#seattle
When your home is away from home
Your brain feels like the rolling storms overhead. Consuming the night with a crackling roar.
The lightning only briefly ignites the black void that surrounds you.
Every fleeting memory comes with every flash, every strike. There in an instant, gone in the next.
You think you need to find “light in the dark” and your left with this profound feeling
This awe, wonder, a small sense of joy in this void you stand in.
But you remember that lightning is rare at home
You remember how you felt at home
How it felt the same as seeing a bolt of lightning.
You remember when you experienced your first thunderstorm with the one you call home.
You remember that your home would have loved to see this.
You walk dazed and dissociated for miles mulling over the past, your mistakes, your health. You drag on mourning your love.
You ridicule and loath yourself. Thoughts slowly frying in the blistering Midwest heat.
Then days come where there's an overcast.
A cool drizzle.
A comfortable sixty-degree day.
You see fog in the distance, and you can smell moisture in the air.
You stare at a pine tree longer than socially acceptable, knowing it's the closest reminder you have to feeling your roots. Knowing there's a whole rainforest beckoning for you to come back.
You sit at a lake and hear the Puget sound screaming your name. You can almost feel the sand beneath your feet. The waves against your skin. You can see the view vivid and longing in your mind. The sunsets, the mountains, the water, the smell of nature all around.
But then you remember your favorite spots. The countless memories with lovers and friends.
You remember all the conversations, the thrill fueled parties and adventures. You remember her. The hobbies, the quirks, the fun. The passion. The love. You remember she shared the same connection.
You stare at the Rockys and see their beauty. Their grandeur, their vastness.
But the peaks and slopes don't compare
They don't live up to Rainier.
They don't live up to the subtle shades of grey and blue, the snow caps, or the rolling green hills. You want to appreciate it…
But you know the last time you looked at those mountains, who you had brought home.
You miss the lights, the energy, the spirit of your city. The variety of your people. You miss the bars, and venues, and restaurants, the extravagant outings. You miss knowing all the spots, you miss riding the train. You miss the city life. You miss the partying, the dancing, the drugs. You miss her.
But you also miss the city life…
The one that took you down. Took you home.
And you know at this home you have family, but that family can't help you. That family can't love you the same.
You watch the toll you take; the tears swell in their eyes over the person they think you've become,
and you feel ashamed cause you know it's the person you always were.
You're reminded of all your childhood trauma and are thrown into the same environment you spent years escaping.
You feel lost.
Because you are.
Because your home away from home
is no longer a home.
Jul 21, 2025
Jul 21, 2025 at 3:34 PM UTC
Sometimes I think of those nights
Flowing through the veins of the city
Coursing along the waterfront
Carried along by inky waves
Watching the wind dance a waltz
With the leaves at my feet
As I walked that concrete stage
©FaerieFoxPoetry
Jan 15, 2021
Jan 15, 2021 at 5:00 AM UTC
There you were on 658 North Skyline drive, visiting the place where you once called home
With those innocent, helpless girls on your restless, manic mind.
At the age of twenty-five, a hopeless law-student drop out
Sitting in the blistering hot Summer Tacoma heat in your battered beige Volkswagen windows down,
wind blowing on your ruddy face.
Wishing you had a flashy Maserati
Thousands of beads of sweat trickle down your head like a waterfall.
Frustrated and exhausted
Knowing the fate what's going to become of the pretty, carefree girls laughing, walking ahead on the street by your car, but they're completely unaware.
The reminisce of cheap beer and stale cigarettes on your breath
As you quickly glance at your velvet crowbar, that resides on your chair-less passenger side, so desperately wanting another hit.
Jittering with panic inside, that familiar feeling surges with an adrenaline rush in your body, going from zero to eighty in 0.01 seconds
You start to get in a trance with self-destruction, panicking with chaotic anger beginning to emerge again, in waves like the ocean.
The entity begins to set in
Yet something abruptly stops you.
