Wish we could dry her tears
She is tough but lately the tears flow over and under
Are we to blame?
A repeat of the same
Time we change
Even in the rain
The laughter and the pain
Do we ignore it?
Or become the answer
Even in the rain
So many things are wrong
Time to right them
Just be ready it wont happen overnight
It starts with each of you moving Heaven and Earth
Be one of many that knows their worth
Even in the rain
It is insane to complain

C@rainbowchaser2022

i felt 2021 leave
as if i had showed it to the door
and set the lock when it left.
felt the weight leave my chest
as i looked to the sky,
the fireworks bursting over the trees
of another neighborhood.
i could feel the arms of a ghost
wrapped around my shoulders as we watched.
not an echo of the past
but a promise for the future, for 2022.
like lines waiting to be colored in.
usually, when the time comes,
i don’t feel the change.
the years just drift off into
an abandoned corner of my house
to be stumbled upon in
moments of weakness or
desperation to turn back time.
i am glad to have felt this skin shed,
to give me more room to breath.
the truth is, i had nothing left to give.
no days to be written over or lived in again.
like an animal in a trap,
i have torn through sinew and bone
and made it to air.
though feeling the phantom pain
of what i once was,
i have made up my mind
and i have decided to run.
now, we look towards the newness of midnight,
a clock set to zero.
and so it begins
(again)

any ground 18 stood on crumbled as all once-great nations do.
the flame of hope that had kept the lights on
turned and burned down the wooden roofs,
while the archers left arrowheads in flesh.
lakes of insurmountable grief covered the ruins of who she once was.
in moments of cruelty, she could feel the bottom of the waters,
could feel the glory of the old self.
the wickedness was that she did not possess the strength to lift it up again, could not resurface glimmering gems.
left without sight and taste, doomed to the brush of fingertips.

in my dreams,
i saw a sunset so beautiful,
i had to open all the curtains.

I'm sitting here
on the darkest night
when a poem comes
and says, "stay there",
and silence will be your friend.
Let's pretend
to know each other
even though
we never remember
faces like the people
we once loved.
I'll say this
and everything you hate
shut up.
You are victorious
over all solitude.

it's been one year of loving a girl who
has fallen on her knees for me and
who has raged like an electrical fire.
a girl who sits in the car alone and
sings for her own ears.
a girl who has been torn apart more times
than i've ever been kissed.
from the outside, it looks like loneliness;
just one girl in a coffee shop corner
who takes up one side of the bed.
but it's been a year of writing over
every annotation you left on the margins of my pages.
now i've finally gotten to the part where the slate is clean.
the part where i let you go with concrete certainty.
i can hear the shackles clattering to the floor.
that sound means i have made it without you,
that you were not the end of me.
and i've changed so much this year,
would you even recognize me?
it feels like i was put back into direct sunlight after
feeling the radiation only through your glass window pane.
i wear skin you have never touched.
i live on a college campus you've never been to.
i've listened to new music that you haven't heard of.
instead of loving you, i love the things that are just mine, just me.
she's an acquired taste, she is work to love.
but i do.
i love who i am without you.

the news from the telegraph is bittersweet today.
they say they've found a way to take out the pain
of forgotten memories and blocked pathways in the brain.
i wish they would've cleared the road a little sooner.
swept off the loose branches and debris just a little faster.
because... what if it could have saved you?
what if you could've been the one i hugged at my graduation?
what if your letters were the ones waiting for me at the post office?
i can see it written in the corners of my mother's face
as i tell her the discoveries.
it doesn't take long for me to uncover
the bittersweetness she tastes too.
nothing is said but
i see it in the downturn of her eyes and
the ends of her lips, how they don't quite lift up.
that's how i know.
life has moved so fast since you've been gone, hasn't it?
and i know that she would've remembered the pain
of loss, of grief, of loneliness.
but maybe she wouldn't only have to live on
in film pictures and old grocery lists.
maybe my essay wouldn't have ended with a hope and a wish.
i have to trust that it's better off this way because
i know she is in a place with endless beaches and
not a single stone to weigh down her pockets
and that has to be enough.
i still think about the roses and red cardinals in the backyard
and it is enough.