This room breathes without me,
not loud, but suffocating.
A hush that hums
like static behind the eyes.

Time forgets me here.
Clocks melt into the walls,
and the walls lean in,
whispering names I no longer answer to.

I wear silence like a second skin,
tight and damp,
stitched with threads of
“should have” and “still not.”

The mirror won’t meet my gaze.
It flinches.
I flinch back.

Outside, laughter is a foreign tongue.
Inside, I speak in sighs,
in the language of
unbrushed teeth and unopened curtains.

Hope is a rumour.
A myth told by sunlight
I haven’t seen in weeks.

But still,
somewhere beneath the rubble of thought,
a pulse.
A stubborn throb.
Not joy. Not yet.
But breath.

Round and baby smooth
Before the heavy lessons
Now more gold than globe

Earned geography
Topography in bruises
Ridged in blue and black

Fault lines and canyons
Shining yellow Kevlar-filled
Stronger in the cracks

But this recent dent
is a gut-aching crater
that wobbled my world

So, I wait for healing gold
And grow stronger from repair

outstanding

i do not research the words's etymology,
for it might steal it's magic from me,
you take me to different places different nights,
in shoes that hold eyes that see those sights.
that I cannot, though perhaps commonplace,
they are
out standing of my welds experience

so i, we, are voyeurs to a moment of humanity,
and i am out side, outside my body, in your visions,
out standing, near by, by words, moved by words,
composed outstandingly…
and now under~standings achingly transport me to
where you have been/seen  
and send us

She standing there with her gin and tonic
Holding it like a cross
ripe for crucifixion

She turns to smile making sure you see her
Pouring out wiles of affection on the somebody that's brand new

It's like an arrow through your affliction
Cutting deeper than the burbon on your breath
Is it her way of making up a torture test ?
Well the answered would be . . . YES !

Well it's sometime between midnights
It's anytime now all of the time
She holding the arm of leaving
with the intention of her new guy she's deceiving

There's no amount of Bourbon you hush
It can't flush away the ghosts

And it must be between the midnights
It must be the last of last call for toasts

The band's quit for the night
The pianist twinkles on the keys of exhaustion
I whisper to the glass of ice
Everything's going to be alright
Best to err on the edge of caution
and learn how to roll with the dice