I read a book
The heading said
Life
I had a look
Blank pages
7.5 billion stages
All faces
their own places
So spacious

The thrum of a city’s streets; the lifeblood of the foyer’s rack.

A simple lobby to most in passing, yet—to some—a trap of loss and lack.

My soul fell out
It’s on the pavement -
Sprawled, a mess
You see it
And your head is turned.
I want to hide it
But it’s out there
In the open
People tread on it
Still, you stare.

A heavy, inward sigh,
As I stare at all the passerby,
Each with their own lives,
I wonder if they think of mine?

What's the one thing you could talk about without rest?

Who's the one person that made talking effortless?

Where is the one that changed you for the better,

where is the one that made you your best?

When did it all occur, was it recently, or more in the past?

Is this one something or someone you wish you could have back?

People aren't things,
and also, they aren't chances.
They're the same solemnness
between the sonder and the glances.
We all have our thing and some of us may have more.
But I prefer the passions of the focused
for whom hearts with pulse on sleeve are wore.

The thousand dreams and burns and hopes and scars
That crimson phantoms, deep within the skin
Graze and raze with, betrayed by eyes like stars,
Shift and ache. Too long I looked within
For on this present dark’ning deathless day
The thousand hearts of man so pierced my soul;
I saw them all. Wild, frazzled from the fray,
Dragging, too weighed by life’s relentless toll.
Sweet sonder, teach me by the sky-wide sun
The thousand lives that glow with redd’ning force,
That burst like vineyard vats with seams undone,
That reel like sea-lost ships that miss their course.
But then that chilling truth in my mind fell:
If I can read their hearts, they read mine as well.

I want to step out of myself
When I'm lying vertically on seaside rocks
Staring at the place a full moon should be
On the azure petal of a bright sky at noon
Because it would be easy, wouldn't it?

Join a different subjective reality,
Step into an opposite consciousness,
Without this heart that loves too clumsily
(It may be gold, but gold is heavy)
Without stupid desires or the weight
Of sparkling sins like bubbles in champagne
(Come on, girl, think of your grades)

Who's to say we're not a film?
A rattling picture show that keeps skipping
That lasts too long but is never enough
All I want is to have the chance to remember

That I am also a we

That I feel and I'm not alone in that
That we think therefore we are and we are therefore we think
So I try to step into the clouds
And find myself shackled to the ground
On a beach in August without sand.