7:43 AM - Period 1 - Symphonic Band
I hid behind a bank of instrument nooks, each beaten, worn and termite chewed to ruddy brown and grey colors. Doors of old supply cabinets with peeling, plastic, paper coverings squeaked in a draft that no one could find. I kept my backpack against the trumpet section, just around the corner from the door, where no one could see me. Class started eight minutes ago, but Mr. Rants was gone as usual, and our student substitute Nick, was not not here yet. I unhooked the metal clasp on my Fossil backpack, searching around in the front backpack for my gum. I popped it in my mouth and bit down. Crack! Stale.
In a side pocket I found a tube of mascara I had shoved haphazardly in due to my rush from the house this morning. I untwisted the cap and wiped the tip of the brush on the rim, looking for a reflective surface. In the cubby directly in front of me was a trumpet case and a harmon mute. A shiny harmon mute. I stared at my warped reflection in the surface and laughed at myself. I thought "Only a real musician would do her makeup using a trumpet mute." I stabbed myself in the face leaving a long streak of gooey black on my nose. "******" I whispered and licked my finger to wipe it off. I laughed again, my hand still at my face. "This is one of those significant moments" I realized. "I'm not sure why though."

2. 4:21 PM - After School  - Way Home From Orthodontist Appointment
She stroked my hand, which was flat against my leg. "Sorry honey, just because I am a little disappointed because of what happened doesn't mean that." I was silent, staring straight through the windsheild. She sighed and pulled her hand away. I fiddled with a rubberband, my legs crossed beneath me in the passenger seat. I was hurt; I thought we were done talking about this. Hadn't she forgiven me? Like it mattered. Telling her was the right thing and there's nothing more I can do. Light Gives Heat by Jars of Clay came on the radio and as I looked through the rain, repeatedly punching my window, I felt something well up inside me. The feeling that actors must get in dramatic movie scenes. Closing my eyes, I imagined I was in a movie. That it was about me, that I would win whatever I wanted in the end and that I was clever and beautiful. "This is a significant moment" I thought. "But not like this morning, not at all."
I looked over at her, she was expresionless, tapping her finger gently on the steering wheel.
"Maybe I'll post something about this on HelloPoetry later." I thought.

the day you left me in the cold was the day i knew you loved me .
love isn't a dish served hot ,
but a flower that is frozen in an ice cube and put in a cup so that it may slightly touch your lips
every once in a while .
i told you that i thought icicles were magic ,
and the next day you brought me an icicle from the neighbor's roof ,
so sharp i could stab a hole in my heart ,
and placed it in my freezer .

i kept that magic in my freezer for 4 months , until i broke my finger and needed something to reduce the swelling .

love is like that ,
not always magic ..... sometimes it's just
melting .
sometimes it's black and blue .
sometimes it hurts the most .
last night i saw your ghost
peddling a bicycle with a basket past a moon as full as my heavy head
and i wanted nothing more than to be sitting in that basket
like E.T.
with my glowing heart beating out of my chest
and my glowing finger tips point toward our home .

you built me a time capsule full of juicy fruit and promised never to burst my bubble .
i want our first date to be at the batting cages ,
where i'll miss every hit , but you'll still look at me with your starry eyes like i'm a home run in the ninth inning of the world series .
now every time i think of love , i think
going , going ......

the first week you were gone to college
i kept seeing your hand wave goodbye like a windsheild wiper in a flooding car
in the last real moment i thought the hurricane would let me out alive .

yesterday , i carved your name into an ice cube and held it against my heart until it melted
into my aching pores
today , i cried so hard that the neighbors knocked on my door and asked if i wanted to borrow some
sugar ...
i told them i had left my sweet tooth in your mouth .

love isn't always magic ,
but i offered my life to a magician ; i told him to cut me in half just so i could come back to you
whole
and ask for you back , would you listen ?

i wrote too many poems in a language i did not yet know how to speak ,
but i know now
it doesn't matter how well i say grace if i am sitting at a table where i am offering no bread to eat .
so this is my wheat field ,
you can have every acre , love ..
this is my garden song
this is my fist fight with that bitter frost .

tonight , i begged another stage light to become that back alley street lamp that we danced beneath
the night your warm mouth fell on my timid cheek
as i sang maybe i need you
off key ,
but in tune ....
maybe i need you the way that big moon needs that open sea
maybe i didn't even know i was here til i saw you holding me
give me one room to come home to
give me the palm of your hand , every strand of my hair is a kite string ,
and i have been blue in the face with your sky , crying a flood over iowa so you mother will wake to venice .

lover , i smashed my glass slipper to build a stained glass window for every wall inside my chest ..
now my heart is a pressed flower and a tattered bible ;
it is the one verse you can trust .
so i'm putting all of my words in the collection plate ,
i am setting the table with bread and grace .
my knees are bent , like the corner of a page ;
i am saving your place .

