I know that we are flesh and blood;
We're bound terrestrials.
There is not a hint nor thought
In me, celestial.
And yet the final day they found
You were ephemeral,
I raised my eyes towards the skies
And sought the aerials.
I hoped the blessed, holy book
In truth, was literal.
The yearning, needing wanting hole
Was raw and pitiful.
In vain I combed the cobalt spans
For proof reciprocal
Of an eternal, lasting love
From the ethereal.
My opulence in obstinence
Brought truth from empty skies
The swirling air, the ash and dust
Is only where you fly.
There is no golden field of wheat
And barley where we'll meet
There is no paradise where I
Will once more hear you speak.
The last known home where you reside
Exists in no known creed
You live now in the dreams and thoughts.
That bring you back to me.

The sun tipping over the horizon
Lifts my lids each revolution of this Shady green sphere...
And for a few brief seconds
The fingers of sleep
Drag me back.

Warm pressure on my eyes,
Pooling, (re)opening them to the last
Paradise;
The only oasis where your eyes are not closed
And your bones are not dust somewhere
Mingling with the soil in Pittsburgh.

Just the same, I know you're the product now
Of some hypnagogic state;
Of the last traces of theoretical DMT swirling in my brain
As is leaves Morpheus behind in the shadows.

You're just the most beautiful hallucination
The truth in the chaos of dreams
Cluing me into what I've been denying
For 13 years.

Impossible that I've preserved you better
Than any mortician could have
In the recesses of my mind
You are a perfect replica
An unholy copy of the original
All creamy skin
And ocean eyes,
Full-lipped smile tipping somewhere between
Arrogance and joy.

"I'm gone," you say. "I'm dead."
Repeating what I already know
"I'm dead, I'm not coming back."
On repeat like the worst kind of ear worm;
A carousel of sound that dips and weaves through every filament of Unconsciousness.

Denial; like reaching out my hands
I shove against the reality, against the unreality
Against the prison sleep has woven
And crash forth
Damp and gasping
Like breaking the surface once more
Teetering over the horizon with the sun
Into the waking hell of another day.

The carousel makes another revolution.
See you on the other side tonight.

Unclasp your fingers
Your clenched fists
And know the release of
Giving in

Let him drift away
Let the ocean stand between you
As a testament
To the vast expanse
That exists there now.

Stop fighting the waves.
Stop braving the icy waters
Arm over arm
To reach him on the other side.

The water will always win.
And you never were much of a swimmer.
He's just a distant island now
Shrouded in fog
Somewhere over the horizon.

Rest now,
The fight is over.
Your mangled, frantic heart
Can slow
And begin another tempo
When it's no longer bleeding over
An unreachable coastline.

Fighting gravity always seemed futile
But hand over hand, I gripped each fissure
Ignoring the natural patterns
Denying the pull towards the inevitable end.
And you're an ever surging mountain
That scrapes the sky
Like the sun personified
And I- a wingless Icarus
Long to stray close enough
To burn the tips of my reaching fingers once more.

Planted firmly on the ground
My feet would wander aimlessly anyway
Always circling the base
Always coming back to the place where I could tilt my head back
See you shining there, perched atop your shrine
Like the most beautiful treasure
Like the unattainable cookie jar on the refrigerator
Only no amount of crying will ever place you in my eager hands
No amount of sweetness could quell my need for you.

No, hand over hand
I push against what should be,
What is,
And what will never be.
Struggling against
The necessity of
Letting go.

I think to be thoughtful
I speak to be heard
I write to decipher
The truth in my words.

I smiled to ensnare you
I laughed to secure
You slipped through the trap
That I built to procure

I kissed to consume you
I hugged to enfold
My arms close on nothing
You're no where to hold

I writhed to entrance you
I clutched you to keep*
Now the place where I hold you
Resides in my dreams.

I write so you'll read this
My hand pens the truth
All that I've written,
I've written for you.

Twist my gaze to the side
Through the copper-and chocolate curtain of my hair
Through the sea of faces
And one amongst hundreds
I could pluck you, like the ripest apple
From the lowest branch.

And in this ocean of bobbing heads
Of flapping lips and empty eyes
I'm just floating
Just alone, drifting
Hoping you'll throw me an emerald glance
A lingering lifeline
To reel me in from this
Crowded loneliness.

Bring to me infinity
From where it dwells in lore
Or return with empty, wounded hands
And speak of it no more.
For if we are eternity
As one, when brought together
Why then do our faulty lips
Find pause upon "forever?"

Morpheus has never been
A kindly lover, nor precious friend
Yet in this stead, he strives to be
Replacement for reality.

Sominiferous ways that heat my blood;
Make my wilting spirits bud
Leave me wanting, never free
There on the cusp of reality.

