Cannot listen to certain tunes
Due to poison melodies.
Cannot sing in an empty room
Too used to sympathy.
Cannot go to certain places
For fear that you are there.
Cannot hide in hidden spaces
For you are everywhere.
No "happy holidays" for me this year
The anniversary of life.
Shedding gallons of quiet tears
As you threatened with a knife.
As I burn all of your clothes
And scorch away the pain,
Your ashes flowing through the air
Though things will stay the same.

I stop and wonder of the old homes past
Crumbling from the bottom up
Why was it left behind?

My mind imagines the years gone by
A family full of love and life
Forever was with-in reach

***** children chasing fireflies at night
Ankles ringed with mystery dirt
Olly Olly Oxen Free

Rockers and gliders making front porches squeak
Grown folks keeping an eye
On kids running wild

Watermelon slices, so cold and sticky
Served to keep them at bay
Wash cloths always near by

Young ones knew that yellow lights in the windows
Meant that soon they would bed
Dreaming of tomorrow

But now, there was no yellow window light
No breeze blowing in to cool
The dreamers

Now there were echoes of innocent laughter
Under a missing roof
And darkness

The safe sounds of parents talking downstairs
Reduced to mere memory
What happened?

As I walked away from the old home at dusk
My heart heavy with loss
I wished them well

I remember you telling me how you thought highways were poetic.

There’s a spot I like to go to at night that overlooks the pacific highway,
a wall covered in vines,
I sit there and feel calm.
I can see the poetry in the way the red and white bleeding lights stretch along this road to nowhere.
I can see the poetry in the way each car holds a human
who is living a life that is not mine
and how each life is different
and how for a brief moment these lives are on the same path.
The man on his way home from work,
who has no one to go home to but a dog,
he is tired and he is a hard worker.
He remembers that he is out of milk so he takes the next exit.
A woman who just came from a first date,
who is disappointed because she isn’t sure if she’ll connect with another person the way she connected with her ex-lover,
she regrets the lies she told.
Their cars race forward
and their lonely thoughts chase them home.
These cars are going so fast,
I find it hard to focus on one for more than a moment.  
However,
there is poetry in the way that I am still, while life is going fast.
They say being still isn’t progressive.
They say being still will get me nowhere.
But, I am grounded when I am still.
I am savoring every fleeting moment.
I am taking my time to get to where I am supposed to be and I am not even sure where that is.
I remember you telling me how you thought highways were poetic.
Tonight, I'm thinking that too.

I breathe in.
I breathe out.

The air is cold--
Or maybe that's
Just me.

My hands are icy,
But that's nothing new.

My heart is racing,
But I have yet to hear from you.

I can feel my pulse,
But I can't feel any blood.

My wrists don't ache,
But maybe they should
And I'm confused
Because isn't that
How anxiety presents itself
In the physical form?

But maybe this isn't
Anxiety.
Or maybe I don't
Have a physical form.

I breathe in.
I breathe out.

He whispers something kind under his breath.
Something that makes me stop going towards that light.

Something like
"I wouldn't want you to keep talking to me
If it makes you uncomfortable."

And I stop and I look over my shoulder
And he's looking down at his feet,
Remembering something good,
Something fun,
Something real.

I hear him again
"You're so kind and good. I'm sorry that happened to you."

And it makes me feel sick,
Because if I'm so kind and good,
Why did you leave?

And then I hear it
Over and over and over
Like the ghost of ex's past.

"Abuse abuse abuse abuse"
All my friends and loved ones
Chanting what a monster you are.
That it was all a game
All  a sham,
An act.

That it was just an act to you.

So I turn from the light.
And walk into something I'm new to.

I walk into the warmth of
Something I don't recognize.

It's called friendship.
It's called kindness.
It's called human decency.

You should look it up.

I breathe in.
I breathe out.