Sometimes in life
I've taken all I that could get
And at other times
I've given all that I am
And then ultimately
I was empty of everything
And full of nothing
But at least I've lived
And lived hard at that

                                By Phil Roberts

The small rock representing your birth
engraved deep into a necklace
proving your worth
to the world
and to you

you,
the one sitting there
staring out into a moonlit sky
the thousands of twinkling stars
dapple the sky
as the whooshing wind whispers
belonging

You
the proud dark eyed girl
standing tall along an old wooded pier
the spray of the sea splatters your face with its salt
bellowing waves crash underneath your feet
shouting,
You belong

And You
are still here
one of many
on this earth
loved and guided
through this life and to the next
and you,
**belong

Friends are a lot like
leaves of a tree,
or roots of a tree.

They're in your life for
a few seasons and fly,
or in your life forever...

So many lines and laments
scribed in ink and feeling,
for the girl who is the ocean

but she is a swell and surge
too dauntless and wild,
for a lover whose bones crave the shore.

She craves the squalls and gusts,
and cast iron skies,
a worldly drift to sate the salt in her skin,
the deep pull of currents in her blood.

She is chaotic but not reckless,
she is fickle, but not feckless.
Love her boldly or not at all
her bones belong to the sea
but she will always return to the shore.

You know it's getting bad when you don't bother to turn the lights on.

Fight or flight instinct in the form of rivers running dry. Feeling blurry, a forgery. The end is always the same, penalties lying in ditches and the sirens running red and blue like the fourth of July.

Shimmering sawdust that forgets how to become human again. Try to remember the moments you stilled into statue. They become important. Trust me.

This is not Jerusalem. There is no holy left. It's a too-human fight, and I hope what they say about time healing things is true because this scraping, this constant rearranging of the keys, it's too much.

When nothing makes it better, not the kisses, or the pills, or the planets. Nothing. The past and present chewing me up and spitting me out, until the future can get its hands on me too.

I am still trying to figure out right and wrong. I am still trying to find out where the bandages are, but it's hard, you know?

She had soft smiles and a degree in empathy framed in her office, but I couldn't stand her for more than a month. I could see her pen twitching in her hand. After all, there are boxes to tick if I get too honest.

I shouldn't have called my mom, or let her fish me out of the river. While I was coughing liquid from my lungs, I heard her tell the paramedic,

*She could have learned to breathe underwater, if only she'd tried harder.