My heart is spring in January. I can feel it in my bones when it's about to rain. The smell, the unearthing of everything we buried. It's the way in grief too.

Anniversaries are the seasons we never can quite escape. Pulling us back into the tundra & frozen in time. We revisit the moments as if they never quite left us.

I swear each year the midwesterners must reckon the seasons changing yet again, but each winter all still feels the same to them....

Like it was the very first time.

I am falling
Perpetual spirals into the dark
I feel my hands grasping
As air passes through my fingers
Something feels off and
I really can't tell
If the caution is real
Or a phantom of my fear
I'm in the land of ghosts and demons
Haunted by these oppressive memories
It's hard to know what's worse
The monsters or the claustrophobia
Flowers can't bloom in the darkness and
Humans cannot thrive in isolation
This place is lifeless, suffocating
Only tolerable through inebriation
Kindess is but a mask here
Trusting no one a necessity
Half these people want me dead
And a quarter could care less
Don't tell me I'm overreacting
When even family aim their guns
I've made my escape and now
I know what growth feels like
I've tasted the freshness of freedom
Witnessed the miracle of peace
It is not like this everywhere
So don't try to normalize this hate
I found celebration beyond tolerance
And I've built my home there
This place is a noxious poison and
I'm done trying to survive it

blue house
brown house
tan house

brown house
blue house

brown house
brown house
brown house

backyard inside the fence
rocks inside of rivets

dead grass and
rocks inside rivets
rocks inside rivets

bridge over tracks
bridge over trails
bridge over the river
bridge over rails

parking lot
parking lot
parking lot
parking lot

high school called
a dead man’s name

circle
avenue
court
lane

Mountains,
roiling across,
just as sea tempests toss'd.
Frost'd froth on brackish peaks churn
the sky.