You are my first line
I am Echo
And I know what it is to be
Addicted
To a voice I’ve never heard
As I recite your words in my head
I wonder how it is
If I don’t know you
That I know that you wish
You’d never been in love.

I would be your knight
If you’d just
Put down
Your sword
But armour is like skin
Worn long enough
And peeled away
There are only bones underneath
I would never force you to be raw
To satisfy my hero complex.

The distance between us is a single breath
And you surround me
Like breathing
For you and I
We thrive in echoes
And meditate
On scars
But I will not cut you
Just to know
I am eternally written on your skin
For you talk in ink
And I am only tapestry
Fearful
Of being undone.

I am mother.
I am school lunches.

I am a relationship
I am an extension
I am an idea.

I am mother.
Nothing more
but everything, everything, everything.

I am a tissue
I am a breast
I am a pillow.

I am mother.
I am a voice
saying no.

I am crying
I am drinking
I am lost.

I am mother.
I am every minute in a day.

I am losing weight.
I am running late.
I am coming now.

I am mother.
I am yours.

I am waking cold
I am feeling old
I am trying.

I am mother.
I am guilt.

I am Eve
who birthed us all
remembered for one mistake.

I am mother.
Because I have forgotten
who I am.

Revere not my body when I’m gone
I do not live there anymore
The grass grows on, curtains drawn

Think not of me in the past
I am not there, but here
Always present in every breath
The life I gave lives on

See me in the eyes of my children
In all the places in-between
I am not lost but free

Now I return to the far off places
My soul envelops all that is
My body is a million pieces

A tree, a berry, a bird, a man
A baby
I will feed the world

As I always was, I will be
Remember me not
For I will live forever.

There is a monster in my head
Who always lurks beside me
And seeking mischief everywhere
It always acts to spite me
It stalks my steps with every turn
And wrongs my every right
And when I feel so safe again
Then suddenly, it strikes

A gesture can be misinterpreted.

A sigh can be misread.

A promise can be intimated,

With nothing further meant.

A smile can be just a smile,

With nothing more to say,

But a kiss is a kiss is a kiss is a kiss,

And a kiss shows clear the way.

An echo is a picture
Captured in sound
Flicking for a minute
between rocks
In a geographical stutter
It winds, wends,
Wanes into whisper
Issues now etched.
A syllable symphony
of staggered sound
Jumps like light
Lingers into
A hush

Fast cars and rubber skid tracery
Like line or heart beat stopper
Neo neon blinding light
An unnatural oasis supernova
-natural plight-

Speed seep, infused into
Impatient eyes – unnerved
Friction play light
Static electricity
Chemical energy
Emotional overdrive
Pounds one sound into a thousand ears
Record of a million heartbeats
All off time.

Pulsing net
Trapping light fixtures in a web
Of white lines and wires
New home for the modern ape
Eden is a million quarter acre blocks.

For every double tap of fear
One heart skips a beat
One fever breaks
Like drought break rain
And for one day
We’re clean.