Raeann Burkey

Raeann Burkey Oct 2013

To give me a voice is to give a flower to the wind.
To help me create beauty out of pain was unexpected, but I say thanks and thanks again. Though I do not know you anymore I sometimes close my eyes and hear your voice beyond the door. I remember whispers of better tomorrows and your lips faintly kissing the day away from my wearied cheek.
Though I do not know you anymore your ghosts live around me. They are there when I cannot breathe and push me further down, but recognizing their mistake they are the hand that helps me off the ground. They feed my darkest demons yet encourage my wildest dreams.
No longer do we speak, but your words are etched within my veins. Every wound screams like you while the beating in my ribcage echoes songs sung softly in your sweet tenor.
We do not go a day apart. Your actions stand firmly in my mind and your promises weave in and out of my heart.
To ask for a change would strip me of skin, muscle, and bone leaving nothing but an empty soul and meaningless name without a home.
No matter how hard I try I cannot relearn a language that has been ossified.
No matter how hard I try I cannot forget the eloquence of walking and running for the first time.
To step with brand new feet, to speak with a brand new tongue, is something that cannot be done.
I can remodel and refine this body and this mind, but traces of you will linger my friend.
To make another understand that I cannot love without loving you is to turn my life on end. And though I do not know you anymore this voice that you have made for me will send that flower flying over the seven seas.
Though I do not know you anymore I thank you for making me free.

Date Written: 10/1/2013

Raeann Burkey Oct 2013

Lagniappe - A Special Kind of Gift

Its nights like this where I just want drum out the beats of your heart with my fingertips. I want to feel the resistance to separate each and every kiss.
I want to see your dark brown eyes illuminated with starlight and moonbeams dancing between the thick black strands of your hair.
I want to sing lullabies and then wake you from sleep to remind you I'm still there.
I want to whisper dreams across the pillowcase and wrap your arms around me until we've fallen in too deep.
I want to make dances out of your restlessness and poems from your mumbling.
I want to be the reason you’re bursting with color and in the dark I want to us to love one another.
It’s those nights that I long, but here, by myself, the nights drag on.
I close my eyes and reminisce through a slideshow of memories filled with pure bliss.
I hope that one day we’ll live like that.
Where our scattered clothing makes a perfect picture on the floor and the sliver of light coming from under the door will warn us of morning. I want to be there when it’s too early to for your mouth to form words and your irises are born anew.
I want to walk with you through winter, spring, summer, and fall. I just want to feel it all.
Every little smile and stupid little joke; I want to live through the fire and the smoke.
I could give you the world and it still wouldn't mirror what you're worth to me.
I want to dig so far and wide and long and deep that we unearth heaven from under the sea. Imagining forever with you has become my sleepless obsession.
So when the darkness holds your breath and the wind bites at your cheek, just know, those are the nights where I give you my heart piece by piece.
And on nights like tonight remember that it is yours to keep.

Date Written: 10/23/2012

Raeann Burkey Oct 2013

Love is Blind

I’m sorry dear for my love makes me near-sighted.
I cannot see far; the harder I try the more I am blinded.
So I must feel you with the tips of my fingers and hear you through the beating in my ears.
I’ll love without seeing you, the way everyone ought to. For our eyes judge without meaning, and sooner than we know our hearts will forget that they are the ones that were supposed to be bleeding. When I close my eyes I’ll rely on our synchronized breathing to tell me where we are going.
We’ll get lost in the power of love’s knowing for there is nothing better than what it is showing us and just like God, in your lips I trust.
So let’s not rush because love is patient and love is kind and believe me when I say that I know love is blind.

Date Written: 9/18/2012

Raeann Burkey Oct 2013

Pas de Deux

How beautiful it must be to move.
How wonderful it must feel when your heart skips miles around the girl with the gorgeous smile.
Oh, what a precious gift this thing you call love.
But she can’t pick her feet up off the ground.
Her body won’t even let her turn around.
She can only hold on to what she knows.
She can only reach out to things; she can never keep hold.
You want her to understand things she cannot grasp.
But too much time has elapsed for her to believe in the truth.
Words have no meaning to her now; they must have proof.
And though I know you wish to see her dance, you must give this stillness a chance.
Hold her face in your hands.
Trace for her a smile, but make no demands.
Place your thumbs at her temples and slowly close her eyes.
Keep her dreaming for her imagination is the only place where she can picture leaving with you.
Listen close to her breathing and you might hear a hop or a leap, maybe even two.
Draw then those thoughts with the tips of your fingers down the veins in her arms.
Help her remember that her blood flows all the way to the ends of her toes.
Watch as they tingle then twitch and know that it was thoughts of you that made her body move, if only an inch.
And before disappointment sets in remember that you can expect no more from the girl with the gorgeous smile because an inch for her is more than a mile.
It might take her a while, but one day those feet will uproot and her arms will sway back and forth with the wind.
This is the calm before the storm.
She needs the stillness before your dance can begin.
Time is merely holding your heart until it is ready to perform they way it once knew.
Waiting to send you running miles with the girl’s gorgeous smile.
Then your hearts will skip together in love, the perfect dance of two.

Date Written: September 2012

Raeann Burkey Oct 2013

Kisses Aren't Forever

But if they were I would live in the little ones.
The ones that last for a single breath.
The ones that send shivers up and down your spine and goosebumps up and down your arms.
The ones where your whole body stutters a little before your lips touch.
They are like a question waiting to be answered. They are the sliver of light from a cracked door. They are the breeze beckoning to you from the open window.
They are everything you want standing just outside of your reach.
Their beauty lies within this vulnerability and if I could I would make a world of these little kisses just for you and me.

Date Written: June 2012

Raeann Burkey Oct 2013

Conversing without Conversation

A million words are exchanged in a second glance.
Another million make their way through the second I give you a second chance.
But I don’t have to say a word. There are things that we just know and there are things that we learn. Those are the words we share without speaking.
Those are the conversations our hands have at night across the pillowcase.
Those are the empty pages of letters that we meant to write.
Those are the conversations that I imagine at the end of each night and the beginning of each morning.
They are the warning sign.
Those conversations mark when two lives intertwine; yours and mine.

Date Written: June 2012

Raeann Burkey Oct 2013

Overdue

We are all a poem struggling to be written by someone else's hand.
Each breath changing with the beginning, middle, and end.
This is the poem due to my friend.
The one who thinks that she has nothing to live for.
The one who hides in the dark with razor blades or burning flames.
This is for the art she creates and the masterpiece that she is.
Each scar on her skin akin to the eraser marks on her canvases.
This is for those little imperfections.
The ones hidden underneath a work of true beauty.
This is the poem she's been waiting for.
The one that tells her living is love.
That no matter where she goes she can always come back home.
This is the poem that tells her not to be afraid.
This is the poem that tells her to be free.
The one that reminds her if she's lost and alone to find me.
This is the poem I've been wanting you to read.

Date Written: 3/12/2013