Look around and tell me, who’s happy?
Isn’t happiness the goal above all?
Or rather to avoid feeling sorry
For ******* away the springtime in spite of the fall?

What is Silence?
By Julia Shaw

Silence is snow falling outside your door
Turning the world into seamless white
Covering up all things ugly and impure
Quietly caressing the earth through the night

Silence is a mime telling stories without words
Using only features by his face recorded
He's understood perfectly though his voice isn't heard
By all that see him he's greatly adored

Silence is a window through which one can look
Seeing wondrous things, but not hearing a sound
Silence is also realized in an interesting book
Where exciting stories can always be found

Silence is sitting and thinking thoughts alone
That no one can know really understand
But thoughts make up what your life has sown
In your silent thoughts, I hope they are grand

The seasons shift
Fade away
Gets a bit colder each bitter day
Moment after moment slips from my hand
Stuck here struggling to understand
You moved on but I'm paralyzed
Guess by now I should have realized
Start walking forward
Turn around
To past it seems I am hopelessly bound
Loving you making me lose my mind
Still I am unable to leave memories behind
You lost yourself somewhere along the way
Why am I still addicted to who you are today?
Is it because I have forfeited so much for you?
Because you're familiar?
Have no clue
When will soul finally know serenity?
Life plunges me deeper into insanity
Why is the universe unfair?
World so cold
I had it all
Now nothing to hold
Begins wearing heart's patience thin
I start to bleed and am left with no skin
Falling backwards into pit of insecurity
Every minute without you feels like eternity

Self,
Here are the ways you have been loved
Instead of the ways you have lost it.

You have known love the color of autumn dogwood  
The deep red of want
Rising in the cheeks like steam.
The magnetic pull of moon and stars
Orbits spinning until they are null
The rush of blood in the ears
Tempests in the paths of plans.

You have known love the shade of fall juniper
The argent blue of constancy
Silver dust on fingertips
Invisible until tasted.
Pepper and pine, the flavor of rain
And washes of hope.

You have known love the hue of October roses
The bittersweet fragile pink
Bright and fast and pure
delicate as a dream on waking,
fading in the opening of an eye,
Its memory more solid than its time.

Self,
You have loved and loved and loved
And you have been loved.
And on the nights this does not fill your cup
When your arms are empty
Your voice dry,
Wait, work, and wonder
Through solstice, equinox, eclipse,
For each in their season returns and returns
And all seasons come anew.

I woke up and forgot it was October
On the front steps, I shook a little less
Than the last time we decided to rush
A season, shaking branches and wearing
Sweaters with the sun beating down
Tomorrow, it still won’t feel like home
But I am learning that nothing does
Except for autumn and that first cool morning
Where the air smells like it did when I was ten
Before I knew that life would ever feel as unreal
As it does now, standing on one side of a door
Stirring up the courage to pull it shut

The first days of fall are always warmer than I remember. It just takes one cold morning to make me want the glare back. Now I'm looking for any reason to go outside before dusk begins to swallow afternoons. I'm checking the mail on a Sunday. I'm carrying a broken lamp to the shed. I don't miss July and its quite seethe. I miss the beginning. I miss not knowing when it would end. It's a slice of sponge cake, a half-erased underline left behind in a book that I can't put down. I'll go inside and read it until the pages begin to curl. My nails were made for digging into palms. I only ever want to stay when I know it's time to go.

summer heat
beating up from sticky asphalt
     has dissipated
autumn cools the world
bathing us in its solid shade
under an umbrella
     of breezy rustling colour:
as summer leaves
autumn leaves
arrive