Like morning mist, not half so pleasant
His remedies are evanescent
From where he lives behind my eyes
And plagues my shattered paradise.

He wears the exquisite carapace
For whom I yearn upon his face
And therein's where my torment lies
From golden skin and forest eyes-

From false reunions, makeshift bliss
From joining eyes and parting lips
Like cannon fire, the sound's refrain
Draw parallels to this cruel pain.

That Grecian Sandman, Morpheus
Lothario, for whom exists
To overchage the soul with hope
So poisonous, I gasp and choke-

Yet bodies, minds, and souls alike
Find inspiration from the strife
And haunted persons, like myself
Endure his falsehoods where we're held.

He haunts the dreamless, lucid world
Upon the cusp, the conscious swirl
His narrowed eyes, his blunted sight
Despise waking world of light.

Morpheus has never been kind to me
His somniferous ways leave me wanting
Grasping at the cusp of a reality
As evanescent as the morning mist
That greets this reluctant gaze.

He exists to these sheathed
Bourbon eyes
Within the veiled carapace
Of the only form I've ever wanted more
Than necessity and air.
His torment lies
In false reunions, in joining and parting lips
In forest eyes that linger behind in my thoughts
Like the echo of a cannon
Long after it's wrought its own havoc.

Yes, that twisted Lothario
That Grecian sandman
Exists to overcharge the soul with
Hope so poisonous
Bodies and minds are wracked with it
Inspired by it
Haunted on into the waking world
Where he waits on the periphery
Eyes narrowed in the light
Of the waking world that renders him useless.

I had to force my lanky legs
a few steps back
And touch only with my eyes
bathe you in the unknowing caress
Of my gaze.
On days like today
I pretend I'm the vivacious wind
Curling in soothing torrents around your face
Brushing past your neck like
Long lost kisses.
I exist in the echo of the scene
one year earlier
where I would have pressed against the skin there
Chasing away the goosebumps
With shivers of my own.

Sometimes beneath close eyelids
I quest to bring you back
As if you were driftwood floating
Downstream on your back.
I dip my hands beneath the veil
And dry away the death
And from my parting, weeping lips
I give you back your breath-
Just like the rising sunset burning
In the summer sky
Paints and saints the mountaintops
And casts their colors bright.



Unrhymed Notes:

Sometimes I dream I can bring you back
Just as simply as dipping my hands into the water
To retrieve a floating piece of driftwood;
Dry the death from your skin
And breath life back into you
The way the sunrise reanimates
The Dark Mountains
Each and every day.

I see your Ocean eyes open
Embrace you like I'm trying to
Fold you into my skin
Where I can keep you always
And feel your summer peach warm flesh
Tangible against my permafrost fingers.

If the dead could talk
Nothing profound would leave your lips
They'd only quirk into a Cheshire smile
And you'd tell me to let go
Relinquish
Move along and stop standing still
Life is for the Living
Death is for the dead
And dreams are for the foolish.

"You *******."

Is dalliance a sweeter state
Due to it's evanescence?
As human beings do we just seek
Ephemeral acceptance?
Or do we yearn eternity
And dwell on it erstwhile
Knowing that our truer selves
Will furtively beguile?
Is affection what we deign to be
A dulcet, soft concession
A short reprieve, a known repose
For sanity's repression?
How much is conscious harmony
How much is chemistry
And what then for the subtle myth
Of serendipity?

There is a trail in Pennsylvania that is barely tamed
That winds on down the mountainside and fractures into veins.
It lashes through the trees and wood, like man-made ligh-ten-ning
And offers streams of water tasting pleasantly of spring.
This way is framed with micro-caves and fissures in the stone
Where sweetest water rivulets feed moss that's overgrown
Haphazard wooden walkways dot the snake-like trodden path
Their clumsy steps all akimbo; they bridge the wild gaps.

And even further down the trail, dodging brown tree roots
That point like gnarled fingertips and target untied boots
Below, like uncut diamonds lodged into the mountainside
Gushing waterfalls sing aloud, in ranges far and wide.
Their surging torrents babble in a distinguished harmonies
The wordless wind responds by rustling through the countless trees.

There, at last around the bend, before the lumbered river
A bench there sits within the shade where coolness draws a shiver
The wood is at the mercy of the lichen and the rain
That rush to bring that broken boards back to the earth again.

And there, amidst the other foolish carvings in the wood
Scrawled with hopeful youthful hands that did the best they could
The chips and angles buried in reveal what once was true
This is the final place where I will always love you , too.

As of yesterday (finally) I opened a personal blogger page to post my poetry in, as a kind of personal collection of sorts. While I will continue to post on Hello Poetry- which I am too addicted to to stop- there will be work that will only be posted on my blogger account, along with other goodies.

