"Do not worry I will be gentle," said the wolf.

"You mean to tell me, a beast as monstrous as you, is capable of mercy," said the traveler.

"No, not mercy," said the wolf. “Gentleness, there is a difference. I will devour you tenderly.”

We blindly type out of memorization,
We blindly write from practiced habit,
We blindly skip paragraphs, ignore articles, and pensively print upon the line without realization of what we’re saying at all.
We never truly see,
We deteriorate out of muscle memory
Absently offering an embrace neglecting to fully eyes-closed experience the wonderfulenss of it at all.
We go through the motions,
Dwelling in our minds straining its relation to our souls,
We no longer act in love,
But the muscle memory of it.
We look, but don’t truthfully see,
We touch, but forget to truly feel,
We hear, but we no longer listen,
We have flesh, yet we are merely programmed.
Advanced, but empty,
Knowledge unimaginable, yet still lacking,
Right, left, up, down, but do we realize the palpability and tenderness of the action?
Or are we too much on automatic?
In over drive,
That we forget to live out the littlest things and realize them to the fullest

This is the world we live in
This is the world we end in
We'll end with it,
And it with us,
The absolute of nothingness.

This is the only comfort
I can offer you.
The finality of it all.
And, you know, these days,
Comforts are few.

When the world is burning,
and retribution is coming.
Those four men and all their horses
Barely held behind the gate.
Soon, there will be no wants to fulfill
Or desires to sate. Just nothing and ruin and what is left of our undoing.

The end is coming, but
That's alright. The fires
Persist beyond our door.
These are the only comforts
I can offer you:
Knowledge of the eventual end
And arms you can rest in
Til we both undo.

So, can we sleep while the world ends?
The distant sounds of grief
Have not yet reached our window.
Just hold me close, and I will, you
Though the world's set alight
I'll rest easy in your arms tonight.
In bed, embraced.
As the fires rage.

This is how the world ends:
Not with a bang,
But with a kiss goodnight,
With a soft "I love you,"
And a pause;
An eventual, whispered "I love you too."

And when the end comes,
Garishly and unkind
We'll sleep through it,
Peacefully and sublime.

How many times must my fists smack your stiffness until you soften?

I don’t want to use my fists, I’m not violent.
Even in defense, words raised to take the hardness,
silently, repeat, repeat.
Raised to repeat, repeat.
I never wanted to be violent.

I don’t want to use my fists, but your stiffness is contagious.
I don’t know how to look at you without them,
smacking every corner, separating hard shells.

I don’t want to use my fists.
my hands,
They’re raw and dry, too sanitized.
and my shell is colliding, oozing, fermenting
into juices of the berries you forbid.
I don’t want to use my fists anymore.
My hands want to open, softly.  
Sweet unfolding fingers
offer demons blessed darlings.

can you hold it in your palm? I can't stop talking about hands.
I don't remember the last time any other body part was that important but the one that slept next to you out of necessity instead of loneliness.
There's a problem, like a rock skipping into my neighbor's pool but it's not my neighborhood and none of the houses remind me of home. A solitary moment shrinking in shrubs when you know that the cars are passing by and you have no idea what direction anyone's going. Where's the destination and will they get there like you?
Muddy lawns and soaking sidewalks is everywhere you've ever been but you don't talk much about that anymore. Some kind of selective mutism that gripped you when you were too young to make decisions, just a bad joke played well on yourself. Drifting from window to window to see if my fingerprints stay there, if the future will break down the door and trip me with shoelaces that were worn by me or my best friend or by nobody and I think I'll understand then the most significant rule, you can't be in two places at once.

Yes, you people
would have dreamed
of your sweetheart,
A thousand things you
would want to see
in your sweetheart,
Oh! I want but one -
May she love me,
May she love my heart
for its tears,
May she be a gift of flowers,
to my tender heart,
May she fill it with her fragrance,
My tears, her fragrance,
Let these two combine,
And I won't ask for anything else...

© Manan sheel.

With each day that I lie,
as you blaze through my blinds
I’ll get up my sweet sunshine,
even though I’m not the morning kind

A gentle voice to cut through nascent wails
A tender hug to quiet and to love
A guiding hand to give a needed shove