Though hidden my name
You conjure the same
Half stories to blame
Heart broke by your aim
In a silent cruel game

Love,
You drive me insane!
Remain…

Hear how whispers the rain
Words bearing strange pain
You’ve died yet again?

No, Love, Remain!

As I burst into flame
To ashes my name
Consumed be your shame.
Love’s power, I claim

Love’s power, Remain

Your spell cast on me
Yet my quiet plea
return & remain Eventually

before I even knew
even then it was still

Only
Ever
Always
You

I think we were meant to be
because
no matter what life brings
I always return to missing you
Only ever always
You are my
Inevitable

16 maybe 17
years…I have lost count
Long enough to be Family
She’ll only eat from my hand
only just enough to lap
but not enough to veil my scent
I, like the boy, miss her playful energy
& I worry how the boy
will deal with this decline
Nothing lives forever…
though
LOVE IS FOREVER

I worry
begging her to eat from my hand

I worry
Knowing just how painfully Love Hurts

I worry
the boy will feel the pain of Loss

Caretaker of the frail,
I beg you to Survive

Wizard of my longing
Memory I most prize
Did you cast a spell on me
beneath September skies?
Subject of my deep desire
Glisten welling in my eyes
You must be my conjured dream
My most difficult “good-bye”
If salty drops could magic wield
You’d be here close by my side
Rather, you return a world away
(& your love for me has died?)
As it seems you must forget me
So my tears must leave me blind
Now with lost sight I will wander
through these cities left behind

I need you to promise, “someday, my love, somehow”
for You are he whom I most love in this eternal “now”
Yet I fear this “never” will prove your final bow
Can you find a lifeline of requited love allowed?
I just miss you so much! See it etched upon my brow?
You are my yesteryear, my future, my forever Now

Sometimes I wonder
Do I hold too much desire
In the depths of my need?
Do I ask too much?

Love me every night.
This my secret wish
Love! and hold me tight
Be my fire! Be my light!
I would love you right.

I swear:
if & when you grace these spaces
It will ever be
As if you never Left
Please be near-
er

It’s okay, Love
I know & believe
What you truly would say
If you truly could say
The truths of your heart
& it’s true: I love you
Forever & truly
you’ll see

I think you must be
Very angry with me
else why
can I not know
the “why”?

The strongest man
is not he whose booming shouts
usurp the roaring thunder
but, rather, he whose presence
stills the raging storm.
Power comes not from
a loud & deep commanding yell.
It takes far more strength
to hold & to protect a heart
listening carefully for its living pulse.
The strongest man
carries hearts in the palms of his hands.
Show me your strength.

Every fragment
That is more than before
Is a treasure
I adore
Ah for more gold dust of you
to glimmer the floor
of my heart

It’s incomparable
How I love you
Through every part of my being,
my existence
I love you
It’s visceral
Cellular
Cannot be excised
You are my atmosphere

Yet, now gone

I miss breathing

Empty
in the shadow of your absence
You—The Missing Piece
Still

Always

It’s only always ever you

now I’m left alone to wonder:
Why? Again?

If you could tell me
I would try to understand
Empathy Would win
Because I really DO love YOU
Then & now
Still & always

Tattered edges
Playthings of capricious whims

Batting carelessly at hanging threads
You captured an essential
String upon your reaching claw
Teased it, grabbed, reeled it in
Pounced, withdrew, reached again
Protracted claw snagged…but
Tired then, you disappeared
Sauntered across the seas into a rising sun

This thread still caught
sought to follow

You left
here remains
Unraveled

The “missing you” cascaded
as a rushing waterfall just now
pounding drops of care,
love, longing & desire
crashing upon my sands of time

how is it,
this longing wins my mind
when logically…
well, you have not been kind…
my heart truly does not care
I love you
LOVE is all that’s there
when all is said & done
You are the only one!
Crash into me
as water falling

Still,
I don’t want to say another goodnight
To those dreams you sent on meandering flight
when your words gave my spirit new sight
even your memory sets me alight
Alas, I miss you, such awful fright
Abandoned again…Gone, your light
I, heart broken, sigh & say “good night”

Since your “Never” splattered red
death across the compositions painted
by my love into your dreams,
I will now rewrite forever
as me Alone riding on the sea

Sometimes mirror still, glassy
I drift through reflected aqua skies

Sometimes rough & wild
I am as the weathered driftwood
on those crests of white, I rise

Sometimes frigid, dark & dangerous
with icy raindrops driving;
they dot the green-black brew
with marks of silence broken

I will sketch a solo rider of the briny waters
Peaceful
through the ever-changing colors
of our textured seas
I will miss the dreams I thought were shared
I will miss…but I’ll be there
Alone upon the green-blue sea

Ah, but also for this Now
I have , of course, painted in
that brown-eyed boy paddling ahead
Another playing violin upon the shore
Music to remind there’s always more—
those children I adore

