When you say sorry;
When you start to care
Emotions are set in motion
Thoughts, pain, memories come crashing back
Seeping through the cracks
that I never knew existed.

I never knew I was broken from within,
Until I felt my emotions bleeding through the edges.
I never knew my thoughts were suppressed,
until they came crashing down upon me like turbulent waves.
I never knew I was sad,
until I tasted the pain that was rotting like venom in the corner of my brain.
I never knew darkness brewed within me,
until it diminished the light within as it stretched over the bright sky.

Dallas days, smoking in your acura legend,
your face veiled, watery eyes.
Tom, I asked you to teach me poetry.
You opened your dictionaries of devotion -
for me to run away, again.
Under a weeping willow, we dug a hole for a time capsule.
Our lives were small enough for this rusty lunchbox.
See, mine was never a kids’ drawing on the refrigerator,
but a western, a shoot-em-up.
Can you understand, just a little,
how it was home I was running towards?
And still, in strange places
I spoke your language of tenderness,
my extinct mother tongue. With words
so ordinary, so simple.

Those memories
                  the warmth of you
make it hard to imagine 
that you are buried somewhere in Iowa.

I revisited that cow pasture with our tree,
my hands clawing at the frozen earth to get time back.
Tom, you promised me poetry, yet all I can write is
please come back to me
in a hundred variations. How I long
to bargain your soul for mine.
Your little toy airplane, the one you gave me
when we were kids, still stands on my nightstand.
This time let me teach you
about the cruelty of freedom.

I think the feeling of being truly alone
is what draws me
awake at 3am
no one speaks my name
comfort
a distance from the motion
serene
a certain stillness

Another Model Town passes the windowed  train I ride
The train is suspended and still
A beggar, a barn, a family's backyard picnic
Each in their own concentric motion
I remain still in my seat
They remain in motion a perfect glimpse of life
A Model Life
Is life best at a glimpse? Or standing still?

The moves you made against your fear moved me to faith.
I watched through tears as you were saved -
the heroine of your own fairytale
facing nightmares to awaken the beauty they slept on.
You were candle-flame and made darkness your element,
quivering formlessly in all directions, then still
the moment you found your center to be where it burned the most.
You turned pain into a glowing power source.
You were my favorite self-love poem in motion,
one that dates back to 13th century Persia
about mirrors, and how the polisher of which took on the form
of moonlight itself, giving all it has
when no one was watching.
You poured yourself into that night
in a waterfall of polished movement,
shattering glass, dancing your way out of a distorted
reflection in a carnival funhouse of illusions
you were grown enough to see past.
From a distance, I watched you
transcend technique,
bend and shift through countless forms
as if through a kaleidoscope.
You filled my mind's eye.
I saw myself in your mirror,
coming face to face with every side of you
past and present, high-fiving one, embracing another
in celebration of your conquest.
There's a fighting word beyond our known language
for this: masakatsu agastu
or, "true victory is self-victory".
Fight the battles you need to finish.
I'll be waiting at the edge of my seat
until the house lights come on and the show
ends and the audience disappears,
leaving only us
in front of the mirror
you are no longer afraid of.

Fingers on the rails can feel
The pulse of steel and diesel engines,
The muscle and sinew of a continent.
Ten thousand horses throb the air
And bear down on a mile of freight.
It rolls by like thunder
Under a clear blue sky, stirs the soul
With memories of lonely whistles
In the night, a desert wind, mystery lights;
When little fingers at the open window
First felt the pulse of steel and diesel,
A few million miles ago.