Your lips tasted of blood, of iron
and accompanied by your ire soaked glare,
I trembled in wake of your presence
Though I never second guessed where your heart was
The scars on your chest, and the scratches on your flesh
left me with the notion that our part wasn’t timeless
Better judgement importuned-
That I recognize the imminent doom,
and take notice of the corrosion crippling my mindset
Hope overwrites logic
If the fabric of clarity shrouded me in protection
Then blindness tore through without hesitation
And I am ripped to shreds in the wake of the hydra

What was the last thing you forgot?
I thought I’d forgotten about Chumbawamba
Their song about not remembering whether they had amnesia
And discovered the reasons we forget
There are three

Sometimes the memory is simply lost
I fail to record it
I struggle to retrieve it
I lose it through the passage of time
And I may as well never have learned it

Sometimes the memory was never right
A subtle hint overwrites it
A trick of the mind confuses where I got it
A belief or assumption filters and interprets it
And surely I learn to trust my memory less

And then, of course, I could repress it
Squash it into the back of my mind
Remembering Freud’s unproven theories
Hoping that what’s left behind
Leaves me feeling more positive

Spring is in its prime again
each leaf beautiful
much is edible
birds and peepers are musical at dawn.

The days walk slowly
toward Utah and Italy.
My left nut hurts.
Joy overwrites death.

Well, well. You're well
alone in your brain
only a negligible fraction
escaping as words and actions.

Every leaf that's coming out
is out. Including the self
to the west and south
a golem, mandragon, an elf.

Aaron was stacking
the last of last year's
firewood. He found
a spotted salamander--

Ambystoma maculatum--
Big mouth--hidden
under the final log
with a worm and centipede for a meal.

I exclaimed Rare species!
but it's common, fossorial
lives in moist woods
under cemetery stones and memorials.

Eats earthworms,
snails, slugs
insect larvae
and adult beetles.

Swaying back and forth. Carrying my mind in vast directions. It is getting hard to stay with the current. The water tugging at every corner and crevice of my state of being. I can feel my muscles tiring, along with my cerebellum. I yell into the void and empty sea air, “LET ME GO. LET ME GO. I can make up my own mind! I am my own person!” But I am the only creature floating in this ocean of debate and discrepancy, so, not a soul can hear my helpless cries of dull agony. All I have left to do is wade, and wait. So I am waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Still waiting.

Soon waiting overwrites wading as my body gives up, and so I begin to go limp.

Now I am limp. Limp. Limp. Almost lifeless.

Almost is the word my mind seems to be holding onto, as if it is some form of a flotation device.

The Ocean continues dropping in temperature as the sun rushes itself towards the bottom, to leave me cold and alone with the moon.

He mocks me. Mocking. Mocking. Still Mocking me.

I am still limp.

“You have to keep yourself above the line.” My mind begins feeding me truths based on lies and mistakes. My mind knows that I am giving up. “You are the only person that can keep you above the line. Depend on no one else.”

For some reason, I choose today, of all days, to take what he is telling me to heart. -Yes, I remember now. I have a heart. And my heart has a beat. BU-***. BU-***.- Maybe it is the sharp, glass-like ocean, or the pitch-black air that paints the sky, that has amplified my trust.

Whatever it is, I am thankful for my mind.

I now stop waiting.

And I begin to Wade. Wading. Wading. I am saving myself.

And then,

as if I have pressed a button on a simple children’s toy,

I awake in my bed.

The sun’s arms wrapped around my apartment windows.  

The air fresh, and the day looking up at me, hope painted across her face.

I have survived another dream, to live another day.

A galaxy of infinite stars,
the boundless stretch of green,
arms spread wide,
transcending dimensions,
that's how this wait feels.

Not second, or third,
countless chances,
of corrections, overwrites,
and destiny's edits,
let's term it a new beginning
and let go of the fear that
it is only the continuation
of the chapter you hate.

Like the spectrum of color
on every bubble that flies,
let us also look for magic,
in hollow ***** that hold nothing,
but only the reasons
we look for,
to survive.