My perfect winter:
precious in how
the summer still
seems to
simmer within
the metro station’s
humidity.
Even if the palm trees
still do shake
alongside the rhythm
of the wind,
my perfect winter
is hot—
pink like the day-ends
of summer solstice.
They are brown like
the sugar in
how you speak
to me,
sweetened.
Orange for
the lengths
of a coral sky right
before 6 o’clock.

And perhaps
I cannot know
a more
perfect season
until I’ve spent
time away
from my orange,
brown, and pink
winters.
But for now,
I will shiver
at 75 degrees,
I will chatter my
teeth at
this humidity—
so that I may
take your hands
in my own for
warmth,
and so that I
never forget the
coarseness of your
skin during
the most perfect
time of year.

I wanted to stay
and bellow out from
the depths of my heart
how very much I loved you
****! But I knew our demons
would blow the horn to
another ****** war if I did
I love you darling, very much so
only.. from safe distance.

#TinaRSH

The neighborhood sleeps robustly…charmingly.

✽

I sit quietly
utterly breathlessly.

Listening sadly to the inveterate, rasping wheeze
and pensively perceiving the impelling, piercing eagerness

of my dismal, labored breath.

Constrained to stay put, there is little I can do
but to repeatedly browse through
a raft of 'get-well' messages
which have consistently traversed
across your sedulous time-tables

surmounting the bustling maze
of the capricious world-wide-web.

I think of you and your caressing ways -
Your determined thriving to bolster me
through my trance-like medicated days;

planting a flimsy little flicker
to my dead-pan face.

✽

This bantam lightweight note intends to modestly denote:

♔ my incalculable gratefulness for your unqualified wishes

and

♔ sportive acquiescence to my maiden experience
of loving your love

quixotic and so cogently beyond
the most adept shot of the Cupid's arrow.

it seems like we love all the same things,
besides each other


©L.F.

Happy 21st birthday

I remember the date of yours every time
And I know it’s not today
Makes it kind of funny
Since you never remember mine
And it’s not today either, don’t worry

I dream about you every so often,
My beautiful birthday queen,
The beauty standard who I hold myself to,
Skinny but imperfect

In my dreams, I feel your hands on my neck
Sometimes a wedding veil or silken glove,
Strangulate me too
Choking me, you’re choking me, I can’t breathe
I can’t breathe around you living either
You throttle me with…. with… with…

Anyways, I hope nothing but the best for you,
You, insufferable *****, you,
I have never felt lonelier than when I stood beside you,
My high school bestie whom I love to bits and pieces,

But happy birthday
You deserve nothing but the best
From me and from everyone else
On this day you have to share with your sister
And a bazillion other people, too
You deserve Vanilla cakes
(Because I know you don’t like chocolate)
And silver rings and beautiful diamond things
(Silver because I know it looks better on you)
A kiss from your smoking hot boyfriend
(The one I’ll no doubt have a crush on *** laude)

And, of course, sincere congratulations from me
Your high school best friend
The girl you left behind
So that you could mack on boys
And had someone to pick up your slack
But in your absence, behind your back,
I became someone new
New and still a little – a lot – naïve
But someone wise enough to know better
Than to tell you *******
On a glittery, twenty-first birthday card

P.S. I hope you like the flowers
And that your real card finds you well
And the fifty dollar note I left for you
In the envelope, an embrace, I never want to give you

Stagnant and thinking

Confused and blinking

Age draws on

Yet still a pawn

Standard and simple

Dull and wimple

Wrapped in indifference

Trapped warm desire

In need of deliverance

If I come un-strewn

May I be blessed in womb

Re-birthed and open

More accepting and woken

New insight could dislodge this anchor

Only I can treat my own lamer

Once in motion

Loneliness is in emaciation

Finding friends in exploration

Finding one for intimacy

Not based on elegancy

Venerate character

Each must love the other entire

Both exchanging devotion and tenderness

Only full of equality, truth, and openness

Nurture platonic love, beautiful and scarce

Defend it like a dove, only vicious and fierce

A private memory shared with one close
closed bubble within my bubble,
on a San Diego winter day,
it came to pass
cacophony's child, noise,

beginner guitar and vocal solo loud as lungs allow,
making dischords and missed beats feel
like, demons
sc'reaching into fretful, jobless Dad's brain

Stop, please! Tic, that was it- the point-end
track switch…

he was cut to the core, a full on ogre
as father
wound, through the heart

in tears of rage, he said,
I was worshipping…

said the child, and
he had been

adding
worth, with his whole little fist sized heart,

Dad had been working, in service of some other god,
slowly going mad.