It was always just there, undoubted, unmoving.
It was the ground beneath my feet, it was the air in my lungs.
I had no reason to worry that I should be proving
That I was worth waiting around for with the songs that I sung.
Then one day I looked down and the ground moved below me,
I walked right off the edge of the earth into the thin air below.  
I had always assumed you and I would be trophies
Hanging around each other’s necks, we were the best thing we had to show.
Then the cold crept in and the trees died in fire,
Each branch was a vibrant torch, flames fighting cold autumn wind.
I still think the cold that Eighteenth Winter inspired
My heart to freeze solid when the truth wouldn’t bend.
See I’ve got shallow friendships tied around both wrists like anchors
They’re all that keeps me from drifting out to even lonelier seas.
One day I’ll work up the courage to thank her
For saving you from my complacency.
Paper butterflies are not enough to save me
For the words forming mobs at the back of my tongue.
I’ve got myself muzzled, forcing myself to behave, see,
Who knows where a thought can go once it’s begun.

Suncatcher.
Looking straight past your actions, I find your intentions. I read them in dark pupils like Webster’s definitions. Despite glass eyes staring as you let me go, your iron curtain countenance was a stained glass window. I see your thoughts cross your mind like I might see tired old man crossing his living room, just before he draws the curtains in the evening. I watched through painted panes as you held yourself still, watched through unblinking windows as you fought your own will. And so I walked to my car, in the dark, alone, breathing clouds of grey vapor in the direction of home. And you stood across the street in the amber street lights that attract the moths whose wing beats my heart finds rhythm with as it flutters from rib to lung to throat, never holding still for fear of permanence. You thought you’d gotten your heart off your sleeves but it will always be a sun catcher, hanging from fishing line, casting cold colored shadows on the actions of a nervous mind, once thought invisible, the windows you hide behind let in just enough light for me see what I knew I’d find.
Honey, I can read your smoke signals.

I don’t understand how you could me mine.
(What does the proud oak want with the pine?)
I can’t imagine how my long, skeletal hands
are the ones yours long to hold.
I am tough and coarse, like a pine,
Ever-green, constant, covered in spines
and needles, unpleasant and sharp to the touch.
While you, my love, are an oak.
You are strong and beautiful. Your leaves change colors,
fiery or verdant, you are loud when all others
shrink from speech. You, love, are dynamic, intriguing,
a tree that inspires poetry.
Your roots hold you fast, they run deep and true,
while mine fan out, shallow. I fear with no roots
to hold me, the wind could take me away.
(The wind will tear me apart.)
You are the one tree that grows tall and straight
in a place where the wind, fed by anger and hate
forces others to bend, to grow crooked, they’re lost
and confused, with nothing to reach for.
My branches are short – I offer no comfort
(from lack of ability or knowledge, I’m not sure).
Your branches stretch wide, embracing with smooth bark,
But an oak cannot love a pine.

I was sure that this feeling was gone for good,
but trial and error has yielded more error than it should
and I’m beginning to think that I can’t do all the things
I’ve so resolutely sworn that I would.
I can’t blame inadequacy on those little pink pills,
Doc prescribed my anxiety for three years and still
to this day I wonder where I’d be
if side-effects hadn’t brought out the demons in me.
But now, dearest reader, I’m finally free.
But freedom, well, it’s a bitter pill to swallow,
because now, who’s to blame when that eerily hollow,
haunting feeling creeps up behind me?
When the only thing in the room is the mirror beside me,
and I’m watching me stare back at me
and I’m seeing what I’ve always seen
and I swore, christ, I swore on everything
that this would be my awakening.
But. It wasn’t.
Yeah, I swore that this feeling was gone for good,
but winter’s brought it back like part of me always knew it would.
So I’ll hide blame under the furniture, in dark the corners of this room
and hope I’ll learn what it means to let go sometime soon.

I tire
Of the perfect:
Of the flawless,
The azure,
The quiet,
The pastoral.
I tire of sunsets
And of flowers
I tire of perfect skin
And perfect lungs
I tire of politeness
And I tire of patience.

I am bored
by golden sunrays,
Reflected brightly
from golden hair
Trailing behind a sundress
Weaving, careless,
through golden wheat.
I no longer want to be her.

I tire of fluffy pillows
And warm blankets.
I am bored of hot tea
And of books about things
That are not real,
Only beautiful figments of the mind,
Only as real as the pages, the cover,
Only as real as we can pretend them to be -
And I am bored of pretending.

I am bored with cities
And with mountains
And with fields
And rivers
And the ocean.
I grow impatient with the trees
And the clouds
And the birds.


I am bored by the beautiful.
Because beautiful is beautiful, so,
But it is only beautiful.
And Beauty, though held fast,
Esteemed above all other qualities
Sought tirelessly
Worshipped and envied
Revered, praised
Beauty is only beauty.
It is not deserved.
It is not earned.
It cannot speak, it cannot give
It cannot love.
Beauty is nothing.
Beauty is boring.
I am bored by beauty.
I do not seek what is beautiful.
I will never be beautiful.
But that is a very small thing
To never be.
I can be far, far more
Than beautiful.

I can be real.
You are real.
And I am real.
And us, we
We are real.
What we are
What we have
Is real.
I am not yet tired
Of you.

And I will never be tired
of us.