Holding a crumbled picture of dear Elizabeth and Molly, you keep your wallet in your right blue jean back pocket.
Yet you don't give in to your double life.No. Not this time.
Letting the devastating, destructive behavior from the entity consume your entire being.
As you begin to have sudden regret ignoring the powerful, impatient fidgety urge.
Ten girls have now suddenly evaporated into thin air, caused by your harmful doing.
Police and newspaper sightings of a certain man named "Ted" have appeared out of the woodwork,
But you keep that identity hidden under lock and key.
Newsflashes pop up at the five o'clock hour, but nothing seems to phase you into utter shock.
Now sitting in an unclean, rat-infested jail cell in Colorado
The walls only seem to know the REAL you
The light fixture is almost sawed off entirely to your liking, for your excitingly filled escape, set for tonight.
Going through the small labyrinth of the ceiling of the jail,
New, fresh, clean clothes on, and annoying coveralls off
You open the front door, as a blast of the bone-chilling cold goes through your body,
Fast, snow falling on the ground, and luckily a car with its doors unlocked
You now fade away into the blackness.
After you've completed the horrendous event in Lake City that you so desired to do on a whim
There's now no recollection of your recent event, even though you were there.
The trees with the wind are whispering and gossip your horrific acts.
Only they truly know your lawless stories
A couple of years has rolled by,
Trial after trial, day in and day out
Hoping and confident that you'll win, but each time, you've disappointingly lost.
Judge Cowart sits on his throne, tentatively listens
The buzz from the ***** and pills that your beloved Carole snuck in for you is finally beginning to wear off.
Irritation sets
As you razzle-dazzle each individual with your stealthy charm
The time has finally come that the jury decides your ultimate, timely fate
Flash forward to eight years on death row, with that heavy metal that you wear
Living in a concrete castle, in a desolate foreign land
Indeed not Buckingham Palace.
Rowdy, loud, ***** unclean, unshaven men surround you.
Something that your not used to doing.
Not the place you wish to be at the moment.
Body odor and sweat with no air conditioning in a stagnant, minuscule cell might also be Hell on Earth.
While just an old malfunctioning fan tries to keep you cool from Florida's oppressive heat.
You talk to the four walls, that listen when the detectives get fed up and bored. With your perpetual beating around the bush rhetoric.
You wasted your life on behalf of your destructive behavior and wrong choices
Time is ticking faster and faster when you only have a few days left till death day arrives
Rose is officially gone and is now a long distant faded memory of your failed career of a deadbeat father and husband.
It's been a few years since you last saw her and Carole as they vanished from your life.
Vanished and stolen.
Like the girl's lives, you had vanished and stolen from happy families only to destroy when you willingly obeyed and fulfilled the entity's destructive wish.
Your tears become your lullaby, for your last night on Earth.
January 24th, 1989.
Your expiration date has arrived.
Rowdy, drunk onlookers are at your last hurrah
The warden swiftly comes to your death watch cell and wakes you up from the unrestful, anxiety-filled sleep you had gotten
Are you ready? He asks you.
No longer now is a handsome forty-two-year-old, but a shaven bald gangly, ailing man, with the appearance of looking like a sixty-year-old who's unrecognizable to one's eye.
"Deadman walking," the warden shouts.
Emotionless expression looks of people that you've once known in your past are now seated in small white chairs
As officers restrain you in the infamous wooden chair, of the many in-humane men who've gone, years before your time.
Adjust your electric crown
Nerves begin to quake internally like a rattlesnake
And in less than a flash, with two- thousand volts, you'll be gone from this world forever.
At approximately 7:16 am, you're pronounced dead.
Alone & Forgotten.
Dec 21, 2020
Dec 21, 2020 at 9:36 PM UTC
Nightfall on the Sound,
Houselights come on one, two, three...
At last! I can write.
