Chasing dreams like an adolescent need,
Feel the heat consume these city streets.
Moving forward, what is it that I see?
These summer nights that become memories.

Good times end before we see them begin,
Feel the thoughts cross of what could’ve been.
City lights shine on the glow that you know,
And you know it’s had you since way back when.

I’m not the same as I used to be,
In what I find the most comforting.
But I know the only thing I need,
You by my side on these city streets.

Shine your glow on me like moonlit beams,
Let me be your escape like a dream.
I’ll hold you tight till these stars collide,
Forever yours under city lights..

Grass of green sways in the valley below
Voice unseen whispers hello
Carried on the breeze
Moving about with ease

Flowers a bloom
Heart wide, of room
Laughter an echoing boom
Across the rolling hills
A perfect painting in the windowsill
Great summer's thrill

- Jay M
June 15th, 2021

I've grown rusty and unused to summoning words from a blank page - but FINALLY - there's something new to describe. School (11th grade) is over - at last - and... more.

There's a party tonight - a REAL, honest-to-God, in person, PARTY - for about 30 of us. Yes, vaccinations are documented. Life seems to be beginning again.

I'm eager, like a boxer before the bell or a racehorse at the starting gate. I'm an animal, long constrained, who knows it's about to be set free.

I'm as disorientated as an awakened dreamer and I find myself laughing, drunk with possibilities as I try on clothes for preliminary impressions.

It's hard to quash tremors of impatience.

I'm sick of helpless, indifferent, pandemic necessity.

I'm SO tired of boredom, circling me like a vulture, in my panopticon palace - that I opted for a respite of pure terror - I'm SO clever.

I'm skipping my senior year of high school and heading off to university. I'd rather die than risk spending another year in my room(s) - I almost went crazy.

There's a paper on my desk, white as a bride. It says "ACCEPTED for fall term 2021."

I’m trying not to let on that I’m afraid. Is desire always a tangle of impossible, contradictory impulses?

I've decided that my life is my only real possession - my own, small, life-or-death riddle to solve.

I want to live with intent, like I'm aimed at something and I'm going to chase happiness like it could be caught.

My luggage is open - like alligator jaws. I stare into those tan, Ghurka depths - rigid with anxiety.

My sister (home on vacation from her surgical residency) sees me eyeing the empty bags.
"Are you worried?” She says, “You look worried."

I normally find the sister-teacher-coach vibe irritating, but now, somehow, it seems reassuring.

"No," I lie - then - "A bit," I admit, close-lipped.

But that's a later worry =]

Barbiturate sunshine afternoons
obscure the niggling work pile
and with fat heat, cool anger,
opening evenings to virtuous
leaf based dinners
only slightly ruined
by too much beer and ice cream

God Brought A Beach Towel

  Written By: Breanna Womble



...

I’m starting to understand
The slight of hand
That it takes to see this world as an ocean
                                                So vast and deep
                                  With secrets to keep-
I spread love on like tanning lotion
                                        
(..) I forgot how the sun feels from this perspective
As my heart beats quick with/          
                             as if it’s,
                                                                         /To keep up with lost time.
I know now I hold the full Collective
all the while I stay and destroy the retina’s in my eyes.
                               This time around,
                                    Loving me is the new objective-
gazing at new found patience with what follows sunrise
                                                                      And left these sands of time-
                                                                      One grain left to fall amongst the Hour,
All this chaos I hold inside of me-
                                           In-spite of trees that Fear let tower

Ahead of me is too far gone
twin flames too, burned away...
Lake Eerie drowned our fire quickly/
                                                           a parted heart of two;
half-hearted sunsets shadowed days,
To the boy I thought I knew.



Do you suffocate with silence?
Do the sun-rays burn your eyes?

All this technicolor vision Love,
Colorblind through cobalt eyes’


(..) I know now of not tomorrow,
                                                          But sea, to my dismay;


                                                        
Salt lake kisses from Oklahoma/


                                                      ...Taste like soulmates in PA.




~Breanna Womble