Why does that girl come here so often with those sad eyes? She passes by and stares deep into the café, always seeking for something. She does not seem like be looking for someone, it is more like she is looking for herself reflected on the glass. I am so sorry for her, she is not gonna find anything more than some broken pieces of her old self.

An orphan was roaming the street

in search of something to eat.

He stopped by a huge banquet hall

and looked gingerly inside it’s glass wall.

Spread inside was a sumptuous buffet,

never seen by his little eyes any day.

Scrumptious food such invintingly lay,

he feared even blinking his hungry eyes

would make it disappear away.

Like a mirage it was within his sight

but teasingly out of his touch.

It was so near yet so far.

How were those inside different than him,

he could never convince himself within.

His innocent eyes seemed to question God,

” Who build this glass wall and why am I not amongst them all ?.’

Like slides across a projector,
Unwanted memories sweep into my mind.
I wish I could go back to before,
Sat cross-legged with my pigtails swinging, listening to the grown ups lessons.
That was all before self-hatred tugged at my heartstrings,
And unworldly voices hissed in my ear that I wasn’t enough,
That I never would be.

The flashbacks are blinding me, they distort the image,
Twisting the reality.
How can a friend do that in the first place?
He was supposed to be my rock, my shelter from the storms inside my head.
I had built myself up knowing that he would be there to keep me strong,
Placing brick by brick around my heart, I deigned to think I was unbreakable.

They said not to throw rocks at greenhouses,
What do we do when the rocks begin hurling themselves at our fragile walls?

I want to grasp at the shards,
Holding my broken pieces so hard my palms drip with blood,
And cut down those who hurt me.
To fight back despite the tears streaming down my face.
I want to use the shards to rip the skin from my bones,
Destroy to create; erase myself to rebuild myself?
I will become stronger, I will never be so vulnerable.

Most of all, I want to rise from the rubble standing tall,
And learn to never again lay my foundations in shakey grounds.
Maybe then, I will have finally understood what the grown ups had taught me all those years before.

tall grass, broken glass
tall grass, broken glass

Shredded soles
Along the slate shoals
Shredded souls
Oh, where my heart goes

Tall grass, broken glass
Thorns aplenty
and dust to ash
Rotted bodies
Of water and trash
Thorns serrated-
sulks in the grass with-
broken glass, ash to ash

Still the rivers flows
Over rocks and stones
And washes away,
every smitten day

Begotten mud forms
Compressed into stone
or primordial bones
with a spirit on loan
nevertheless

We will have our tall grass
We will make our broken glass
And as the mountains burn to the ground we'll shrug and state "ash to ash."

I concede.
This iridescent mask has sheered.
Melancholic holes breed a home,
a numb unwelcome coax cracks
in a frame so familiar.
The comfort in self, picked from marrow;
left all but a carcass
in the shadow of chipped smiles
hung from walls torn with cadence.
A weathered translucence,
where light fails to flood
rich in the poverty of hope.
A hope that tomorrow brings
the chance of remedy,
birthed from a purging kindle
to char the taste of sorrow brown -
until I'm softened to sand
and reshaped in former image.