As it is still being tidied up, I'll apologize for the unprofessional appearance of the blog.

http://sarahquil.blogspot.com/

Thank you to all of the people who took the time to read a few of my pieces. I cannot thank you enough for your praise and criticism.

-Sarah

Here I am, I'm breathless
And you, you're just the same.
My recollections failed to serve you
Justice once again.

The sight of you has chased away
The numbness of my limbs.
My beacon cheeks are fire bright;
My widened eyes; a-swim.

And everything is rushing back
And hanging on my lips,
Unspoken words that surge and rush
Like blood to fingertips.

I wish my eyes were ocean tides
That rose over and crashed,
So I could saturate your core
And make my presence last.

Oh, that those waves could draw you out
And pluck your from the shore
I'd carry you away with me
To where we were before.



*Original, Unrhymed Notes

Here I am, and I'm breathless
And you're just as I remember you
The sight of you has chased away the cold
And I'm a beacon, all flushed cheeks
And wide eyes
My coltish knees locking
And suddenly I cannot make the words
That will carry be across this
Invisible ocean
Break across you like an
all-consuming wave.

You are the sweetest of my torments.
You're the tangible torture of citrus
The bite followed by the ****
Fresh and unbearable in the same instance

You're the lemon zest scent;
Sultry, as I quarter fruit
In my hot summer kitchen.
You're the juice in the cut
As the knife knicks my thumb;
The sweetness meeting the wild coppery tang
of blood in my mouth.

You're in the twist in my chest
That exists somewhere between my heart and my stomach
Both organs being wrenched apart...
When I see your picture
And remember that we haven't spoken in months.

Seldom though eventually
His words will wash away
The human mind's a yawning sieve
That siphons thoughts away

For all we are is flesh and blood
And dust, in all due time
His face embedded in my thoughts
Will someday leave my mind.

Each grain of sand; each thought of him
Will slither down the glass
Slow and steady, one by one
Until he's in the past.

For now my mind's a youthful cache,
No wave can wear or wash
Impressions left upon my soul
Cannot be staved or quashed.



-Un-rhymed Notes-

*Every once in a while
The human mind is all it's built up to be;
A sieve, where the balm of time
slowly mends and knits
The torn edges of the chasm.

Every once in a while
It is as if the wound has healed
And the flow of muscle memory
Ripples beneath the unmarred surface

Broken thing, little bird
Still your wings and heed my word
There's always time to fly again
So take a rest my weary friend.

Feel the wind rush through the leaves
Sway gently on the summer breeze
Slow your breath and end your song
My little bird, the day is long.

Oh, baby bird, my little crow
I love you more than you could know
Sleep sweetly, softly, precious one
The night has come, the day is done.

He told her she was pottery; a vase with grooves and cracks.
The patterns of the history she hid behind her back.

Within his words he layered in- like thread upon a loom-
The sweetest undercurrent to illuminate that gloom.

In certain cultures, he decreed, when pottery is cracked
They aggrandize them with gleaming gold to bring their splendor back

For they believe, with certainty, once damage has been wrought
Those tiny cracks, now filled with light, hold truths that can't be taught.

Many months had whispered by
Unbeknownst to me
The sheaths of ice retreated slow,
And buds furled from the trees.

I had not stopped to grasp and hold
The notion laying stagnant
Within my chest, there thawing too
A sunken, fading, fragment

This withered seed, this dying shoot
Lay wilting in the dark
Until my sightless, bourbon eyes
Saw what was in my heart.

I long for earthen forests, deep
And steeped in mystery
The branches curving overhead
Are all I want to see

I want to be the soil, rich,
In which you sink your roots.
The dark, safe place from which you rise
And send forth budding shoots.

I want to keep you grounded, safe,
When high winds bow your peak.
I want to be the gentle place
You fall when you grow weak.

I want to be the canvas which
In fall you toss your paint.
Cover me in golden leaves
That flutter down like rain.

Blackberries, fat with summer rays,
Burst sure and true, like ocean waves
Against my tongue they carry too
The scent, the touch, the taste of you.

Each bramble stripped with greedy hands
Felt no qualm from scarlet brands
Those such marks would wash away but
Stains of you will still remain.

The scratches heal, I’ll brush away
Those nettle prongs that stick and stay
I’ll brush the bracken, soothe the sting
But thoughts of you will always cling.

Those onyx beads, their shiny spheres
Imbued with Sunshine, wet with tears;
The taste is fading from my mouth
Their waves of sweetness drawing out.

Don't bother me, don't follow me
There's no one else I yearn to see
So fold away your memories
To cede beneath that Hemlock tree

What will I do? Where will I go?
Unshod against the burning road?
These memories I mourn and hold
Crease in my hands where they enfold.