Nov 13, 2020
Nov 13, 2020 at 6:52 AM UTC
I’m hit with sounds and smells of you
Sitting behind a smoker on the transit
And I’m strangely nostalgic
I’ve grown to love it
Because on you it’s mixed with pine
Like you dozed off next to a fire pit
I realize you’re all around me
Because in these parts
short flannel clad men
with tall egos
are a dime a dozen
Though I know when I move away
I’ll look back with yearning
On those nights in your car
(they meant more to me than you know)
listening to Tame Impala and waiting for the bridge
bass cranked high like the heat
effervescent windows frosted
from our craft brewed breaths
singing and saturated with spirit(s)
Was this home or all I came to know?
I can’t deny that summer will never again
be as heavy with happiness
as when the sky has stopped her crying
long enough to paint in pastels
canopied air crisp enough to bite
I guess that’s what happens
when you spend 2/3 of the year in grey
it’s not for me
Mar 31, 2020
Mar 31, 2020 at 1:42 PM UTC
The page this was written on
has rain drop stains.
Something about all that falling water
gets a brain going.
A jogger bobs along,
only rain walkers remain,
the rest are gone
back to their homes.
Something about all that falling water
really gets to them.
The wetness does end folks,
it's a cycle.
Missing out on a whole.
Jan 20, 2020
Jan 20, 2020 at 2:07 AM UTC
There's a wind on,
a real, big wind.
Too strong for kites,
likely to snap the string,
flying the kite
far, far, far.
Walking is a battle
between you and the breeze,
brewing up a tussle.
See the people bent over double?
They know, they've got it,
they know the score.
You and the wind, destination moot.
Forget jobs, forget groceries and lunch dates,
you've got gusts to tackle!
The door shuts,
the whoosh mutes and hair settles,
you've made it, but the wind,
it still howls.
Jan 20, 2020
Jan 20, 2020 at 12:52 AM UTC
Petals flurried in the wind,
gusts rushing white clouds.
A final hoo-rah,
a perfect storm
before bare branches.
We sit and watch,
petals in our hair,
mischievous tendrils of air whipping.
We sit and watch
with wonder, this blessing,
yet we forget our own.
Jan 19, 2020
Jan 19, 2020 at 8:42 PM UTC
Sitting on a boulder
nestled in a valley,
clutch tea in a tumbler,
watch the water and leaves
that slide on its surface.
Green moss takes refuge on the rock,
a welcome pillar to guide toward the sun
which sifts through the trees.
A wound in the city,
a green scar
reminding us what once was.
Jan 19, 2020
Jan 19, 2020 at 8:06 PM UTC
There are three bright spots worth looking for on cloudy days.
In the morning, it’s coffee with you. We find our silver lining in a hole-in-the-wall cafe near the market where fish fly, talking vividly about what we dreamed as muted light finds its way through the window where we sit. We save the moment, but say bye too fast as if we had flights of our own to catch. And we loose sight of each other in the never-ending current of strangers rushing past. The sky reverts to its stone grey self, and I drift in the company of office buildings, weightless as the clouds from my breath.
We meet again, at a walk-up noodle joint on the pier. We share a steaming bowl of tonkatsu ramen and gaze at the mist-covered bay, talking about the jobs that keep us from waking up. The sun peeks through a blanket of overcast to find us. We take a selfie: in it, we are beaming. We say bye again, this time, with an embrace as warm as the soup on our lips. We save the moment, floating alongside the edge of the water with a glow that will see us through the chilly night ahead.
The last bright spot is the golden hour. It gets dark far too early here, so there is no time to waste. We spend what’s left of it together, over a drink that burns when swallowed in a dimly lit bar beneath a stairwell. It begins to rain. We say nothing this time, and instead, share an unspoken understanding of who we are at the end of cloudy days. We put a finger on it, and promise that we’ll see each other again no matter how heavy the fog may get. We’ll find our way through. We save one last moment and slip into the wintery mist, seeing clear.
