The mind
as thought
is the naming
after  arrival
of an image
of our tree..

walking back
we realize there
is no tree..but a
series of brushstrokes
on the canvas of
our perceiving mind..

quietly and quickly
in an eye's blink
the mind's thought
names a tree
and 'lo.. we speak
of a tree..

I can’t do this anymore
something has to change

I love you
I miss you
and I never meant to hurt you

I won’t say I’m sorry
because isolating myself
is the best thing
I’ve ever done for me
I’m finally getting to know myself again
and now I know why
I was never happy

The thing is
I was too caught up with
you and your messes
to realize
I was beginning to unravel
from the inside out

I was too busy making sure
everyone else
got their own happy ending
that I forgot
who I am
and what I needed

Now I realize
I needed
more

I need someone
to remind me to breathe
to step away
keep my sanity
stitch myself together
and bleed my own sorrows

Everything
you are, resided in me
everything
they needed flowing in my
veins
every dream
slept in my heart
and yet
everything
that I am was
nowhere to be found
and I can’t be that again

So this is goodbye
to the girl I used to be
and sleepless nights
worrying about
tomorrow’s sorrows
wishing
I could take the pain away
'til one day
I did
and never stopped
I whittled myself away
until I was nothing
without the pain plaguing you
and those around me

I became addicted
to ******* the pain out of you
and into me
inflating myself back to life
just so you wouldn’t disappear
I never showed it but
I was slowly
going insane
always needing more pain

You always said
I never wanted stability
and you were right
because if everything was alright
I had no clue who I was
and I couldn’t
fill myself back to life

I miss my father
He's not dead, but it seems like he is
Doesn't talk
At least not to me
Where'd you go dad?
I know I couldn't be all the son you wanted
But I tried
I know we tend to forget about dads
But from the bottom of my heart I wanted to say


I love you, dad.

I am quiet. Not silent.

It might be hard to understand the difference, but there is one.

Believe me, this once.

I have spoken, screamed, begged, prayed, all of it raw and angry and loud, and it has been too unpalatable for digestion.

Ignored and left behind on plates.

The suffocation of having words lodged in your throat, words that choke you to swallow, choke you to try to speak, because they are horrible.

And then they dribble out of your mouth, leaving behind the foul taste of their wretched shapes, and the putrid stench of those horrible words makes heads turn away.

The words unheard, the wounds unseen.

Except neither of those are true, because I have spoken them within your hearing, I have shown them beneath your eyes.

So not unseen, not unheard, undigested and ignored for your own rotten convenience. Sometimes worse. Questioned and made less of.

I burn brighter than any pit in hell; rage hotter than 5,779 K searing me from the inside out.

The fire could peel me apart, my skin clawing away beneath my fingernails to expose the flames that would set all before me ablaze, the flames that are hidden beneath my bones.

And wouldn’t it be fair? For consequences to finally exist?

I am no longer the same, irrevocably different from that girl who might once have existed, who believed in fairness.

I am hate, and anger, sometimes only this red burning fury, no more. Red that crashes down upon me in unending waves that erode me further each time.

I swish it around in my mouth, considering the taste: defeat. Injustice I must make peace with, rather than repay. Because I can’t. How?

I spoke. You didn’t listen. You didn’t believe.