Have you ever been transfixed by the quiet beauty of the night? She's mysterious in the worst way You know she hides no unseen light at her core, and yet you like to imagine so. Have you seen how she swallows everything in her path with those tendrils of darkness? She blinds you and leads you into what your sure will be destruction beyond the black walls of her embrace, But you go into that velvety unknown willingly, unable to resist that dark temptation. I have seen this. I see her in the vulnerability of everything around me. The quiet allure of voices on the point of breaking. In sunsets and sunrises because they are beginning and end with no hope of as wondrous a middle. In twangy guitar riffs and solo violins, Almost violent in their fragility. I hear her beauty in ice breaking Those arcs and swirls of frost Patterns on its thin canvas Cracking beneath boot and snow and even breath. There's something so tragic in its brief life And it resounds within me like pity and a recognition of how precious it really is in a mixture that I have come to define as love of the most volatile sort. I love Spanish guitars And swing sets in the rain. I love eyes above shots of bourbon with their kicked innocence and I love smokers' voices. Smeared lipstick and yesterday's makeup tell tales of instability, but all of my heroes are tragic. I want to see their cracks, like chinks in armor, because this world is a hard one, and the best things recognize that. I like my music to be in mourning. Soft, slow piano and whispers. I like whispered promises not brave enough to be uttered aloud My flowers dead and falling apart My coffee cold And my tea oversteeped. I don't overstep to say it helps me remember how valuable things are if there's some imperfection. I see things that I want to love in the broken and downtrodden items littering the sides of the road I walk Some not imperfect but insalvagable. Beautiful in the same sad way as smashed piano keys in pure white slivers on the floor. The remaining keys like a pitiful smile that says "I'm sorry, but I'll never create music again" I can hear the ghosts of their creations. I'm swept away by that lost potential and blown by the fact that it is gone forever. I know that I cannot save the pieces, but still seek to fill the gaps in those teeth with bits of my own smile so that we might at least make two halves and have our songs heard again. But in the end they always sound like warnings, ominously ringing out their weakness to the night.