Yes, the boy & I,
we tasted rain the other day
Paddled to the border
Heard the music say
Our hearts align
while also set in varied array

They are my “Now”,
&, I remain alone Someday
riding on the sea around the bay
and you remain forever far away
with hints of splattered red
death across those compositions dreamed
now seaweed tangled,
sunk beneath the bay
whose sunsets colour art of Acquiescence
I will paint again

I don’t speak lies
don’t exaggerate
__, when I say
I like your size
Yes! You feel great
Come on! I wanna play
Pressing deep inside
you satiate
Hold me close & stay
Always true
I miss you
Fill me with Someday

How could I resist
You’re the entire list!
I crave everything about you

This hunger eats away the midnight hour
Filling empty longing with fitful fantasies
Tongue curling around your strength
Licking your pulse, tasting salty masculinity
Fill me…years-long empty
Unfulfilled craving for your flavors
The taste of desire, the taste of obsessive attraction
The taste of bulging pleasures,
Tastes of you
I cannot pause this hunger-strike
Until you return to satisfy
I cannot sleep
As I salivate for you
Return
I’m famished for your breath
Let me kneel beneath your shower
and drink of you
let my starving fingers claw your groin
and draw you close
My every sense reaches for you
Feed me of your pleasure
Until I finally remember
The taste of satisfaction
I miss you
Fill my famished memories once again
Fill my reality with your rhythms
Press hard into my mouth, my throat
and more
Remember how I want you
More
Prowling for you, hunger devouring
Remember the feast
pounce upon my need
and feed

Tell me, what fuels your fire?
My passion, my desire,
my ******* fantasy,
is to be your fuel
to fan your flame
to know your molten core
melts

explode for me
though buried by the deep blue sea
mountain of my dreams & memories
rise, erupt
by my heat

Let me fuel your secret fantasy
Burn blue and white for me

How can you even imagine
Much less believe
that Any touch but yours, k
Tattooed in living color
Could ever
Touch forever
even now your absence
reigns tears in the shower

This need for only you
Is writing my next tattoo

How many more tears must I cry?
& Now Don’t You Know?
It’s only you!

I’m a confused sort of angry
Since you left my heart to empty
abandoned in the shadow of your silence
Absence
Yet again confounds my sensibility

I’m a confused sort of angry
with myself
for still not hating you
So contrary, irrational
how I want to know your words
how I desire still to see your smile
how I care

I’m a confused sort of angry
some moments wanting to evaporate
some moments sinking like a rock
sometimes seeping everywhere
flood waters breaking dams
swirling into
a confused sort of…

How are you doing?
It’s been a rocky evening here.
heat exhaustion hit

There, where you are now…
is it easing into being
a satisfactory home for you?
What do you like? What do you miss?

(I miss you! But this you knew)
My home wasn’t here today.
But my heart is too beaten
to try to say hi
when you’ve silently signaled
Another goodbye

I’m drowning too!
(You by change; I by stagnation…)
Either way, I guess this sea is too deep
for swimming So I’ll just sink

The more he speaks
the more I see
If he were me
There would no longer be
Even remnants of this “We”…

“Life is too short…”
he argues.
Thinks to sever
another connection
he deems harms
his…


I silently wonder
Am I next?
as he whittles away
more of the ME from me…

Either way, it’s not fair
how much of me lies there
in the discard pile
Shackled

I’m so tired of apologizing
for being myself

I DO think it’s true
(though regret muttering the words)
that the truest me
must be difficult for him to like
He preferred me
malleable

Is it so surprising
I dread the presence
of one who crushes my ME?

Yet still, it is I…
Swallowing so many words
that should reveal my truths
(they are not worth the conciliatory cost!)

I’m so tired of…

Silent
Aching
Gasping
Grasping
Grappling
Pressing heart & chest & lungs
Clenching in the guts
Every muscle weakened by the emptiness
Every nerve echoing the pain,
every rib drawn close in weeping,
cacophony of an arhythmic heart,
spasms of asphyxiating lungs
As the heart & soul weep bitter tears
Palpitations of The Missing…
Yet, the face remains impassive,
Secrets of the heart must remain
silent
though the heart weeps

How do you tell someone close
You don’t love them anymore?
How do you let them know
All the years that have gone before
Are too filled with hurtful words
Piercing you to your core
That several months of “trying”
could never even the score

How do you say after 20 plus years
What a weight their presence brings?
How do you trust them with your fears
when their presence a heaviness rings?

How do you break the bonds that bind
When they’ve broken the truest you?

Despair is the only fate I find…
To answer these questions, I haven’t a clue.

When you broke into the home of me
I said “I love you” and gave you the key
Later you thought to return it
as shards were cutting our feet
Return?! You did not see
It secured to your heart as roots of a tree.