Before today,
I spent nights looking at the stars,
and the moon,
knowing that anywhere you were,
you were also looking at the same sky I was.
day after day knowing
that no matter where the stars were in the sky
you saw them too.
No matter where the sun sat,
you were looking too.
Here we are,
almost three months along
and I look at the sky
and all its stars
and regret it all.
Because no matter where you are,
weather you be sober,
or dazed and confused,
strung out,
or stressed out,
behind the windsheild of your jeep
you see the same thing I do
but with through different eyes.

THIS STORY IS FOR A STRANGER ABOUT A WOMAN

It's not exceptional nor is it extraordinary.
It just is...
A brief journey through a half life.
She was given home to be born into that was furnished with doubt and anticipation.
A surpirse gift.
She had parents who loved her and raised her.
An adventurous and curious child.
She made way into the territory of her youth that was sometimes dangerous and sometimes timid.
That didn't stop her from exploring and wondering.
Pushing bounderies of her own mind and the surrounding world.
She climbed the highest tree just to fall effortlessly onto the ground waiting for her.
What could of been an instant end resulted in a hospital visit.
Left to her was a concusion and a willfulness to conquer fear from then on.
She was learning but not alone.

Forward some years and the little girl becoming a woman.
Being of compassion and loyalty she was a good friend.
Maybe sometimes too good.
An irrational chain of events one night out of thousands more to come would test that girl.
A time where her will and mind had been altered irrevocably.
An innocence stolen.
Still she trudged ahead for there was still life to be lived.
Even though at times, she questioned if her's was worth it.
She was a fighter at the core.
Cause and effect may be taken into account at this point.
Things had changed for those around her as well.
Here she was unceremoniously given the duty of caring mother-like for a child sibling.
Thrusting through an abandonment of the other half of a two pillar support.
Naturally and with some rebellion she mustered up the task and did what she felt she had to.
It was not expected but necessary.
She was learning but not alone.

As time moved on she moved with it.
Experiencing love for the first time she lept into it with ferocious dedication.
Trying to use the knowledge she had witnessed and apply it to the grown up world.
In this endeavor, a garden to be planted where a flowerbed had stopped blooming.
From it a seed of life becoming and unbecoming before it's time.
A warning of maturity perhaps.
Then later a gift of responibility to come to fruition.
A living, breathing love.
Not without it's concequences though.
With this joy also came trepidation.
A new seed growing but with possibility of delays or death.
A birth defect, chromosome abnormality the doctors warned.
A lifetime of disability or a short lifetime resulting in eternal rest.
The girl knew that no matter what came about she would want to bring this life into the world.
It deserved a chance.
So with that a baby came immense joy.
And to this day no negative physical affects.
The gift she will be forever greatful for.
She was learning but not alone.

Years pass and memories are still being made.
People have been lost but not forgotten.
Now a woman, she masters her life with hopeful hands.
Her health was always a loose branch in the wind it seemed.
Sickness came in the form of kidney infection and dying organs.
Car accidents and permanent aches.
Feminine ****** duties being taken away.
Genetic self sabotage.
Mental illness and straining to swim above.
She was learning but not alone.

It was a long difficult road in a short expanse of time.
Her life that she was constantly improving and trying to understand.
Now brings us to the point of a recent harrowing situation...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2014
It's Christmas time last year and the snow is fickle.
Family is spread out and travel is a must for her little one to connect with everyone.
So she gets into her car to journey across the counties.
It's uneventful outside.
Work and bills and hobbies are what consume her daily life now.
But she is always focused on being a good mother.
So that's the reason for the ride, not the excuse.
Cruizing the same highway she's been down hundreds of times already,
She thinks nothing of it.
It's just what she has to do.
Traffic is sparse but other vehicles out now are semi trucks and hastily driving holiday commuters.
The radio is on and the child is in the back seat commenting on the passing scenery.
She is patiently answering questions and focusing on the road.
Up ahead of her some hundred feet on the snowless stretch she sees a car wiggle a bit.
Tightening her hands on the wheel she just knows this isn't right.
She can't move over to her left.
She slows down under the speed limit just in case.
But it's inevitable.
She's going over that samw spot in a few seconds.
Now as she does, her body suddenly kicks into instinctual safety mode.
The car doesn't wiggle.
It starts to fish-tail.
Hard.

