Canterbury Bells
Canterbury Bells

The Belle of my eyes
Blooming the brightest blush
Of pink and white
Sometimes blue or indigo
Different colours
They all remind me of you

i'm just a little much for everyone i love,
amongst a bouquet of silver flowers,
i'm a lavender foxglove,
growing sideways and upwards.

{
i tried to grow tall enough to be another star in your sky,
but the azure ripples of your universe became a whirlpool,
pulling me under, under the piercing night,
yet, somehow, my roots held strong to the earth around me.

i tried to grow my roots deeper into the rusty ground below,
but my leaves grew weak and my stem became invisible,
and your sky released a tornado of snow,
and yet, somehow, my flower petals pushed forward.
}

i love myself, i love the people in my life, i love love,
in a field of waving white wheat, i am a violet foxglove,
against the soft blue sky,
you can see me reside
in my own space,
by my own grace.

I met a girl with flowers in her hair
not a crown or a clip, but cherry blossoms
they bloomed from her ears and her scalp and the hollow of her neck
she was a garden of eden

I met a girl with flowers in her hair
and roots that ran all the way down through her feet
they never held her in place
instead, they made the earth upon which she stood her home

I met a girl with flowers in her hair
who let summer sunbeams catch her eyes
as they glistened among ferny tendrils
until the autumn came

You planted kisses
on me like flowers, and from them
a garden grew

(if) when i
turn to stone, take my
heart and bury it
beneath a garden.
let vines embrace my
frozen form
and a forest grow
above my useless body.

find the grave of the cosmos
that convinced the stars
we were right
and salt the earth.

(eye contact is
inevitable).

put me to rest as my own
grave marker
surrounded by soil
crawling with the things
she’ll never give me. let
it seep into my
pores and manifest
as the dirt
under my fingernails.

(who’s to say
i wasn’t made of stone
to begin with?)

i.
i’m stuffing my ears with cotton
because there will never
be enough pores in my body
to absorb her voice.

too many people talking at once
and i can catch every
other word that she
never meant.

ii.
but her eyes remind me
of the way
freshly ground coffee smells
and she knows
i could never give her a solid

iii.
no.

she feels like the
real thing
but the nerves in my fingertips
have become calloused and senseless
so there’s really
no way to tell.

iv.
(she told me
that my voice
gives her butterflies

and i still can’t
really believe her
despite this dragon
breathing fire into my gut.)

v.
i’ll sit on that brick
as long as it takes
waiting for her to blow that smoke
back in my face and say
“taboo”

vi.
because i was never
the one she dreamed about.

i will not
close my eyes.

i’ve only just begun
to reopen
the doors that keep
my heart tucked away, yet
you rushed forward
with a romance
i didn’t expect.

you took the emptiness
i had forged
from fires of the past
and tossed handfuls of
stardust
into constellations
on its surface.

the nerves in my neck
tingle in anticipation
of the promises we made
to each other.
the salt in our hair
and the sand on our
skin make it real.

(i promise.)

so eagerly
peeling back layers, you
just make sense
the deeper
i sink.

(no matter what.)

such a beautiful mess, intertwined and overrun
overgrown and tangled and chaotic and fair
a swirl of thorns and dewdrops and earth
eyes that sparkle with petrichor and hope
hair with sunrays weaved and rivers entwined
bones which are not bones, but inky flora and mud
sculpted by the trees and the stars and the air
ephemeral glow and luminent dullness
smell the grass and the weeds and the stone and joy
hear the light and the rain and peace and dirt
taste the wind and the toxic petals and soul
see the longing and leaping and flying and warmth
feel the lucid colors and the pastel dreams
such a beautiful mess, unclothed and airy and loved.

{alaska}

some chose the company of fine wine
while I enjoyed the company of Thoreau
images of flora and fauna
woven into the spine of the book
with renditions of romance
between human and creature

humans are so self involved
the gravitational pull of their ego
can swallow an ecosystem whole
all things beautiful we destroy
we hunt, we cut, we want it all
every last ounce for ourselves
we have long strayed from our instincts
rather we strayed from purpose
into castles made of sand
with every grain being selfishness
the pursuit of belonging
the gathering of things
the celestial purpose
that once we revolved
now has turned to dust
we follow blind
hand fed ****
were told it's truth
but the "fallacies" are more legit
what do we strive for
another dollar made
moments that are priceless
give you more
than another pair of shoes
or fancy clothes tucked in your drawer
I'd give a million dollars up
to see a sunrise from a mountain top
then fade under the Los Vegas strip
to see the stars dance with northern lights
than the light pollution of NYC at night

for I have seen more than the one who has not stepped in the forest
for I have seen a process thousands of years in the making
the circle of life
of symbiotic connections and mutual gain
the soil the plants of which gave birth
to the food we eat and the air we breathe
to the nutrients infused in the ground beneath our feet