Do you, by chance,
Know of romance?
Far too long I've had
A dalliance
With self-deprecation.
I was so sure I didn't deserve love,
Or a hug,
Or a sympathetic look.
Only recently have I learned what my past had taken-
Silenced a heart to keep it from breaking.
It's been yearning to awaken.

Do you, by chance, know of romance?
Not what movies feed you, or what novels mislead you into believing-
that there are happy endings.
Do you know how to wake up,
And as your eyes are still adjusting,
Not see demons in your reflection?
Do you know how to center yourself when life is spinning you in all directions?

Do you, by chance,
Know of the hardest romance-
Loving yourself?

It is our lot
To tabulate
This formula before us.

The sin lies
in thinking
We all have the same puzzle
To solve.

Dear reader,
Though we come from the same source,
The forces that guide us are quite dissimilar.

I assure you I have none of your pieces.
Understand me,
And you may know what peace is.

Our worries, endless as they may be,
Aren't shared,
And that's quite alright.
That's quite alright.

Has been around for millennia.
We are fruit
Falling from the branches
Of a tree.
A tree we could never truly understand.
We fall
To give others
Another chance.
Some are carried away
By the wind
Or finches,
Or insects.
But most of us fall.
And most won't grow
Into a life giving tree.
Maybe you;
Definitely not me.
But that is the game.
As I see the ground approaching
At terminal velocity-
I'm just happy that I got to play.

A mayonnaise man
Tells me
I need to spice up my life.

He can see the boredom in my eyes.
He thinks
Something new
Will awake me from my slumber.
But he does not know
I wish to kiss thunder.
I want to feel my atoms burning.
I want to be crushed by the gravity
Of some distant planet.

"I think I'm going to take up writing." I tell him.

He smiles and says, "Yeah you should write a book or something."
He walks off.

And I am his hope-
This mayonnaise man
With all his plans
And systems
And routines.

He sees the chaos in my eyes
And knows,
Even that isn't good enough for me.

I won't let you down.

Am just
A whisper in the wind-
A gentle reminder of
A dying love.
Above our skyscraper egos
Are worlds still unknown.
Ask for entrance
And you will be shut out forever.
All you have to do is listen;
Audible ghosts scream to us from
Beyond the cosmos.
Bifurcated banshees (our ancestors)
Beg to become whole within us.
Between you and I,
Civilization has reached its peak.
Countless eons of evolution have
Cultivated us writing, madly scrawling
Ciphers to make sense of nonsensical

Existence.
But
I,
Am just a whisper in the wind.
Slowly losing my ability to continue on.
It's all up to you now.

Scrolling through newsfeed
I read
Emmitt Till's historical marker
Had to be made bulletproof
and weigh 500 lbs so as to not be removed.
In some states,
Courts fight for Confederate statues
To stand tall.
There's a tragedy somewhere in it all
I'm sure,
But I don't know what to do about it.

I have California dreams,
But also
Texas sensibilities.