In a place with as much grey area as this, the word ‘alone’ looks blurred: it’s ‘all’ and ‘one’ put together, where nothing is missing. The selfie we took comes into focus: it was myself, a complete stranger in my own company. Now, when it's cloudy outside, we see each other through it, filling whatever is empty like a glass, toasting to the brightness found within.
Nov 17, 2019
Nov 17, 2019 at 11:15 PM UTC
I. Post Alley
Here, darkness isn't the villain.
It's the anti-hero.
We cheer on the absence of light
in favor of insight
- the kind used by blind swordsmen
who distinguish right from wrong moves
by feeling where the fighting spirit
of their adversary sways.
And so we stay awake,
following the signs etched in the neon,
blazing a path toward our fears
with a howl that cuts
the darkness in half like an alley.
We don't dream here.
We embrace the insomnia
like a cup of black coffee
with both hands,
eyes as moons,
tears as tide.
--
II. Olympic Sculpture Park
Every alley finds its way to water.
They all meet their ends
in a view that floods your eyes
at the speed of ferryboats passing.
It's the there and gone of it
that stops us in our tracks.
It's the childlike smile
you may never see again.
Days here
retain an afterglow
that brightens over time
we can't reclaim.
--
III. Alki Beach
I fled here when I thought the world ended.
I ate magically delicious clam chowder
from a paper cup
at the edge of Pier 57,
where a Ferris wheel that no one was riding spun.
Moving became mantra: a prayer put into practice.
So I flew
as far as I could get without crossing an ocean.
The fog I arrived in hid what was gone.
The sub-arctic air was balm
on what was burning up in flames.
Painters believe that lighting
defines what you're looking at, puts objects
as absolute as Mount Rainer in limbo.
I saw the heart differently here:
it was smoke
exhaled from the top of a building
to join the overcast like a freed spirit.
Love wasn't a concrete word,
but a formless mist
that your eyes keep redefining
depending on time of day: the first morning,
it was a cargo ship.
By twilight, it was a one-way ticket
on the Light Rail.
It was something that kept moving.
That's it: everything became far up here,
as if I was looking at it from the top
of a UFO-shaped observatory in a skyline
from the space age.
The sun itself appears removed:
it checks out at 5pm due to the extreme
northern latitude and lets night check in early
like an Airbnb traveler you'll never see.
It's okay to remain anonymously sad and blend
in with the rain.
Locals don't carry umbrellas on purpose.
I'm not okay yet.
So I return often to keep my cool
on their 51 degree summer nights.
Statistically, this is the city with the most single people in it –
soloists, loners, former lovers who understand that oneness is wholeness.
There's healing properties to that.
Up here, nothing is missing.
I'm so far away from what happened
that it becomes invisible,
or at least
lost to the fog that keeps rolling through.
--
Nov 3, 2019
Nov 3, 2019 at 1:43 PM UTC
yellow
you waited for me in madrid
blue
your presence granted me pain in granada
orange
within breaks of pain i was granted joy in segovia
turqoise
i truly remembered how much i love you in toledo
black
you hated me in seattle
white
i learned love without pain is not love
gray
you granted me life
Jul 10, 2019
Jul 10, 2019 at 2:50 PM UTC
I open the windows when it rains
I watch the sky drown the earth the same way the pain of missing you drowns my soul
I smell the wet soil and think of home
of the way the mountains smell in April
of how the beach smells after a storm
With the waves crashing into droplets on the cities edge
I'm not religious but I pray that if I leave the windows open during the storm a droplet from Seattle will find it's way to me in the desert
One with salt from the Pacific and sap from the pines
I pray for a droplet from your home to find it's way into mine
Jul 1, 2019
Jul 1, 2019 at 5:48 PM UTC
Have you imagined in your turquoise dreams majestic mountains and seaside scenes?
Then go West my friend and come to me in endless summer, savoring fruits of joy in sun warmed shimmer....
