You celebrated my victories with me
Until they become our victories
But now you're gone and I
Don't celebrate anymore

- p. winter

I apologize in advance,
For none of my love songs will have melodies.

I will laugh in euphony and cry in cacophany, I will bleed with every typo and breathe with every verse. I will think in metaphors and speak in rhyme.

I will tell you I love you
Not by using those three words
But by writing my own; pages at a time.

I will compare your eyes to lighthouses in the mist
And your laughter to a lark's opera.
You won't just hear me say "you're beautiful" (though you are), but go on for chapters about every little freckle.

You won't understand why I think so dramatically. Or why I take so long to choose my words (because I always know I can find better ones). You will become angry when I sit down and write because I just can't say what I want to with my voice.

But, most of all, I apologize for the way your face will fall when you read my poems and discover who I am. You will awe at how I can hide so much in those little notebooks. You will hear stories about me that will never escape my lips. You will tremble at the exhausted self that remains after I pour all that I am into the pen strokes on the paper.

For these things, I am sorry.
So please excuse me for being a poet.
And please excuse yourself for loving one.

- p. winter

Depression is art
The kind few actually understand
It's poetry is embodied in the paint
That covers the artist's hands.
And the canvas drips words
That fill up the empty space
With colors of black and blue
To fill up the feeling of grey
Within the emptiness
Of the corners of the artist's heart.
But the design isn't yet finished
The last stroke waiting to breathe
On the canvas to complete it
Before the world can see.
Slices of red added to the portrait
And specks of tears too
To complete the last touch
Of the masterpiece for you.
...
But you know what they say
Most art isn't understood
And the poetry behind it all
Is lost in the colors too.
For you would only know
If you knew this:
That the art was her soul
But the canvas was her **skin

She grew thorns...
Not to lure him in
        with deception
But to keep him out
        who was deception
For as beautiful as she was,
She was dangerous within
Her petals holding secrets
No world could bear...
She grew thorns
All to protect
Her fragile heart
From unleashing
Her sins...

.
Flowers so rare and fine,
Missing from this dry world,
Lost, unwatered, unseen, yet
No ones and none despaired,
They then planted their garish
Seed in blot sun, most sodden,
Soppy soils sprayed which fell
On the plainest, most commoner
Grounds, such fertile dirt, wrought,
Then, all who came to view where
But gaggles of proud mediocrity
Who arrived to revel and preen,
Unjust, they remade this earth,
Once lively, to be lame, what
Celebrations they now need
What praises they do crave,
Sadly, they could not know,
A flower for the weeds.

read this slowly
in the intent to feel as though
your big toe stands on top of the highest peak
and attempt to spin
sweeping the air
and you are allowed to smile as wide as the sky above
and you may grasp the blades that make your shoulders
feeling safe,
you might feel alone.