When I saw you for the first time, you were sitting in the grass at a school game. Your head was thrown back in laughter and you were with my friends. I joined you. You made obscene commentary and threw your hair out of your eyes, crawling like a sensual tiger towards your boyfriend, jumping into his arms, eyes on fire. It was the only moment I looked away from you all night. I thought you were the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. You thought I was too beautiful and you hated me. You didn't want him to look at me. You wanted to crush my skull and hide him under your bed. It made me love you ten times more. He was a fleeting moment in your life. I watched your heart die again and again. One day you latched onto me and kissed me like I was the only thing keeping you breathing. You were the only thing keeping me breathing. You kept saying "mine" and I knew I was never getting my heart back, even after you crushed it again and again. Never died. I dragged my way from the heavenly hell that was your arms and took the remains of my heart with me. I have found someone else. Please stop acting like I broke your heart.

I feel musings and poetry on my tongue, in the back of my throat, on the tips of my fingers. Letters never written or never sent are inked across my brain and words unsaid are branded beneath my skin. I am composed of writing now, my greatest love. It will be okay.

The grass is dripping with chiffon, that old garment that somehow becomes new with every evening's donning.

What a shock! To feel that wet fabric between my toes, noticing the squish and the scrape of the grass and the gradual acceptance as my body warms to match the chill underfoot.

I wonder about the suburban night,
how despite our best efforts we can't permanently pave over that expanse of dandelions (you would wield your power over each as you popped off their heads) that used to live in the field next door.

Envied by a world of mates, they separate and procreate without a second thought as to where their seed lands as long as the soil or sand can root down far enough to support its wispy yellow tufts.

The days are shorter now, and the nights in Cleveland once again hold that bitter edge that makes this town our own personal triumph, our defeat over the elements as they wax and wane in their consumptive impulse. You can actually feel the winter on the wind, for the love, after a year of cold and cold and rain and cold.

But the grass, that gauzy tangle that grabs you before you topple into the cliff of whatever whatever, complaints about the weather. It's that chilly, beautiful, selfless dew that you wrap yourself in, that wraps itself in you, that helps you slow your aching self, and for now you can leave the future on the shelf.

- Don't wish you life away, that's what my mom used to say -

How, at that age, can you possibly gauge
that your mom is a holy person, a shaman, a sage,
That she knows that aging turns into to dying
And that growing up is worth less than a whole field of dandelions?

There were some roses, once, a long time ago.

They grew out of nothing, out of a tiny seed that burst and ****** its contents out into the new and terrifying air, and even then they didn't exist but for the idea that one day they might.

There were some roses, once:

the product of a process that included water and light and the removal of weeds and the implementation sharp protection from predators: deer and birds and squirrels and the like.

There were some roses once:

great surges of crimson fruit that bloomed so fiercely in their rebellion against the surrounding thorns
dedicated to the protection of the home of the finely spun veined silk that blossomed almost overnight.

There were some roses once:

Never has such beauty been guarded so staunchly;

and with good reason, for the rose in its radiance has but one short season to stretch its arms and breathe its perfume to which all lovers beg and swoon.

There were some roses once:

They faded,
green
then red
then crimson
then purple and umber.

But in their slumber we see the bloom we once beheld on that summer day.

We fondled their petals, hastened their decay.

There were some roses once, a long time ago.

They had to die, as if on cue, as living things tend to do,
and oh, they dried so elegantly!
Plainly meant for royalty.

And even in their most brittle form, they're somehow warm
Somehow still new.

So you plant some more, you cut the weeds, you draw blood on their thorny guards,
knowing that it's not for you, but for the birds in their back porch churchyard.

And the moment the first rose peers around from inside the womb, well
there's your reward,

to forward the growth of something so fragile and sweet.

So ruthless if you aren't aware of its teeth.

Sleepless nights
when I've
laid in
the thick darkness
listening to the
sirens scream
throughout
the city.

Drawn out sleepless
nights ,
nights that I spent
conjuring up
images of better
times.

Sleep deprived
lonely nights,
nights  I spent
counting
someone else's
legless sheep.

Nights I spent
wasting hours
by thinking of
nothing but
the past.

sometimes we say forever
but forever is easier said than done
sometimes we make promises
but they are broken easily than fulfilled
sometimes we say goodbye
yet all we want is to say hello &
start all over again

**its just that sometimes,if not most times we say what we don't mean,forget what we mean & lose what we had

It takes
hate to appreciate love
absence to gratify presence
pain to embrace solace
& tears to enjoy the laughter