Hailstorms with big winds, trees writhing in breezes
Coyotes howling in moonlight, dogs when they sneezes
Alloys and carved toys, stone gargoyles with wings
These are a few of my favorite things.

Skunk smells carried gently on nocturnal breezes
Sly double entendres and tickley teases
Beautiful salmon colored sunsets that make my jaw drop
Smell of pine 'n cedar in my sauna and wood shop!

Dolphins and doggies and toddlers and mooses
Saunas and cold plunges and honking V-flying gooses
Small mutts and storytellers and Pixar cartoons
Crazy call of the Maine dark of night loons
These are some of my nurturing tunes!

Volcanoes with lava and magma all oozing
Cross country skiing just gliding and cruising
Receiving massages unwinding and unbruising
I love my collections of adhesives and strings
These are a few of my favorite things!

So when the wasps sting
When the bored people whine
Wen I'm feeling dispirited and sad
I just think of a few of my favorite things
And I don't feel…so…bad!

I pushed you away because of what you did to me.
It wasn't your personal acts that ****** me of,
it was what the voices in my head would say whenever you were around.
A darker version of me erupted like lava in a volcano, intruding it's way out.
It took everything within me to keep it down whenever you were around.
You were always high and it did nefarious things to you and the people around.
It ruined your life, as it did mine.
Lethal weapons in a battle of your own.

So for four months I stayed away, remaining to myself. Keeping the wounds at a distance for as long as I could. I painted. I drew sketches. I wrote three chapters to my novel. I watched an animated movie that actually made me laugh.
I was stitching myself back together.

Then one night you came to me with promises in your words and wonders with your eyes. For a while there, I thought I saw hope.  Like stars in a cloudless sky.

You said you changed, but I knew that was a lie- you can only grow. You said that you haven't smoked- that you felt better and loved life just a little more.
I didn't want to believe that you were full of it- your ambition was floating in the air like pixie dust on a chilly summers night.

But of course you did.
You lied.
Just like before I left you and just like now.
You still speak to me as if I'm lower than you and you continue to paint cracked black paint on your face whenever you feel the slightest bit upset.
I try to help you, you push me away.

You broke your promises. You lie through your teeth. Its a been a long time since anything was actually good.

Looking back at it now, I pushed you away because of what you did to me.
It was the voices in my head.
The ones you put there.

A heart full of wine
and liquor-spotted lips
I can’t remember the last time we kissed or how long it lasted for.

Yesterday’s makeup across a sham of a smile
I always catch a glimpse of you on Sundays; it’s where you used
to hold my hand and trace secrets across my forearm.

Daisies stripe the path we ambled again and again until the grass was embedded
with stumbling prints of your neon Nikes and the soft tap of my feet.

I still feel you in my veins
The toxin levels rise; I watch it on the monitor.
A plastic bracelet wraps my wrist too tight, the way your left hand did.

I expected you to burst like a volcano
and flood me with heat, scalding my ribs
and charing all flesh.
I waited for you to make me new,
and you didn’t.
My hair was the darkest black,
and I faded into shadows
following you.

We are faults; we are despairing flaws that blemish the surface of our revolving sphere with the intent of making reparations.
We collapse entire cores of foundations and tear down freshly plastered walls with family portraits and decorative ceramic angels hanging from stainless steel nails.
We destroy entire civilizations, coating citizens in molten lava from a volcano that never overlooked them in the first place, leaving future lovers stepping over their remains unknowingly and blissfully clueless.
We are natural disasters; we tear through corn fields, bring down windmills, and rip shingles off of roofs while toddlers sleep soundly under quilted blankets.
But moonlight shoots through your veins and sun burns from the crevice of your chest and I can't help but cup it in my hands and put it in my coat pocket for safe keeping

Her smile was more radiant than any sun. Her eyes deeper then any body of water. And her heart, warmer then any volcano. All these elements mixed seamlessly into one soul?
No wonder they call love a hurricane

There are days of restless worrying,
And sleepless nights of fear.

Then are days of numb oblivion
With nights of terror-filled dreams.

Like relentless waves pounding
The weakened beachhead of the shore.
Like bloodied knuckles punching
The shredded remnants of a sandbag.

This, my cycle of the
Inevitable,
Unavoidable,
Inescapable,
Unpreventable

Stirring­ up of the
Indescribable,
Indefinable,
Inexpressible

Anger that resides deep within
My broken soul.

Yet no one knows.

I am a calm, placid lake.

A deep and dark lake
Sitting in the mouth of an active volcano.