Don't bother me, don't follow me
Or brandish me things I cannot see
My eyes plunge past the memories
Beneath that bygone Hemlock tree.

What will you do? Where will you go?
I was your heart, you were my soul
Did you let go and drift below
The Lethe River’s undertow?

Don't bother me, don't follow me
I hold my head above the sea
These memories furled around your sleeve
I've stashed beneath the hemlock tree.

What do we do? Where do we go?
There are separate paths, or so I'm told
You'll tour one, and if I'm bold
I'll peer once more down your own road.

Don't bother me, don't follow me
But yes, perchance... I'll dream of thee.
I'll stargaze there, and make believe
Of truth beneath that Hemlock tree.

I may never walk anything more the same as him
In converse shoes slapping campus pavement,
Than taking down miles in memories
And mulling over trite bereavements.

If all we have left is muscle memory
Where summer grass stroked skin like hesitant fingers
Then I'll sink into autumn leaves
And worry my lip where the impressions linger.

Someone stroked the dial down
On contrast, shade and form
The dullness paints the very air
From eyes; tired and worn.



ANNOUNCEMENT (To my readers):

Hi Guys,

I know it's been a while since I've posted poetry and I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your support and feedback. All of you have been so kind and I could not have asked for a better audience. However, times are rough at the moment and I'd like to post a link to my GOFUNDME account. If you like my poems, you will be make a small donation via the website, even a buck would be appreciated. Below is the link.

Thanks,
Sarah

http://www.gofundme.com/Sarahquil

"Don't stop dreaming" crooned a voice in my ear
But dreaming re-enforces fear
Slumber comes and shreds my thoughts
Subconscious wars are brought and wrought.

Inside my skull holds evidence of
Bruised purples and nightmare reds
Sleep shreds my mind between its teeth
And wretches it across; bequeath

Across the walls, across the room
Across the shadows, through the gloom

One year has passed today, one year since you took your last breath on this earth. A whole planet-full of anguish has been left in that wake. You would have been 23; a full month older than I am. No longer is such. You’re frozen; forever young at 22.

They told me time would ease the pain, and I guess they meant the physical display of hurt. I don't burst into tears every time I see a Steelers logo or find myself suddenly breathless whenever I hear a song that you loved. No, I am not that same mess of a girl that existed last December. I do not look like her, but she's still present within me.
The thing about time is that the pain never really dissipates; you just unearth ways to tolerate it. Ways to function around it. I am able now to maintain a smile on my face whenever I need be, and a small, invisible part of myself can curl into the crook of my head and weep. I numb myself and place the pain on the back-burner, to deal with it later.

One year, come and gone. One year without you.

One full year I've wandered around until my feet were bruised; until my shoes were breaking. Wandering and not perceptive to what I was looking for. I know now that you are the destination.
I'll always be searching for you, and you'll never be there.
Because you're in the wind. You're in every kind gesture, in every hill and mountain I find beauty in. You're in the smile of your sister, the love of your mother and the memory of every family member or person who mourns you today.
And I mourn you so much. I never considered that this much sorrow could be coiled into one body so firmly. So crammed in that at times I spring a leak and you fracture forth like a rainbow on an oil spill. My mind circles back to you thousands of times in a single day, like a little determined moon circling the wake of her planet's obliteration.

I don't have a place to visit. At first, that was one of the hardest parts of moving on. By nature I am a wanderer, and in my travels I yearned for a place to stop; a place where you would be always.
You don't have a final resting place, and that's fine, I've accepted that now. It wouldn't have made sense with who you were as a person. You always were more like a force of nature than human- so beautiful, destructive and awing. So when I imagine you in the present tense, I like to think of the swirling dust devils that whirl leaves into miniature tornadoes. You had a playful spirit like that. I think of you in the wind that gusts paper from my hands, because you were always a joker. And I think of you as a warm breeze on a summer day because your warmth was something people sought out.

I'll continue writing for you, even though you'll never read it. I'll never stop loving you, and your memory is enough of a home for this wanderer.

To quote What Dreams May Come:
" I’ll cross whatever distance there is. I send you my love."

Forever and Ever, C.J.H.
-Sarah

Not for all eternity
Will sadness streak my cheek
Or curve me with a sightless weight
That bows my kneecaps weak.

Nor evermore shall I mourn
A departure so abrupt,
A constant fixture in my world
From it, so sudden plucked.

Even all time, so short and long
I dare not wish nor pine
Each blessed day that passes by
Each night would ease my mind.

But for  lasting moment
Each smile, each laugh, each breath
The memories shall hold me now
No longer left bereft.