It would be easy to die for you,
but you are teaching me what it is to live,
not just for you,
but for me.

The things I would do to simply hear you softly strumming your guitar from the other room would offend god, man, and everything in between.
To catch the moonlight reflecting off your two pieces of sea glass.
To smell the room after you've left your trail of gentle aroma.
To crawl into the bed and be enveloped in a hug by the warmth that you have left.
The things that i would do for an ounce of tenderness.

Can you ******* Marlboros still?
Can you feel my hand upon your back?
Is someone else filling your space?
When you're under the covers,
do you long for me as I long for you?

I tend the fire,
stoking it with wood,
but will it consume me?
I crave its warmth,
please, don’t extinguish it.
Hold me beside it.

I long for the day I can look over and see your sleeping face,
Brushing away the weight of yesterday.
Your curls framing the peace you find in your dreams
Are you dreaming of me?

The unseen, unheard spirit that guides us

does not linger in the pews of a hollow church,
It doesn't commute through the veins of a five-lane highway.

It doesn't nest in the bones of suburbia

or whisper between the teeth of an office cubicle.
It waits where the earth still breathes.

In the gentle songs of a waking bird,

the hush of leaves surrendering to the soil,

the wind’s low hymn through cathedral redwoods,

the autumn air, cold and sharp.
These are the roots that connect us to our home,

woven into marrow, into memory.
But I tore myself from the earth,

uprooted from my lover, my tribe, my sanctuary in the sleepy woods,

chasing gold that turned to dust in my hands.
I just pray the ground will take me back.

I don’t wish to be your keeper,
only to stand beside you, safe in love.
But why did everything shift so suddenly?
Was it really as sudden as it seemed,
or had the change been locked away,
poison pricked, creeping slowly through your veins?

Everything was so bright.
I had a place.
I had a home.
I had a boy I thought was my own.

But am I bound to these chains forever?
Will my past continue to stain my future?
Have I already lost my chance at love?

I carry fragments of every version of myself.

A scared kid, alone, waiting in a car,
the world just beyond the window,

a quiet ache in my chest.

A troubled teen,

fingers trembling,

seeking solace in the burn of tobacco.

A young adult,

locked in a cage I built,

controlled by the world and its expectations.
But in the stillness of all these lives I've lived,

I’ve never surrendered.

I’ve learned how to survive.

I’ve fought battles, against myself, against the world,

I've been knocked down more times than I can count,
But I always get up.
I still work,

a slow, steady progress,

never perfect,

but always moving forward.