Splotchy recollection takes over here.
From that exact moment, it could of been only a few minutes but it felt limitless.
As the car started to take a life of it's own she heard the voice of her daughter in the background.
A mantra of 'It's okay, we're okay" flooded out of her mouth automatically.
She tried to right the car but her hands could have been invisible at this point.
Half rotations from left to right eventually lead to doing a 180 degree motion.
Stopping the swivel just before the car impacted the dividing medium on the highway.
At unaided 55 miles an hour she was now looking into the windsheild of another car in the other lane.
The momentum pushing the slippery cage of metal backwards now.
She was a dichotomous fog of confusion and awareness.
Only lasting a few more seconds the car wipped it's way back East.
Sliding back into the lane it was originally in, it kept going.
She now could see the edge of the ravine getting closer.
Where the highway ended and darkness started.
A 20 foot drop if you fell sideways.
Scared chatter from the backseat.
Radio on.
And then suddenly nothing.
Like catching a glass from falling off the table the vehicle just stopped.
Everything turned off.
It was over.
Just sitting alone on the road.
No horns were honked and no one was hurt.
Her breathing was the loudest thing to be heard.
After looking back quickly to make sure her little girl was alright,
she closed her eyes for the first time since this all began.
That's when she felt it.
Something she has felt before but only faintly throughout her life.
When things were wonderful and when they spiriled down.
When she had felt great happiness and overcoming sorrow.
It was an electricity that bloomed in her belly and down her back simultaneously.
It grounded.
It soothed.
It overtook.
She was learning but not alone.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You could say it was a fluke or maybe luck.
For me it was something better, bigger.
As I continue on my life's path wherever it leads me, I just know.
I know that things happen for unknown reasons and we want to make sense of them.
Sometimes we can't.
All I can say is that by suffering through the pain and bad, we value and appreciate the good.
People have terrible situiations to live through but they live through them.
We find the meaning to our lives sometimes in mysterious ways.
Sometimes you have to attribute things to faith, undoubtedly.
And when it's not your time...
It's not your time.
I still survive.
What's your explanation of my story?
Something I haven't already thought of maybe?
When you can find another reason for it, let me know.
Until then I dare you...

Tell ME that GOD doesn't exist.


*©NDHK

Five Days In May**

They met in a hurricane
Standing in the shelter out of the rain
She tucked a note into his hand
Later on they took his car
Drove on down where the beaches are
He wrote her name in the sand
Never even let go of her hand

Somehow they stayed that way
For those five days in may
Made all the stars around them shine
Funny how you can look in vain
Living on nerves and such sweet pain
Loneliness that cuts so fine
Find the face you've seen a thousand times

Sometimes the world begins
To set you up on your feet again
And I know it wipes the tears from your eyes
How will you ever know
The way that circumstances go
Always gonna hit you by surprise

But I know my past
And you were there
In everything I've done
You are the one.........

Looking back it's hard to tell
Why the stood while others fell
Spend your life working it out
All I know is one cloudy day
They both just ran away
Rain on the windsheild headed sound
Oh she loved the lines around his mouth

Sometimes the world begins
To set you up on your feet again
And I know it wipes the tears from your eyes
How will you ever know
The way that circumstances go
Always gonna hit you by surprise

But I know my past
And you were there
In everything I've done
You are the one.........

The morning air freezes in my lungs,
My chest tightens
My hands are too weak
To hold the panic down,
It rises up from the ground
And wraps itself around my ribcage

The cold has me exhausted
And it's only November

I need to stay focused now

More pain is coming

I take the frost on my windsheild
Like a glaring warning:

"Breathe now.
This is the calm
Before the storm"

I feel like the mountains are laughing,
They see what's coming before it
Reaches us
And they know how ill prepared
We'll always be

They think it's pretty funny,
The heats up all the way
But it's only circulating
Bitter air
In a tauntingly rhythmic
Motion

I am staring into blank space,
Snow blind
And shaking

You are where the pavement is warm
All year long,
And no one ever asks
You to feel their blue hand
On your pale cheek bone
So how do you know what
Sorrow tastes like?

Yeah, I've cried in the warm sun
But it's a unique depression
When it feels exactly like
the whole coast is crying with you

I let every call go to voicemail,
I need more bad news like
A hole in the throat

This is when the overdoses
Start to pile up

My friends are broken
I'm glad I never got there

The cigarette in my hand
Is shivering
While I hold it out
Into the elements,
Unprotected
It fights the stillness,
The thickness,
The grayness
Of Almost-Winter
With its small bit
Of raging fire
But it stands no chance
And as soon as the center
Gets damp,
It starts to taste like cancer
So I drop it over ice...
Watch it try to follow my car,
Watch it fail
And extinguish
Into the ground

That reminds me
I should really call you back
But I'm so tired baby

And sometimes
Maintaining anything
Feels pretty pointless

The earth inhales,
Kinda wheezes,
It sounds too much
like the last three gasps
Of a dying man

Do you know what it's like
To be as tired as the day you're in?

