~

I read your poetry
and I am taken away
to a place where my childhood waits

Those sunny summer days
when life was easy,
and pressure was only a word taught in school

I feel weightless,
as if I can fly
and your words are my wings

You tug at my heart,
tempt my senses
and touch me in ways I have not felt before

I read your poetry
and it is as if
I am talking to a long lost friend

Catching up on good times,
crying tears with you
and sharing every smile

Walking long paths,
waving good morning to each sunrise
and good night when it sets

Dancing in moonbeams
and counting shadows,
which always add up to two

I read your poetry
and I am in awe
of your amazing talent

and I think maybe I should
just put down my pen, for yours
*is all the poetry I will ever need

it doesn't have to mean
anything.
sometimes I just need to
draw something.
something about the way her
hair falls into her face
when she laughs.

something about that crow on
that wire that keeps
yelling my name as if I've
hurt his feelings and he wants me
dead and in Hell.
something about the way I've never
heard anybody say they
love me in her western dialect
before.
I melt whenever she does.
hey, I melted the first time
she said she liked me.

that's all there is to it.
it doesn't have to mean anything.
just like dust, rain, chest pain,
a cracked windshield, a hole in
your sock or a letter from the
taxman.

it's just poetry, mum.
just little
somethings.

Every day, people fall in love;
Compose beautiful symphonies exalting the descent.
All I can hear is the somber echo of my own voice, reverberating in the air.
A piano key struck, the note sustained.

I can still see his hands on the keys, practiced and deliberate.
Mary Had A Little Lamb dropped my jaw.

I still don't understand why bad things happen to good people.
In time, he will be gone,
And even now, he is gone still.
Protecting me by hurting me.

Every day I live his death.
Every day I break my heart and tell him to stop scraping his knees.
Go slower.

He wrote me a letter: "Dear __, I know".
He stopped there, but I never could.
Nightmares of words that filled those pages.
He closed his chapter while I tried to write in the margins.

Please do not stop writing; finish that letter.
Tell me there, or in the space between our fingers. Tell me what need be told.
End the story, or start a new one, but please do not stop writing.