Slow is her progress and high is her climb,
It's measured in arcs that trace my night sky.
I spoke and she answered, but only in rhyme,
Across space and time, the poetess and I.

In my dream we met, and she told me she'd written,
Something dear to her kind heart- a poetic creation.
For Sara herself, I was utterly smitten,
And I urged her to share it, with awkward elation.

I rambled then, foolish, and shy to be near,
Since her words had already reached me before.
In a future that’s past yet, paradoxically, here,
And knowing, not knowing, just what was in store.

“There's a poem that you wrote...”, I had started to say,
“In the Bradbury story, I think that's the one”,
“There's an automated house that's going through it's day...”,
“It recites your piece aloud...?  but the people have all gone...?”

“ ‘There will come soft rains’,dear friend”, her reply,
And her smile said, “thank you.  I'm glad you recall”,
“But this one is shorter”, and her voice was a sigh,
“It’s a different theme, but encompasses all”.

Then, as you'd expect, in the midst of a dreaming,
She opened her notebook and the next thing I knew,
Four lines of writing appeared, only seeming,
To arrange themselves magical, universal and true.

——————————————————
"Moon's  Ending"  by Sara Teasdale

Moon, worn thin to the width of a quill,
In the dawn clouds flying,
How good to go, light into light, and still
Giving light, dying.
——————————————————

Every step of our lives, we are walking the line,
Fail or succeed, illuminated in the trying,
The moon is just as bright when she's on the decline,
Our light, consolation to the living or dying.

Thank you, poets. You gave everything that you could,
When you’d make something holy from the simplest spark.
Thank you, friend, for understanding. I had hoped that you would.
Thank you, Sara, for writing the light and the dark.

My foreign friend once went through my bag and found a bottle of ibuprofen. She said I wonder if these are her anti-depressants because if so then they're not working. Once my friend, excuse the bruise, my friend thought the rope in my room was meant for a noose. Once I regected food all day and so she spooned the meal to my face. She said "good girl" when I made myself a sandwich. She used to cringe every time she saw my ****** up wrists. She said her dad ******* when she was a kid and once she took a pen to her own skin. She said you know that feeling when you throw up ice cream? and I was the only girl who got it. Who really, really got it.
So, I remember sitting in the park by the waterfront smoking flavored cigars. It's starting to get dark and your leaning on my arm. I wanna split a cigarette but you're saying how I always get the filter wet. You were both the hardest and softest girl I'd ever met. We got our cards read that weekend. The tarot lady said I'd fall in love, I said bring it on. Well, I remember nights in a used hotel room, wound up on the bed was the only time you let me hold you. I used to give you chapstick every time you asked for it. You said you only missed me when your lips got chapped. and those days we weren't friends were the worst ones that I don't remember too well. I forgot how we both pulled the devil when we got our cards read. What I remember is that you were there for the worst anxiety attack. It's still funny cause you're the only one in the room who was scared. And the next day I'm dead inside and somebody's in my ear telling me about how they're making an effort to be friendly and I'm the problem, I'm not reciprocating. You ask me why I'm wearing a hat, It's so I can hide my shame under it. Today I don't have a voice, I can't talk. Can't say what I'm upset about. And I remember somebody telling me that if I thought happy I'd be happy which lead to break down sobbing in the bathroom and you came in and talked me out. You never blamed me, never thought what happened to me was my fault. And you listened to me spew about what it's like to have no friends and to hate yourself so much. And you didn't ask questions... you just loved. Loved, loved, loved. So much that I saw it building up in myself. That first jump into the pool in our sweaters and sharing showers and drying in the sun. Listening to you mumble in your sleep, combing through your hair with my thumb. And you said the first time you saw me you thought ****! Another girl that's too pretty. I think we should still be... lying on a sun lit deck. You're reading my books, I'm wearing your shoes. We should still be out on the lake, eating lunch in one of those big red canoes. We should still be jumping off the dock, yelling when the fish swim near us. We should still be up on a hill where we can smoke and watch the sunset fall to dusk. I should still be waking up late in your tent and stealing the blankets. We should still be up all night talking politics and arguing semantics.
So yes, I remember lying in your arms those last few nights while watching shooting stars. Those nights I wished so long and hard to never feel lonely again, I realized this summer that's my biggest fear. And this summer! This summer I feel healed! You bandaged me up so the good bye was rough. I felt like child peeling old band aides off.
Before she left she told me what I needed to fix about myself. In our soggy t-shirts, we have our toes diped in the water. She grabs a pool noodle out of my hands and as she bends it in demonstration says I have no back bone she can take whatever she wants, she can just have it. I'm too flexible. But she opens up, tells me about the guys she's ****** and how she's never really been in love. She tells me about her girl crush. She says if I'd told her I'd loved her first, "like I SHOULD have" then she'd of been crushing on me instead. I just wish I could have been the one to drop her off at the airport. I helped her pack her bags and watched her slam the car door shut. It's different when you're forced to be apart, she didn't have the chance to make me hurt. I count the miles that seperate us. Guess I'll just love her from a distance.

Lavender and sage drift in waves of smoke
soft and subtle like your ebony hair flowing
through my fingers as my lips brushed yours.

Blood rushes to my cheeks and I gasp still-
fever overcoming shock as you touch me,
siren on land waiting for the tide to come in.

Once a hesitant explorer, meekly tracing your
beckoning curves and scars I now salivate-
wet with hunger to devour you inch by inch.

But we are little more than bleached bones,
memories grinding into dust with one foul move
blown away in the wind to feed new life.

if you went back in time
and found my eighth grade self

you would find long sleeves
pulled way down her arms
and you might notice
she was hiding something
that she got awfully tired of hiding
and tired of stares when she wasn't

i'll give you a hint
my ninth grade self
had bright red scars
seared into her shoulders

my tenth grade self
was still finding leftover
pink horizon lines from
safety razors on her thighs

my eleventh grade self
found all her skin remarkably
pale but her coping
mechanisms still unhealthy

and my twelfth-grade self
she was the weakest one of all
just had the strongest
jaw to hide behind
and enough self-confidence to
stretch thin across her neuroses

but if you could go back
and find my eighth-grade self

please tell her
something for me
she won't believe it
but i just have to tell her

that in four years she will buy
the most beautiful sleeveless
white dress with navy lace
and she will wear it with
sneakers and bruises on her knees
a smile the overexposed
color of her insecurity

and nobody
will say a
**** thing
about her scars
bleached into
a memory.

As the sun shines,
All of creation rejoice.
As the trees sway,
All of its residents sing and tweet in harmony.

As the rivers flow in tranquility,
All of the sea creatures swim in their beauty,
As the coral reefs provide a shelter,
A home,
For the creatures of the deep.

For Mother nature is one of the greatest gifts,
The trees, the animals, the open ocean,
Are all hers,
But yet she doesn't use them to abuse us,
Instead she lets us observe them,
Admire them,
And yet we still
destroy them.

                                    Jonesy 2016 ©

What I am trying to say is,
I am well aware that it matters not whether I am with or without you;
I will keep moving,
but I much prefer your limbs with my limbs,
and I enjoy the tragedy you think makes you unable to be loved,
and I'm sorry I didn't touch you a little bit longer,
and when you're here I feel it,
and when you're not I feel it too.

by : Alexandra Crawford