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Most moments in our lives pass unnoticed, without remark or consciousness.
Then, there are those that mean something, or that we choose to mean something,
   that become a placeholder for our lives, to add meaning, understanding, passage
    a demarcation that bestows significance
My daughter graduated, under rainy skies and cool breezes.
The white tents in the grass flapped empty and lonely like a cancelled wedding
We sat in a loud gymnasium rather than in the grass quad surrounded by trees
I was there with a thousand other proud parents;
I circled her name in the program.  I waited for the moment when it was to be called; being    
   slightly afraid I'd miss it
And I whistled and yelled, but I don't think quite enough.  I didn't seem to mark the moment.
It was a moment, and I knew it, expected it, wanted it to be.
   so badly.  
Bittersweet.  I like that word, it explains life so well.
I like the idea of bittersweet and I wanted to have it envelope me that day.
I tried to hold on to it.   Like a good dream that comes too late in the morning and wont be prolonged quite far enough
I wanted to hold on, to understand what it meant.  I knew it meant so much,
   or, at least, I wanted it too.
I held on to understand what this meant to her.
I held on to remember my own graduation and the dream I then only fainty realized I had just experienced in my four years of college
I held on because I know her next steps take her further away.
I held on to feel what she felt in the mixture of joy, relief, sadness, confusion;
   all that goes with parting from friends who alone know the exerience you shared.
I held on to make sense of my life.  Making sense of moments makes them meaningful.  
I want life to be meaningful
I wish I would have written something that evening.  In the full emotion of the day.
I thought about it.
And now, like that dream, it is fading into morning light.  I can't remember all that was, or seemed to be, profound and important as I watched my daughter those two days.  
I want it to mean something enduring, symbolic and permanent.  
I want my life to be important, to reflect a famous quote from someone, to be in granite.  
Not so everyone will know it mattered, just so that I will.
If I approach you my hair feints,
In the wind like my heart.

If I look at you my eyes glaze up,
A beautiful birdy flies by.

What little words we seldom share,
I show such trouble speaking.

What little time near you I spend,
I have such fainty breathing.

Rain drops feel like your finger tips,
What I imagine touch to be.

Temperate waters in the harbour,
To carry boats fine out to sea.
If I approach you my hair feints,
In the wind like my heart.

If I look at you my eyes glaze up,
A beautiful birdy flies by.

What little words we seldom share,
I show such trouble speaking.

What little time near you I spend,
I have such fainty breathing.

Rain drops feel like your finger tips,
What I imagine touch to be.

Temperate waters in the harbour,
To carry boats fine out to sea.
Peyton L Jun 2020
When I close my eyes
press the heels of my palms into
the sockets, push them into my skull
ever so slightly,
the phosphine images dance
even in utter darkness.
Sometimes the colors are cold-
purples splashes like deep buckling
bruises on skinned knees,
heart blue of a stormy sea,
gray ash covering a consumed funeral pyre.
Sometimes they are warm-
crimson reds flash with dull orange,
a yellow hue to soften the background,
a golden brown like the sun
beaming on slick mud.

The lids closed over my crater eyes
lips parted as I just experience
the sensation of being
nothing and everything all at once.
And when I remove my hands,
open my eyes,
I feel infinitely different
but the same.
Everything and nothing has changed
a fundamental feeling inside has gone
away but only just emerged.

I look at myself in the mirror
and do not recognize who stares back,
but have never imagined her differently.
My face doesn't quite look like mine,
like there used to be some other
consciousness inhabiting
the expanse of my skull
like a different heart
beat inside my pericardial cavity.
My fingers look too short,
my hair too long,
my nose not squishy enough
but I remember feeling the locks
of my hair between my
too short fingers,
remember scrunching my
not squishy enough nose
at smells not satisfying
I remember feeling every inch of my skin
even if it seems too warm or too bumpy
I recall placing my hands on my hips
when displeased
sticking my too wide tongue out
batting my too clumpy eyelashes.

Running my tongue over my teeth
the smooth pearl-like bone
feeling the jagged points of my canines
and fainty remembering
moving a salty, chalky pebble around my mouth
twisting it with the tip of my tongue
slightly biting on the surface
the friction of stone on teeth jarring
and I spat it out
the saliva covered pebble
striking the ground
leaving my spit to absorb into the Earth
a little peace offering
to Mother Nature.

I have always been of this universe
the material of stars coursing through
my tiny veins and capillaries.
My nerve endings
like nebula just beginning to take form
my eyes like swimming in
a galaxy of green and yellow and gray
my stomach acid like the uninhabited
surfaces of lifeless planets
outside of our solar system.
The thoughts in my head
like the ever-expansive space
us humans peer into when we
stargaze, our wonder at the falling stars
how we find the depthless dark
of infinity beautiful and terrifying.

I have watched many things burn
stared at books disappear into dust
observed as bonfires
go up in flame and smoke
but nothing will burn quite as bright
as intensely white-hot
as the hunger in my eyes.
this is also posted on my Instagram, @poetrypeyton
OGOH OWULO ALEX Feb 2017
Speak not your pain into the night
Where the air will store them high
To the smiling face of the sky calabash
On a fainty sky, painted ash.

For;
When the moon shall again grow
At dark, with your painted pain that show;
On her face mirroring ugly
Shall she returned back your pain wryly.

But,
Say your wish of brighter days ahead
On the twinkling face, on the moon's head
And when her twinkling shall again re-appear
Your wish shall return brightened like a sharpened war spear.

— The End —