As much as I want to feel loved,
I don’t think I am lovable.
I fall too fast and always, always end up
Laying on the concrete with
Blood in my hair.
I have flaws, everyone does, but I’m always
Afraid that you won’t love me, not the way
I need you to. I’m terrified, like a cat in a
Thunderstorm, that someone will
Put up with me for a while
Then leave.
And I’ll be left to wash the rust out of my
Hair and wipe the black and grey from under
My eyes.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow—
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream:
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep
While I weep—while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

i anchor
myself
to the back
of your mind
you wish
me away
but here
i still linger

August burned quickly, incipient nostalgia
prematurely vanished, mellow and gentle
sea stone on the tiled table, cedar plank
with fish, sunset through the eye-slit window

thigh high in life and riding wherever life
takes me like a hopeless romantic