and i ache just thinking about it
all those times i needed you and you walked right out the door.
all the soft and tender midnight words i dreamed you had whispered in my ears that were soon replaced with cold lifeless ones.

and i ache

i ache for all the times my heart skipped a beat just to get thrown down the stairs

i ache remembering all those nights that i would lie awake
    alone.
right next to you.

        begging
to be touched
to be looked at
to be held
to be seen
to be felt
in all the throbbing places
inside of
    me
just one little kiss
one kind word
a moment of softness
   some sort of mercy


and i ache. i shiver and shake

        i cry and wonder when i’ll get a break

i cry and wonder when i’ll get a break.

Sometimes the Dead
by Michael R. Burch

Sometimes we catch them out of the corners of our eyes—
     the pale dead.
          After they have fled
the gourds of their bodies, like escaping fragrances they rise.

Once they have become a cloud’s mist, sometimes like the rain
     they descend;
they appear, sometimes silver like laughter,
to gladden the hearts of men.

Sometimes like a pale gray fog, they drift
     unencumbered, yet lumbrously,
          as if over the sea
there was the lightest vapor even Atlas could not lift.

Sometimes they haunt our dreams like forgotten melodies
     only half-remembered.
          Though they lie dismembered
in black catacombs, sepulchers and dismal graves; although they have committed felonies,

yet they are us. Someday soon we will meet them in the graveyard dust
     blood-engorged, but never sated
          since Cain slew Abel.
But until we become them, let us steadfastly forget them, even as we know our children must ...

Keywords/Tags: pale, dead, shades, shadows, fragrance, mist, vapor, fog, rain, forgotten, melodies, dismembered, tombs, graves, catacombs, sepulchers, mausoleums, graveyard, dust

I woke up
With a clear head
For the first time in two months
not hiding underneath my pillowcase
For once
I knew what I wanted
And it wasn’t you
For once
I knew I couldn’t keep doing this,
Seeing you
Promising pure intentions
And ending with you curled up naked beside me

You can not make love where there is no love

And I no longer desire you.

For the repercussions have finally pushed me over the edge

I know what I want

And it isn’t you.

we must have run out of songs to sing to
we must have run out of ways to make each other laugh
we must have forgotten all the birthdays we spent together
we must have forgotten the days on the recess yard
or maybe we just simply ran out of things to say
because now we're miles away from each other
while sitting in the same room
and i feel an emptiness in my heart,
in the place you dwelled so deeply

©L.F.

its Friday night, and I are happily at home!
Being suffocated by my blanket.
It's as if the world is pushing down on me because it knows I have no one around me.
I close my eyes and I feel my oxygen depleting.
I am trapped in darkness, with no one around to help guide me to the light.
Fighting my way against the world with no one to reach out for.
Feeling lost and forgotten.
I wander through a dark forest of depression, while only the monsters in my head reach out for me.
I try to beg for help and can't make a sound, but eyes scream out.
So I sit to face my inner demons and overcome my greatest fear.
The loneliness tries to take me over. Rejected and unwanted, just like a broken toy nobody wants to play with. I was left in a dark room, with no one to come back to me.

for her.

<>

“you will laugh with surprise, as the anointing oil of relief
crowns your head, slicking down to caving cavities,
river running in crevices, that feed the buried places, replenishing the almost forgotten secret of letting go”^

                                                         ~

the mind caches certain skills, once learned, never to return,
but tucked away, just in case, maybe, in the nightstand junk drawer of: “don’t need it now but, ****, you never know”

kept around in the lost and hopefully, not to be searched for & found,
a skill set painfully gained, a muscle memory, flabby from no use
but quick taut tightly, snapping back when ****, here we go again

I loved you in ways theoretical impossible till you enabled the possible

lost you for no good reason, in an act history labels beyond belief,
refuses to record, lest by memorializing it became/becomes re-realized,
this intolerable, would be past the ****** eroding barrier reef

the difference between junk and treasures is in which drawer placed,
the steps to letting go once learned, cannot be forgot, the cost,
way way too high, kept around, in a damnable place beyond grief

not to close, handy, findable but easily, avoided, but strange, when
living in the epicenter of the virus, you do some cataloguing, ridiculous,
this touchy-feely escapade, nothing ****-it to be gained, all-too-brief

head shake, took a pandemic to make you go back, rustling among
the ancient, old hand-writ poems, another keepsake kept for reasons
known and unknown, to be **** sure you once owned it, survival skills

In the Pandemic Days of Almost,
somethings will die, some go forgotten,
but the almost-forgetting-skill will survive,
a necessity of the how-to’s:

how to grieve,
how to believe,
how to leave
but live on,
hoarding
all the **** necessaries
ready to be retrieved


<>
Tuesday Mars 24 Twenty Twenty noon

In the Epicenter, New York City