out,

Back and fourth.

Mud stuck to the bottoms of my feet,

I rinsed them in the cool stream of your reminders.

Were you real?

As real as I am.

And although I dreamed these things,

You confirmed each line I came to remember.

There was that silence that Bumped along your hips

like,

Stars in the sky and the forest of trees

behind the house you grew up in.

Was it a dream,

was it a stitched together

like the meandering waterfall,

its roaring voice too loud to hear the tickling of that cold water.

When I took my shoes off and jumped in,

 naked and full of fear,

and you held me close.

You said with your voice I heard as harmonics,

I’m right here.

I’m right here.

And I let my body lay against yours,

 like I had done it a thousand times,

and told you to come to bed.

 Your flesh was like the mountains I visited as a child.

Dips and canyons engraved upon my minds eye,

my fingers laced against the curves of your essence.

And I breathed your name like it was a lullaby.

I let you break every barrier I had ever built

Within the those moments of bodies melting, becoming one.

Late at night I lie with blinds drawn back
Night drifts just beyond a thin piece of glass,
it drifts too far from reach.
I wish I were outside in it, but watch it I will.
Street lights guide empty roads, impatient, they wait for the air of morning.
I am for once alone in an undisturbed solitude.

Each ticking moment,
from the peaking hour of our brightest stars to the resting streetlights and pale blue air,
Runs through me indefatigable.  
Slowly I turn into a new person as the people and day fade to nothing
Slowly I become more.

The moon cascades light into my room,
it presses its face close to the glass
Both present we are alone.

I consciously listen as my mind wanders.
I am still here, not dreaming.
It is at the death of each day,
far past midnight, words drip onto the white page.
They are not shy nor afraid of displaying their truth.
The moon is empty of judgement.

When the brisk daylight arrives I will cover myself.
When the birds songs ring through dawn
I begin dying again among the life of everything.

But for now in the depth of silence and stillness,
I shall bare myself.
For the night invites such comforting warmth,
I unclothe my thoughts
For the night invites such comforting warmth,
I do not sleep.