There’s a certain heaviness to it,
the inherent darkness in a silent room,
**** near oppressive,
dirtying,
almost as if it’s crawling into you,
isolating you.
Utterly alone.

Then you remember her,
half curled on your chest, cradled in the nook of your arm,
wrapped around you.
A thin smile,
just barely exposing her thin, top row of teeth.
A faint glimmer in the inky blackness around you,
starlight.

She looks up at you.
It’s an extreme cliché,
to call eyes a window to the soul,
but it’s fitting.
You look down at her and meet her eyes.
Seeing her,
that childlike joy, curiosity mixed with tempered wisdom beyond her years,
all coalescing into beautiful, amber eyes,
makes that darkness feel a bit less heavy.

You see the corner of her lip trapped between her teeth,
thinking on what to say.
You’re doing the same.
Whatever words are spoken next decide an uncertain future,
a tipping point.
“I think I’m falling for you.” You want to say,
but you stay silent,
you’re terrified.
“I’m sorry,” she says almost mournfully.

That darkness comes creeping back,
weighing on you,
on your heart,
and it breaks you.
You like to think she heard it,
that breaking of hearts,
that she understands.
But she still lays there,
enveloping you,
who are unfeeling and alone.

it's strange the rides your mind partakes in while it sits still in your head.
i am unmoving, staring at the endless rows of grey spotted ceiling tiles from a bed, while my mind cartwheels and bursts into flames, cosmic colour, ribbon dancing through its many seasons during my quiet sit down. it swims through galaxies with graceful strokes, leaping joyfully into nebulas and leaving behind a shimmering trail of sparks. it speaks in starlight and dances hand in hand with planets.
the peaceful space of the space in my mind
bursts to life.

The day I entered this world, my eyes lit up.
They were a shade of blue that you only see in baby dolls and colored contacts.
Like my birthstone, aquamarine flood my eyes and breathe life into the souls around me.
I was bright blue, like the pure water I was baptized in.
Blue like the baby blankets they give you at hospitals.
The blue that no one can argue with, because everyone thinks blue is beautiful.

One day, I morphed into yellow.
I was the dandelions I made into flower crowns
and the banana Laffy Taffy that always stuck to my pants.
I was yellow sundresses, bright sunlight, and a warm smile.
My hair was the color of a wheat field.
One of my first words was “lellow.”
Lellow like Big Bird and banana runts.
The idea of something so bright, something so happy, soothed my childish brain.

There was a time when I was green.
Like the green of St. Patrick’s day, which I never dressed up for.
I was always pinched.
Green like the baseball diamonds I spent hours on as I watched my brother.
I was the grass I laid in, the grass I played in.
I was the green of an aging plant.
You could see colors swirling in intricate patterns throughout my mind.
The green of maturity;
of gears turning in my head.

Green turned to purple when I was uprooted from my home.
Omaha to Lincoln hit me like a lack of oxygen and turned me purple.
Just like a body without air, my limbs turned dark.
I was purple, like every middle school girl’s favorite color.
The purple of painted fingernails thumbing through Victoria’s Secret magazines.
The purple of trying to fit in with new friends.
I was the purple of colliding galaxies.
My brain was confused. They were making me something new.
They put me in purple high heels and pushed me forward.
“Learn how to walk,” they said.
Everything was the artificial grape that still makes me cringe.
Sometimes, I taste the purple Koolaid on my stained lips.

I’m glad my soul is done being black.
Black like the empty demon eyes that stared at me.
Like the pen that cracked in half and watched its ink flow.
Black like Sharpie tattoos and chokers.
Black mascara tear stains that burned my skin.
I fell deep into the night and into the abyss.
It was so dark that no one saw me fall.
I was blind with only a hint of yellow starlight to guide me.
So I followed it out.
I tracked the starlight through the night.
It was never easy. Sometimes I fell down and was dragged backwards.
But I finally left black.
I’m not all the way back to yellow yet, but at least I’m not black.

Now, I am white.
I am all of my colors wrapped into one.
I am the good and the bad, the clean and the impure.
At first glance, I am a blank page.
I appear to be a paper with no scratches, no eraser lines, no marks of red pens or bright highlighters.