Days are never tired in the south

You'll never know darkness like a northerner

We can smell the bruises forming

I hope to be there by the morning,
to see you in the sun.
i love the heat brush past my windsheild.
i know you'll be there,
you'll say hello.
you're smiling in love,
we'll know by tonight.
savannah,
we sum up perfection like a handbook.
we'll know more but,
until then.
baby, i spent my life wondering.
wondeing when i'll find you.
i need you to know that,
everything makes sense when you're with me.
savannah,
walk out to the country evening,
the sea breeze brushes your hair to the side of your neck.
all these feelings that are so hard to find,
are just there.
believe me,
we'll know my tonight.
but until then,
goodbye, *savannah.

I wish you could flash high beams from tail lights so that u can tell the ******* behind you to turn off their high beams
I wish my headphones were invisible
I wish my acne was invisible
I wish I was invisible
Aren’t I?
The salt hurts your eyes when you try to tell the elephant to get off of your chest
He walked in with a maroon vest and pretended to help as she reached for the top shelf in hopes of an antibiotic buzz
Fuzz surrounds my memories to hide the ugly parts
You pushed me around in a shopping cart and I forgot that I had legs
I spent my high school years inside of song lyrics tapping kegs
Taylor wrote about a forgotten egg
You have to be known to be forgotten
Mr knott says cotton will **** you
I just wish the blues were still blue
I’ll stop rhyming now
It’s not how I plan, what its made to become
My mind finds the next line hidden in the last one
I don’t make sense and i’m not having fun
I wish pencils were still made of led
“God ****** laura dever” you said
“It should have been you”
I wish i️t was me too
I’m done living in suburban blues
I’m done living without you
19 days to be exact, a 17 day panic attack
It’s always easy to know where i’m at
A final goodbye, the sky turned red to warn us of what was already done
Trees attacked the public and it seems im the only one
That wasn’t afraid to die
A red warning waited in the sky
It took place of the rainbow and watched me tell my last lie
“Please forget about me, goodbye”
Mother nature cried, she was finally on my side
My broken windsheild wipers weren’t doing well
Through the rain it was still easy to tell
Something’s been missing from me for awhile
Call 927-6289 if you happen to find my smile

This is not what I expected
it’s been a blurry haze
since you injected

your mistake in me

now i’m infected
with what I love to hate
a new neglected

side of me..
she’s kinda hectic.


I feel the dizzy before I spin
and dear, I’ve lost my head again

These walls don’t it know,
but they’ll crash.
What was once a home is now trap.

These feelings that won’t go,
are not changing.
My heart’s beating so hard
that it’s breaking

down again.


A loves gone loveless for far to long
so sick with sadness
what went so wrong?


and all I know, when the phone rings
I will leave after the tone

someone hear me!
I’m starting to think that i’m alone!

Is someone near me
or am I still own on my own?

I can’t see real clearly
but it looks like
it’s the end of the road

can’t get a grip
i’m loosing stearing

and now i’ve completely lost control

I can’t stop
no brakes
no gearing

windsheild’s bursting

lights knocked out

guess this is goodbye
my sweet last hope.

It was witching hour three sheets to the wind and a blinding high beam now spinning out of control into a ditch contorting cemetery fencing around the windsheild at windpipe height and I think to myself, "That's almost poetic."

The sound of rain hits my ears
As we drive through the wind
The drops of water crowding the windscreen
And a sad song is playing on the radio
And all I can think about is you
But you aren’t hear anymore
You were taken away
And now you are an angel
And the rain could be
All of earths angels crying
And the clouds
Show all the emotions
That cant be expressed
And a tear rolled down my cheek
Because I miss you
And I blended right in with the rain
And I wondered what you were thinking about
Do you miss me too?
Do I cross your mind?
Memories surround me
Rain is so sentimental
Just staring of into the distance
Gets you thinking
About the past
Every raindrop is filled with memories
And pain
And hurt
And they covered the windsheild
And started to fall really hard
And they all just hit me at once
And I buried each raindrop
Deep in my heart
Where I could hold you close
Forever,
Until we meet again
But for now
I’ll always be thinking of you
Especially in those long rainy drives.