Jun 24, 2019
Jun 24, 2019 at 3:52 AM UTC
love is what love is; i've always spoken it into monuments. their eyes would be pearls among cheeks captured in marble, and i spent a lot of time time tracing bone to bone over the bridge of my nose thinking if my touch is the same as others'. love is what love is and i've acted as Midas. under all the suns kisses are dandelions, we run through the blossom. in the scratched blackheads there's pollen and i lie fetal as a raisin and whisper **** it out". break my shoulders, whiten your hands, **** it out.
love is what love is; I've started to wonder if raindrops **** intimately, so the pollen pours out at paint's pace. love is what love is what's real is what's slow. i can count blackheads among vacuum suction marks. water trickles down the post, jogs after each other 'til one catches the other in matrimony. i wonder if they **** if they love, and if the rising action is longer than what i have to live. but love is what is, slowly but surely. moments in time can't be lost if rain ***** forever.
Apr 10, 2019
Apr 10, 2019 at 2:54 PM UTC
If you're unclear about love,
return your heart to a place with fog
With clouds created from breathing in the cold during long uphill walks that end in a view of the water
Return the way daylight retreats to the grey embrace of the Pacific Northwest sky at the edge of winter, dissipates in all directions like ripples upon their misty bay
Return the way sunset colored leaves hanging in limbo fall back to Earth
Visions to pieces
Tears to eyes as condensation builds
against the glass of a coffeeshop window and distorts the view from outside and from within
Return the way rain lands on a broken sidewalk in Seattle,
not pouring so much as drifting
through what looks like a new morning
blurred with all the dark nights that came before.
Oct 29, 2018
Oct 29, 2018 at 12:51 AM UTC
Seattle is where it's okay to bury your head in the clouds,
where it's acceptable to walk beside and among their sad water
Here, the greys of puddled sidewalks
give way to deeper greys that extend beyond the reach of their docks
This is the place where you can get to any level of cold and wet, only to be steps away from any given coffeeshop and the steam from a mug held with two hands
This is where you'll wake up and face the rain sans umbrellas
where you'll gain an aesthetic to the gloom, a poise to the overcast
Shrouded in mist at the far corner of the map, you'll draw your energy
in harmony with the ups and downs of their multi-storied fish markets and undulant streets
Here, you'll find your path through faded daylight and breathe in air embalmed by hundreds of rainy days
You'll exhale the weight you carry within your chest into a healing view of a horizon lined by ferry boats,
there to take you across whatever darkness you're faced with at day's end.
Oct 22, 2018
Oct 22, 2018 at 7:33 AM UTC
Where do you run when your loneliness strikes?
It's just about midnight, while you stroll downtown glaring at the lights.
All over creation, I see the lust of the world,
while pride tries to draw me in.
Can't you see what PornHub has done?
As I sat in front of the garden of Eden,
I watched others stand in line waiting for their fruit.
Oh, how deceived I was.
Being ****** made the loneliness worse I was numb to it.
We're all lost,
overly using the wrong Messiah such an Urban Legend.
These apples had my heart but never caused me to Have A Heart.
I certainly almost surely died,
from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Admit it, we are all lonely.
May 27, 2018
May 27, 2018 at 5:22 AM UTC
Influence is the power you have over others
Brothers fighting over the bigger crumb
Dumb to what they and their sister's have become
Won by skin tones and education
Legislation driven by religion
Forgiven by a being we've never met
Regret nothing, so we do it again
Friends burn bridges for this power
Liars sell visions for this power
Poppers give their lives for this power
This is why I despise this power
We all sin
So we all can't win
But if the game was rigged to begin
What do we ever, really win?
Apr 4, 2018
Apr 4, 2018 at 4:34 PM UTC
Rotting flesh bathes under the sun's unrelenting waves
Our prey has felt the reapers touch
repossessing its soul
so we may harvest the remains
The scents invade our nostrils
luring us into a state of blissful hunger
We dive
We feast
We leave none to waste
Feb 15, 2018
Feb 15, 2018 at 11:51 AM UTC