Late August mornings
The air is getting cold
Wake up, and pull me closer
The sun is rising slow

Slow, like a butterfly, when it lands on a blade of grass
Slow, like my eyes that open, once and then blink twice
There's no need to go faster, there's no need to rush
These late August mornings, lay still and enjoy life

Lay still and take it in; you're breathing, you're alive

Late August mornings
Feel lazy the whole day
Everything I planned to do
I might not do today

Today, life is perfect, no worries, no regrets
Today I plan to stay asleep and dream away the stress
I dream of pretty butterflies, of wind and scattered petals
These late August mornings, I get to feel alive

Sit there, and imagine, you're perfect, so is life

Late August mornings
Rays coming from the sun
Peeking through my window
Trying to wake me up

Wake me up from the perfect dreams inside my head
Wake me up so that I'll feel safe and sound again
Calm, and very happy, quiet all around
Outside I hear the crickets chirping, birds singing their sound

That moment is the reason I love this late summer month

Late August mornings
Coffee, rumpled sheets
Across the room, a pillowcase
Has landed by your feet

Feet that walked a hundred, a thousand million miles
Feet that carried you through everything you did in life
Nobody else will ever understand who you are, what you do
Nobody else will ever get what you had to go through

You stand there, please understand, you're who you need to be

Late August mornings
The breeze plays with my hair
The open window lets in light
With you, its cozy here

The way you said good morning, smiled and kissed my brow
The way you held me in your arms, I want to feel them now
Loved me unconditionally, but beauty has an end
I'm alone now, you're gone, I just have a head full of memories left

I wish you stayed for longer, but time came for you to go

Late August mornings
Like time came to a stop
I lay alone and think about
Nothing and everything

Everything I said, everything I didn't do
Nothing comes to mind of what I loved more than I, you
Not long ago, life was completely different
Changes will come and go, and you were one of them

You're gone now, and I miss you, a smile ghosts my lips

Late August mornings
It's time for me to go
Wish I could stay for longer
Sun came up long ago

Long time until I'll be able to do this all again
Long time until I'll be able to move on from this mess
But until next summer comes, I'll be here all alone
Until I close my eyes, and imagine you were never gone

Reality comes crashing, to imagine is a dream

Late August mornings
My bed is undisturbed
The sheets are straightened out
The floor has lost the pillowcase

The coffee cup is in the sink, the windows opened wide
The sun is up, the open blinds are letting in the light
Instead of lounging on the bed you can find me on the couch
Staring out the window, in my hands a cup of tea

Late August mornings...

They feel different without you; you are all I'd ever need

Our mornings nearly always unfold in the same way.
We reserve those initial hours
for stretching out muscles and moments.
we turn on slowly,
these tickers are getting older every day,
It seems,
our engines don’t turn like they used to
it’s a sputtering sort of process
A stop-and-go kind of thing
Slow
Steady.
Reliable.

Old souls in young bodies, one might say.
Our aches and ailments aren’t all that bad,
Our muscles haven’t knotted and we haven’t grown frail,
At least not quite yet, anyways.

Oh, but our souls?
These ol’ things?

They take some time to get going,
They need a little warming up before we can --
well, before we can really do a **** thing,
Just enough time to ignite the fires in our respective bellies,
And to settle into the heat.

And we’ve got it down to a science.

It starts in the toes.
Yours find mine,
Or mine yours,
And I ease into knowing that you and i got lucky,
Maybe the only luck we’ll ever have
or at least the very best of what we’ll ever see of it,
How fortunate it is to find the body that holds the soul
That wakes yours gently, slowly…
i digress.

Next goes the hands,
To the hair
Or the face
Then comes the muscles through our backs, shoulders,
We get reacquainted with sunshine and song birds.
We adjust.
Adjust the blanket, the pillows,
Adjust our schedules
(10 more minutes, we won’t be late)
Adjust our bones, our bodies,
Our expectations.
We take our time
tweaking and turning ourselves into the type of people who
Get dressed and
Brush their teeth and
Socialize and
Go to the bank and
The grocery store and
Reply to emails and
Call their moms and
Pay their bills and
Clock into work on time and
Get through work without crying and
Remember to take their meds and
And oh, god, okay, fine,
Five more minutes, i digress.

Finally
we lean into the weight of the world and take it on in pieces. A slow drip. A toe in the water, then the leg.
Two tortoises in a hare race,
We know how to conserve the stamina we’ve got.
We know we’ll thank ourselves for it in the long run.
So, our mornings go slow.
Steady.

Some mornings are an easier start-up than others.
Sometimes the rain aches deep in our chests.
Or the late night slips sandbags into our eyelids.
Other days, our hearts are quick to fall into formation,
Well-rested
or still ******,
But we don’t let that change our pace, nevertheless.
Our mornings,
Our slow, stretching, simple mornings,
They let something live in us that i’m not so sure was there before,
A feeling so deep and peculiar,
An appreciation, i suppose,
For the syrupy-slow sort of way that we unravel ourselves at the dreamscapes
And knit ourselves into the fabric that is the act of being,
Gently.


One day,
Probably sooner than we’d like to admit,
our souls will wake slowly and our bodies even slower.
We’ll crack and pop from head to toe,
Our bones and backs will ache and pinch and grind and pull,
And we’ll adjust accordingly.
As we do.
We’ll let our bodies, knotted and frail,
Take their time easing into each new daytime.
And our souls, the same,
As they’ve grown accustomed to.
This, at least, we can give to one another.
On days that we have nothing to offer except
Yesterday’s leftover hurt and
The shells of people we once knew,
We once were,
We can give each other slow, steady.
We can sit together quiet,
unfold the sunrise
(or whatever happens hours after the sun rises),
And wait for our engines to purr to life.
If nothing else, we have our mornings.
Our old souls, our stretching muscles and moments.
We have it down to a science,
Us and our mornings.
Isn’t that lucky?


a.m.