I apologize that this is not a poem.
but a simple thanks,
to all my followers and fans
for creating such a lovely community here.
Thank you for your encouragement,
your compliments, your critiques, your concern,
and sharing your own work here, too.
Somehow,
it feels better, safer to share things with you all,
Nearly-complete strangers,
than with even my mother.
However your life goes on,
beyond the screen, between the words,
I hope it goes well.
Thank you.

when the boy with musky cologne and hazelnut eyes
shatters your heart into a million pieces

you're going to have to put yourself back together

you're going to have to be your own super hero

you're going to have to love yourself

finally
after days of dark, threatening clouds
and anxious birds tracing signals into the air
and trees waving back at the lightning
while the thunder rolled around this valley-

finally
it rained

the sun fought against the sky and lost,
instead blazing behind the curtain
and turning the sky a dangerous yellow
while the trees accepted the sepia rain
with defeat

i stayed inside and watched their branches
waving lazily back and forth
as if to escape the rain, or maybe
just to dance beneath it, i don't know
but i knew
i didn't feel like dancing

i felt like dancing
when we were alone in an old building
whose walls echoed the tinny swing music
back at us and whose floors were already printed
with the patterns needed to teach you
the basic formation
and we fell out of place a million times
only to fall back in again

if you were here, i'd take you out
into this rain
and dance until the thunder came back
and celebrate the lightning's wrath
and fall out of formation a million times
only to fall back in again

with you, i always feel like dancing