Time
The present carries you along, the past
Unwinds behind, time’s arrow
Keeps the future up ahead.  
That’s how it’s always been, but now
The present slips away, leaves the future in the past,
  and disappears.
You’d follow but the present’s gone, moved on,
Left you behind,
In a future that’s already out of date,
But still enough to knock you down.

Change
Things change without you—
What seemed stable disappears,
Your horizon shrinks to nothing,
The future surrounds you,
And everything is stranger than you imagined.

Keeping up
You hesitate along the way,
Say that’s enough to this and that
But keep up with the rest,
Until you say to what remains
This far but no farther
This much but no more.
            
Memory        
When asked—
You find your reasons are in the past,
With gaps and pages missing,      
And certainties uncertain,
Planets in motion, pulled loose from their stars,
Leave you in silence.

There is a house
on the edge of the world,
where the wind forgets its name.
It does not welcome travelers;
it devours them,
pulling their stories
into the walls,
where they rattle like leaves
trapped in glass jars.

No one built this house.
It grew.
Its beams are the ribs
of something that never learned to die,
its windows open not to air
but to the sighs of lost seasons.
Even the sun’s gaze
glances off its roof,
afraid to linger.

The door isn’t locked,
but it resists touch—
a surface too smooth,
like skin stretched
over something restless beneath.
Still, you knock,
your knuckles trembling
as the sound folds into silence.

Inside, the rooms shift
when you look away.
A hallway grows longer
with each step,
its floorboards breathing softly,
as though the house is inhaling
your unease.
The walls ache with the weight
of unsaid things.

In the center of the house,
there is a room
with no corners,
its shape dissolving
as you try to name it.
Here, the wind gathers.
Not the wind you know—
not the playful breeze
or the feral howl—
but the discarded breaths
of all who came before you.

You see their faces in the wallpaper,
their mouths frozen mid-sentence,
their eyes half-lidded
like clocks stopped
between seconds.
They whisper your name,
though you have not spoken it.

You try to leave,
but the house will not permit it.
It swallows your footsteps,
its floors growing soft
as the wind begins to rise.
It presses into your chest,
pulling at the corners
of your voice,
stealing the words
before they can shape themselves.

And then you know.
The house eats the wind
because the wind carries memory,
and memory tastes of the living.
It feeds on the forgotten,
the untold,
the silences that stretch
between what was
and what will never be.

When you vanish,
as you must,
the house will grow another door,
another room to catch the wind.
Someone else will come.
They always do.

For the young,
the gut-wrenching ache
of love lost
Remembers.

The old witches know:
it forgets,
for memory is the reward—
a gift for having known
a twin in this world
(even if only for a short time).

I brought my favourite drink.
One you once told me not to.

You were just a stranger then.
Not even one of my closest friends.

It's funny how the fizz.
Reminded me of you.

Then again you told me,
Lots of things.
That became untrue.

You shook me up.
So good.

So much so.
I wish I could forget.
The way you taste.

Instead I'll ***** the cap back on.
To stop the fizzing and frothing.

Bottle you up.
With my sinking emotions.
So that you drowned the way.
I did.

When you first kissed my lips.

In my head I've lost it.
In my head I'm standing on your front lawn
My bare feet on the damp grass
In the early morning.

The mist fills my tongue
Sprinklers pour over me
I shiver and think of all this water

I feel the weak warmth
Of a pale colorless sunrise.

You walk out the front door
In your suit and tie, briefcase in hand
You don't even look at me. The apparition
You kiss her goodbye, you get in your car and drive away

I stand with my dress all wet
Soaked to the bone
Praying for the sun to come sooner

This water pins me,
It weighs me down.

I've never saw such vibrant waterfall before,
Took off my clothes, left to dive in,
Ventured the silky blue till the bleak red,
Watched the paints washed together, before
Bask myself beneath the glowing yellow.
Only this time I had hurted my gaze,
I saw no more silky and bleak hues,
No more fluids, or glowing light.
I blinked once, then twice,
Through my eyes,
The pitch black waterfall became,
Nothing I could recall,
As the girl looked at me,
Like the empty space I saw.