Though now our feet have traversed
through many miles & spaces & lives
& our hearts have grown, are submersed
in a couple or four loves (or five?)
Those wounds now healed, with callouses grown. . .
Yet I think you still own the key to my home.

Those shards of glass knives
That sliced us apart
I swept into a furnace
Aflame in my heart
Once molten I shaped them
into fanciful art
Now hung on the walls
(mingling sweet with the ****)
of spaces held secret,
where memories restart.

Is there a chance
You’d ever unearth that key?
Do you even desire
To wander the halls of me?
I wish you would find it
Re-enter this door
Make me your home
and more. . .

Would you run through your night
Lock us inside
Together we’d hide
In the rooms of our minds
Together we’d hang
New art we would form
Together we’d wake
To a fresh beautiful morn.

Come, a new key we’ll cut
Find fantasies fresh
Build a shared house
for hearts long enmeshed.

None of it really matters
long enough
to tear my heart away…
I am
Always returning to you

All it takes is a thought,
A sense of you
hearing you, seeing you…
everything evaporates
and you remain
i always come back to you

Will you come back to me?

I miss you
I love you
  
I could choose to converse
with various friends & acquaintances...
But it’s not them I crave to better know.
  
I’m so touched out!
children grabbing grasping,
pushing, pulling, dog-piling my body,
Unaware of where their bodies end
and mine begins...
Yet I crave that single touch
whose lightest brush
would send electric awareness
fluttering through my every nerve...
that single touch,
now farther than mere miles away.
  
My ears are worn with overlapping chatter
in competition for my listening attention
sounds bombard with needs... yet
that single voice that sings throughout my dreams
Is so long silent…deceased to me, I fear.
  
Friends and family repeatedly profess
Their deep true love for me.
(yes, those children hold my love!)
Yet, it is you to whom my heart returns
It is YOU from whom I seek heart-stopping reminders:
“I DO love you”
  
It's you I need
It’s you
always you

That dirge to the heartbreak of loss,
“Ashes of Life” echoes in my mind of late:
“Love has gone and left me
And the days are all alike”
I
wallowing,
sunk in my sackcloth and ashes…

No flaming garb of vibrant red, instead shades of grey and black course coal
serve as my meager cloak & bed.
Those tongues of fire were so enchanting...
Now their bright blazing flames have died;
as smoke-filled skies remain to choke my breath–ashen
asphyxiation.
Amid charred lifeless trunks which
bely past vibrant verdant days
I wander awaiting years gone grey, a future
to further lay waste & topple the broken snags–to earth returned. . .
wait
a pause. . .
A glint of ruby red!
a single feather surviving?
molten scarlet letter “A” to lift from the ****?
witch who will not be burned up,
who cannot be consumed?
Has that resilient phoenix truly met a last cremation?
Or will her red wings yet arise renewed
Up from the “Ashes of Life”?

You are my waking thought,
my hopes and fears throughout the day.
You are assurance, peace… and loss.
You are my heartbeat and my breath,
my heartbreak and my tears.
You are each song that I hear or sing,
tunes of passion & love, of hurt, anger &
sorrow, of satisfaction, completion & joy.
You are the lift in my step,
my upturned smiling lips.
You are the glistening drops of missing pieces
hidden in my eyes. . .
You are their sparkle, too.
You’re the kiss of wind or wet dew on my cheek,
the crisp air of spring, scent of cherry blossoms,
the sweet taste of beloved memories
the sour sting of hope lost.
What more can I say?
You are the moments of each day
from my first consciousness on waking,
through the ticking seconds as they pass
and still seeking out my sleeping dreams.
Is it any wonder you are the flame
igniting my happiness?
& You are the absence collapsing
my aching heart? You
…my desired Someday
…always my Today

These strings of thought
are all knotted
I’m too hung up on you
the maze just dead-ends
nothing to lead back …
the more I try the more impossible
this mess
messy strings of thought
******* in seeking
hope?
I cannot sleep on this mess of knots
& cannots…
Would you? Could you untangle
these confused strings of thought?
They’re all the same color—
the color of you & me
in our memory

I wonder if you ever knew
the dreams you drew
into the palm of your hand
when first you drew my body close?
Those dreams they haunt
my silent screams eternally
as I long for you…
Desire taunts my heart tonight
as you have drawn away
to further stray
from these arms that reach to claim
(falsely claim) you as my Someday…
Though false these dreams,
they refuse to fade…
No, nothing can sway my mind
from thoughts of your palms
claiming my heart
grasping my waist
pulling me into your need…
Here pulsing a rhyme along this page
the beat of our music harnesses truth
(You still need me; I still love you)…

claim me, draw me, dream me

i wait

No one listens
to the girls, the women

Who will hear their stories?
Who will believe?
Who will care?

