Neither here nor there,
Neither silent nor loud,
Neither full nor bare,
Neither humble nor proud,

Neither game nor serious,
Neither love nor indifference,
Neither realistic nor delirious,
Neither the house nor the fence,

yet still two, pacing together,
and either for worse or for better,

stuck in dying fire.

As echoes and whispers
Begin to change
And sound and silence
Become the same
I look back
From where I came
And find solice
In everything

His bulletproof boots
decorated with wet mud, dried blood
trampled fields of flowers
fourteen years before her.
She, a cloud of fluff and rain,
was his first shower.
He, a kick of crack *******,
was her fifteenth.
Every departure had her,
tasting of his cigarettes,
teary-eyed against his shoulders.
Every mile of distance had him,
singing to her songs,
pulsing to another woman’s skin.
Tonight, with their hands interwoven,
his lips parted open,
sweating as if birthing a confession,
her smile lingers, glistening

like snow nobody has walked on.

I fell in love
with the way you wrap your suit
around my shuddering shoulders
on a summer, New York night.

I fell in love
with the way you draped "beautiful"
over the face and body
I thought a clown's.

I fell in love
with jazz music blowing up my dress -
I was the world's only princess
when you spun me around.

I fell in love
with the fire in your eyes,
your voice, your skin, your glowing red demise,
another one of a million fights...

I fell in love, once and then twice, three times and then ten times, desperate and pathetic and forlorn and ecstatic,


I fell in love.

"Look into the camera,"
and bring your eyes nowhere else,
not behind to where the lady stands,
holding an eight-year-old's hand.

"Place your forefinger on the sensor,"
and don't dare move it closer
to your wet eyes, for the man
with the ten-year-old might see
you shudder.

The arrow always points forward,
so take your steps fast and sure.
Ignore the shouts, shove away the feels,
smile and wave your way to
DEPARTURE.

Let my self esteem not be governed
by how many of my memories
you can recognize,

Let loose these bonds of achievements,
these stocks of degrees,
names you call me
that don't represent me
and my soul, we
don't quite agree with that.

We are the free spirits
We are them who you don't remember
Don't know, don't care,
We are not recorded in autobiographies
Nor looked up to as models of inspiration, we
Are not known.

And they can never capture,
What they don't know, they
Can never judge,
What they don't understand,
We are the
outsiders.

Saying goodbye
To someone you love
Is like reading the final page
Of an amazing book.

As the last chapter ends
You begin to notice
Just how beautiful
And perfect
The plot always was.  

You appreciate the joy
And even the pain
As you read and thumb
Through every page.

Finally understanding
The moral of the story,
You realize you've reached
The end of this journey.

Although the last sentence  
Is the most difficult to read
Another great book awaits
Once you turn the final page.

Eventually you may stumble
Upon yet another great find.
Or maybe you'll return
To the book you left behind.

You may just discover
Once all is said and done
That this particular book  
Was your favorite story
All along.