You are precisely as my soul remembers you—familiar and unchanged,
Yet somehow distant from what my heart believes you could be. When our souls recognize someone but hesitate to connect,
We must pause or, better yet, swiftly exit through the nearest gate. Our souls carry the memory of past karmic connections,
Familiarity doesn't always mean safety or a genuine bond of love.

We must learn to identify past cycles that are not worth repeating.
Once we have mastered the art of avoiding a repeat of the old drama,
Only then can we move forward with clarity and heal our trauma.

I am
deliberately
destroying our family.

They say a wise woman
builds her home—
I am removing every brick
we so carefully
stacked.

But do not blame
my wisdom,
or the lack of it.

If only I could show you
all the possible endings
of our story—
the ones I’ve built and rebuilt
in my mind and heart—
and still
it would not be enough
for you to forgive me,
for me to forgive myself,
for the shame
of becoming
a beggar
pleading for life.

Jesus, son of David—
have mercy on me.

Calm,
What a weird,
new feeling.
Stripping anxiety from my bones,
searing itself in its place.
Causing the old ache to seep from skin, my soul.

Hi, new friend.

Please stay.

Envelope my body,
Cause brush fires with my smile.
Lower the humming bird beat of my heart,
Let me join you every night with my head on your pillow,
Until I finally sleep.

Has your soul ever been displayed,
Framed by thick wooden-glazed borders,
and set up in the gallery of another's life?

Can you say the painting of you
Beams with joy through heavy clouds,
Sliced by sharp shards of glass-like light?

If not, may you then brush-up yourself,
Quick blots of pink on sunken cheeks,
Lighten the shade under each eye?

Or will you draw the curtain,
Blind me to me, and you to you,
Pinch out the last flicker of fight?

In the wildest place,
my mouth stopped with stars,
I came to the end of words;
the parched mint, bitter
paper plank

where I lost my balance,
on one foot teetering
along that roadway where gold-
flashing fireflies stand effortlessly
on air

to send their fragile signal
out,
every night a nocturne
of one less
til I and the last firefly

danced alone
in the wildest place
sending our last ignition
out
to find our kind

or else fall quiet
and one
with the wild that
will neither be spelled
nor known.




©joyannjones June 2023