But I am grape Koolaid stains.
I am hands covered in smears of black ink that cover my mouth.
Sometimes, I still eat Laffy Taffy and lemon lollipops.
I climb up tall trees and bask in the glow of leaves in the sunlight to learn something new.
I stare at the blue sky to remember what it feels like to fly.
I am a rainbow, hidden behind an expanse of white.

i. he is a dancer,
he moves with such grace
he's spent his youth
dancing in front of mirrors,
he knows the way his body moves
as much as he is sure of himself

ii. he is starlight
he has seen the cosmos
and through his smile
he shares the wonders of the world
i could never see for myself

iii. he is a gentleman
he regards everyone sincerely
chivalrous in his beauty,
he walks with kindness
and acts with heart

iv. he is a storyteller
after his past of good and bad,
he is what he says
words stream from his mind
like rain drops on windows
he speaks with purpose
without ever intending to hurt anyone
but only wanting to love

v. he is my lionheart,
he braves the flashing lights
he does not mind being himself
raw and out in the open
he carries his books around
and can be silly without a care

vi. he is a wonder
shining among the chaos of his world,
and even king midas could not
conjure a heart as golden as his.

There's a place between forever and a moment, a connecting pivot between all the other wheres from which every matter molecule descends. It is a place we marvel and question and dream, and feels irrevocably natural yet so logically unnatural that there is a quaking in your very bones at that place of reverence.

Stars.

A person can gaze up at them and give them names and tell them stories but the fantastical part is no one ever knows if they are actually listening.

If you close your eyes, you can almost feel their tremendous radiance. The type of glow and beauty that over-arches all. Its fascinating, when you make your sight dark and see them in your irises, how familiar they fee when they are thousands of dead miles away. How warm their touch is when they are surrounded by fatal coldness.

Night is seen as this terrifying conundrum, where darkness brings out the fear of the unknown and the dire. Yet stars, they give a calming eminence to these fears, sliding away the layers of mortality and lifting a soul to a place where for a moment, for forever, they can feel light.

Stars are a wonder to this world. Not because we are so important, but because we are the closest mirror they have. A bright faced world of change and glow in the dark coldness of a quiet universe. We are not singular in our celestial reflections; we are a wonder to each other.

Yet stars are becoming invisible to the human eye. In a bustling city night, the sky is bloated with electric light that brings silence to the darkness, but also to the sky.

The mirrored bodies up above are being blotted by our light, forgetting their beautiful power and our collected memories and leading our humanity into an existence of singularity. The world is more populated than ever, so then why do so many people feel so painfully alone?

They are waiting, the stars, for their earth to come back to them. To shine their light in each bright eye and confess the silent loneliness they hope their humanity shares. In the deepest of their burning heart,s they don't hope for our pain, they never want that.

But they just hope so dearly to not be alone.

So in the silent night, when things are quiet and dangerous, turn off every light and take a step outside to a place where your eyes can open for the first time. Look to the sky, use your boundless power to see the moments in between, and find a star. Open your mouth, whisper the truths you didn't know you were waiting your whole life to speak. Learn the truth that your ancestors forgot when they tried to burn away all the fears of the unknown.

In the starlight, you are never alone.

I think with my heart;
not my head
in my hand
or buried deep under the sand.

Because when everything comes from the core,
i don’t need to wonder any more.
Thinking is not a chore:
like folding laundry into a tidy drawer.
But that’s what draws our glass floor,
and causes us to continully snore.
But what we chose to ignore,
should be infact, exactly what we adore.
Then maybe we’d ask for an encore
instead of a 24/7 drug store.

_

To you, i may be a boar,
but we must bust down the door.
Stop fighting the war!
Live for evermore(
if we wish to soar).



But today our biggest sore
may be the us marine corp.
i hurt for their souls, scattered galore.

it is i who they fend for,
it is why their blood continues to pour.
But that doesn’t effect you,
because it happens on another shore.

Your questions? i have answer for,
but please don’t ask me the baseball score.
Those fact are not in my houses’ decor,
all forms of politics, i choose to ignore.

__

You can call me a dinosaur,
regardless, I am not a cannibalistic carnivore.

_

I know you may ridicule,
but i prefer to be the recluse,
only coming out, when looking for a spruce.

So, when i do explore,
you will not find me with the busy bodies,
you will find me with the mircoscopic spores.
After all, it's we they provide for.

After this adventure, i know they swore,
they could create me a commodore.
On our yaht, somewhere offshore.
There would be no more war.
just hugs, tugs, and kisses galore.

Before, I was a skeptic, *******.
i now believe holeheartedly in folklore.
My faith in prewar,
is now eternally restored.

Because mother against man always out scores,
that is why i look no more.
Nature is my only mentor.

_

now, i see myself as a matador.
i can be anything,
that is the underscore.

Bonding beneath a Bloodmoon
Stuttering starlight of June
Waves that trace a salted line
Ever-changing sand with time

A loon calls from afar
As the wind responds in kind
Whispering wonders of the stars
Projecting our peace of mind

Bodies shrouded in darkness
If not for the afterglows
Speaking words in silence
Ruby kisses on the nose

Two silhouettes on the horizon
A glorious, glistening red
With nimble waves to guide them
They'll continue to forge ahead