The wind is brisk against my face
The leaves crunch beneath my feet
The colors are a dancing swirl around me
Haven't I been here before?

I walk these empty streets
With nothing but my thoughts
Fighting a war inside my head
Just like they have all those times before

It's funny how fast a year goes by
All those prologoned decisions we've postponed
Are suddenly at our doorstep waiting
I'm still lost, waiting to be found

But I've grown fond of the nostalgia
And the summer's indecision
Because when life has no real consequence
It's hard not to enjoy the ride

But everything has an ending
And how naive I was to think
That all of these delayed choices
Wouldn't catch up to me

And that's the thing about hearts
They're fragile just like glass
You can pretend the crack isn't there
But over time it shatters all there was

I said I'd have it all figured out
I said I needed just a little more time
But maybe the truth of it all
Is that I've known all along
That the ones who ignite our soul the most
Are not who we spend our lives with

Waiting for you was the toughest thing to do,
But not knowing whether you'd come back
was even harder.

Under a tree,
Await rain to stop.

I
See a flower
Defy rain,
Struck by drops,
Liable to die.

When I hesitate,
She falls, beheaded,
So beautifully, in
So ominous rain.
Even while falling,
She never yields.

Now, leaves fall
Above my head.

I regret.
Should’ve helped.
Here remains only
This wet, cowardly flesh.

I
See this bud
Defy rain
Even when dead.

apparently i wear my hesitation
my measured self control
in bold streaks of watercolors
across the pulled canvas of my face
but somehow that tension
the taut bounce of my shallow panorama
slides thinly by your
probing eyes poking at my weak spots
and waiting to watch me
shatter

search me
put the hidden words in quotations marks
and hit the return key
to query the google of my mind
whose only existence to you
is a retreating shadow
running past the wind
with a sonic boom of silence

it's easier to find something
when you have an idea where to look
and my subversive games
of smoke and mirrors
throwing my voice to a
different part of my body
the elegant distraction and the
final solution to my
nebulous existence
as a paper doll girl whose
amorphous two dimensional body
wears whatever
diaphanous primary color frock
the world demands to keep
it turning without hiccup
a sacrifice to the gods i have
foresaken and blasphemed
whose names i've taken in vain
and cursed with the most excruciating
fervor and
resolution

i want peace
which does not in fact live
in placating distraction
or hand waving while i'm
hemorrhaging from the
butchered wound in
my abdomen out of which
my secret shame seeks
to excrete that pheromone that
warns approaching creatures
that i am still
a wounded animal and
could snap at any moment
see red
then nothing

you can only help
a person so much when
every time they run
to your waiting arms
bleeding and broken
begging for absolution
or perhaps simply an
intercession for their muteness
and sutures of salvation
how do you help a person
who stands from the alter
with the transcendent certainty of
a religious experience
and yet still
pulls out those black wire stitches
while passing the last of the
empty pews
and the flickering flames
sending prayers up to an
empty firmament

i am the headlights on
the cars that follow in
solemn silence behind
the police escort
and the hearse
from church to finality
and a place in this world for eternity
a hole just my own
where peace is blackness of nothing
and the endless chatter
the bile whose acid
eats away at my brain
dries up and in its dessication
flies away in the arid winds
of terminal acceptance

you say you want the truth
but you're not like me
and you can't hide the pain
when i
hiding my fear
tell you that i need you
to leave
when all i want
is to keep your body pressed
infinitely close to mine
world without end
but my words fight to hold
the front line
and my canvas face is pulled
that much tighter.