The counselor didn’t
“You were old enough to know”
Closest friends?
No, not really.
they’d rather find excuse,
minimize the wound…
The pastor?
he who possibly did even worse?
he who perceives in black & white
& also blames the victim?
(she was drunk?)
(her skirt—too short)
(she chose to be there)
(SEDUCTRESS!)
clearly not the zealous parents,
judgmental.
or the jealous other…he who claims ownership

& clearly not the voters

so I ask, WHO
Who will listen?
Who will hear?
Who will believe these stories dredged
from the depths of pain?

Those fears…nested in denial
their silence…
Those buried secrets
greedily devour heart & soul
while softly blooms faint hope
of a someday when
Enough who care
finally will believe…
…
No one listens
to the girls, the women
…
Believe Them!

god, how much I’ve missed you
ever since the start
more than you could ever know
I wish we weren’t apart
are there ways to demonstrate
how strong is this desire?
It’s only ever always you
who lights & fuels my fire
Desire years-long strong for you
who forever rules my heart
try as I might, still lost the fight
I can’t be where you are
someday I dream
You’ll return to me,
you who burns within my soul
Show me you still care for me
Your love will make me whole

I know you hold
So many aches inside your heart
I know you care
So deeply
You hold so many hearts
Close
Your heart is big
But no heart can hold the burdens
of the world
Yet you try
I know this of you
Please know, my heart holds yours
I care

I want to go back in time
I want you to be mine
& me to be only ever always yours
I want yours & mine to be ours
I want what cannot be
an alternate reality
as my now & my future
I want you to be in my life
More

My heart would race
Flip-flop
Stop
If you
Walked through that door
As if I were a teen again

don’t wanna make it weird…
but thanks for being real
I realize you don’t express feelings lightly

I won’t tell you “thank you”
Don’t wanna make it weird
Yet i am…thankful…
I treasure your trust
I treasure knowing you

What are the secrets
You promise yourself never
to reveal?
They are safe with me…
hmm, but would I be safe with them?
Perhaps that is the truer reason why
you hide the thoughts I wish you’d say.
Truthfully, I just miss you
in every way, every day…
I’d be your week of recovery
If only fates allowed…
Mmm, though we both know
I’d never be satisfied
With just a week
I still want a lifetime
even that would be too short a time
to know your touch
to touch your heart
to hold your heart in mine
to have all mine be yours
No, a week would never suffice
Still, it would be nice…
Famished here in this desert of nothing
I dream of an hour, or just mere minutes
in your presence.
I count my wealth in moments
spent immersed with you
(& your secrets)

I would make it home for you
I would BE Home for you
Not just “would be”
don’t you see?
I AM for you…
I want to be your
comfort, constant, safe, release
through the changes
bring you peace
yes, I too fear change…
see? …you are held
warm in the palm of my hand
soft your skin, soft your lips
warm to the touch of my hand…
safe, home, calm, held,
Loved
Home
WE are home

Why
Why can’t it just be okay
why must I give excuse or explain
why does society not accept
that I just want to be alone?
Why does guilt weigh heavy
Why can’t…

I just want … alone

Is that so wrong?

Yet even now, at 10pm
guilt weighs heavy
as I rest
Alone

Airport billboard read:
“Someday is Any day”
“**** that” I say
My someday
is never
Whatever
I’m used to disappointment

When a vision dies
While the love that wrote it breathes eternal
The heart cries
Tears trickle down worn cheeks as sharpened ******
A sorrowful mourning

How can i reconcile Love and Loss?
What to do, Knowing how I must let go?
These tendrils of my need cling so tightly
‘round and through each essential part
of my life?
I understand why…
I just don’t know HOW
Did YOU find a way?

I donned those waxen wings of hope,
Sought to woo the sun…
Too late, too hot I learned
Iron weights alone the rip cord released
As wings melted with nothing to replace
& wax melded to my skin
I wept
Molten feathers trickling down my back
Seeping to my heart
Filled with greying lead
Oh, for lasting, lifting wings!
of titanium, stronger, lighter,
Elevating
To be as Neil Armstrong
In a rocket to the moon
safe landing assured

Oh that these life choices
might be enough to woo the moon
or Winged Mercury
Closer to the shining sun
Light and love
Rather now, as plummeting Icaria
I am a weeping candle,
flickering
faintly
failing
falling
forgotten

I thought I wandered into your tomorrows
the way you wandered into mine.
the opened gift revealed just sorrows
the kind surviving space & time.
I still wish that I could borrow
memories of yesteryear.
yet it matters not how far I go
I can’t seem to find you near.
now I think that you might be fighting
harsh histories of your own.
if only I could put in writing
assurances you are not alone.
I know not the right way to love you
cannot find how to be your friend.
regardless know these thoughts ring true
my care remains to the very end.
With much love always,