The distant sounds of silent screams
Echo through my soul
A nightmare filled with broken dreams
That time cannot console

My helpless mind will not yield
To these voices that I hear
My captive thoughts have not revealed
The purpose of my fear

Loneliness mocks my very being
As time comes screeching to a halt
Blame still hides my eyes from seeing
Insisting it's not my fault

They say I'm mad, mad indeed
They know nothing of my pain
There's no one here to intercede
So this madness must remain

My soul cries out in sad remorse
But I fear it's already too late
I cannot alter this dreadful course
That somehow holds my fate

They call me a poet, poet indeed
How is it they do not know?
Can't they see the words I bleed?
I'm Edgar Allan Poe

Until your birthday
January kept it's cold claws in Texas until May
Sometimes I wonder if it's you
Who makes it shine or makes it gray
I wonder if those days you are missing us too
Cold holds your shoulders
I hope not
I wonder
If the cold felt refreshing and you thought I'd like it too
You were one for winter
Who hated the heat
And saw beauty
I didn't
In colorless December
Maybe it should have been my birthday in June
And you'd have November
But you were too warm
Don't worry I will always remember
Summer nights with you
Like yesterday
When we first met that May
It was five years past then you left one day
I wrote you
With guilt on my fingers
Like Poe
Dread pulled me from my bed
I didn't know you were leaving
I'd have hugged you longer
Told you twice I loved you
Believed in you
Was proud of you
At least you could read my letters then
Now it's June and there's no sign of you
Just your birth day sitting clouded in the future
I wonder
How that day will feel
Not so lost like January
Maybe isolating like a frozen TV dinner meal
5 months passed since your passing
Life has never felt so long
After witnessing how brief it can be
The days were slow
And January still has it's breeze in me

Yoga instructed that I must think of the best thing that happened to me today

And of course I thought of you.

Then what was the worst?
And your face came quickly back to the eye of my subconscious

Now let this wash away
As you exhale into downward dog

I quit picking my feet up
And crossing my fingers over rail road tracks
The day I lost a close friend at the age of 20
"Close friend"
Gives me that sick cliche feeling
Its guttural attempt to bottle what I had for her
Into those few words
To bottle anyone into words
Though I see now, that is what I do best

I work for mason jars
To portray personalities
Like shapeless liquid souls

I don't know why I quit;
Quit picking my feet up and crossing my fingers
Losing her was no matter of luck
But maybe it's the vulnerability of wishing
Of hoping
Having hope
The feeling I get with my own luck-trapping-routine

I cross the brassy tracks a few times a day
I see them in the distance and lift my feet a second before reaching their metal edge
Crossing my fingers just after I lift my legs from the seat beneath me
Holding my luck-trap until the last moment
It's a close call
I almost don't make it in time
I hold my breath in my chest
As the front wheels pass over before the back
Pitter-Pat
There it is,
Sitting in my chest: Myhope
My hope I was always so afraid of losing

Until that morning
Cool with wind and warm with early spring
Gray-blue-white clouds
With sunshine peeping through
It was January
Where years started clutching onto months

I still left for class that morning
The windows down
I could see my own reddened baby face in the side view mirror
As my room mate sat almost awkwardly beside me
No one would know what to say
It made me feel sorry I put her there
I slid my sun glasses down my nose
As we headed East
We crossed the railroad tracks
With the fields to my right
With the river and the morning sun
Still early enough for a thin shade of pink in that child like cotton candy sky
Almost suggesting a good day

Pitter-Pat
Brass beneath me
I hung my head
Deciding then
Hope was good as dead

And Californa's trees
Burned
Before Colorado's
But summer ended
By October
And with
Autumn
Rain came
To cool the trees
And drop fog
On forest
And outside of Texas
Window panes
Wrapping around shrub
Branches
In yellowed
Thickened
Air.

I hope that I don't become one of those poets

That only writes lost-love sonnets

Just because
After sleeping in your bed

I can't get you
Out
Of
My head.

After class, I will stay at the library and study until close at midnight.
Heading home hangs on my shoulders behind the music, the music that tries but can't quite keep my company, and stays well past falling asleep kissing the skin of my morning.
"Home."
White sheets with whiter walls that echo the whispy sound of the AC.
A dark green lace cloth standing as a curtain between me and my only friend--Sun.
I feel that I could reach out for her hug.
Gently pulling her through lace edges, and from behind embroidered corners.
My heart feels a light sqeeze at the thought of raveling into her warmth until I've rolled all the way up her arms, up her rays of sunshine, and into her warm familiar womb.

I lost you
As the Universe intended it
I shaking there
A lonely poet

Will always be the lonely

Ones.

I never felt good about having slept with you

Until the next time

When I didn't have the chance to make a choice

Words that I often don't even remember
I wonder if these of teal ink and hot April hold anything
If only to a distant me that time will someday pass too
Or if they are stories told and forgotten
Sitting on pages with scribbled dates
At the beggining of my book
At the back of my memory
Buried by their own epic poem