Take me back
To the secret garden
I have been here too long
I am shape shifting
Fog passed through me
This morning
We dissipate
It is always this way
When the sun rises
When your skin warms
I am not against it
I am not permanent
Simply here
Weeds peek
Through brick walkway
Not shy
Simply there
Stone walls close around me
A child castle
A world apart
Can we not name the shelters we built as children, home?
Tell me the difference
Between place and memory
Cut into bark of a tree
It is wick
It is green
We were young once too
Before I knew what permanence was
When things were simple
Small yellow blossoms
Freckle green grass
Growing natures way
Reaching for the sun
Aching for her rays
We long too
For what warms us
Do not name me
A dying sun
I’m an evening candle
Nothing more
Simply there

Ask me
Where I was before
I do not remember
Do not ask me
What I am afraid of
I do not know
The fear will not tell me
All I know is she is the hunter
And I the prey
And I do pray
But God is not in heaven
He does not hear me

The weight of the world
Sits different on my shoulders
When my head
Is resting on your chest
My ribs beg to split open
To scream, my soft prayers
My devotion, into your ears
Somehow, when I whisper
I love you
I hope you hear me

You have a way with words darling
What a way to say
I am the love of a life not worth living

I don’t want you to see me like this
I don’t want to experience it, first hand, either
I cannot change it
I am vulnerable
And it has not bode well for me before

Last night I was hurting
I felt six years old, again
No matter how loud the music plays
How hard I cover my ears
I cannot change
The way my mothers voice sounds
It echoes from the inside

I do not remember you
You are a strange man
A nightmare
When you crawl into my bed
Your touch all too familiar
I am a mute
To your headless horseman
We are both ghosts
You, passing through my body
Haunting, screaming, possessing
And I, a detached soul
Slipping from a warm body

I ask myself
Maybe my father never knew love
That is why he cannot show it
I turn to look at my youngest brother
I never knew love either
But to him
I cannot help but show it

Run me back
To the house on the hill
To where the trees grow thicker
Perhaps that is where I get my skin from
Today, it will not hold my rage
Still, I feel contained

Here I am
Standing on the edge
This thought
Binds my feet to the ledge

If I jump
The pain won’t fall with me
And, somehow the heaviest
Weight on my shoulders
Is weightless

I know
If I took that step
It’s not right
To leave you what’s left

I can’t burden you with it
There’s no where
In your soft body
To hold my hurt
I can’t burden you with it
There’s no where
In your soft body
To hold my hurt

The space you made to love me
I could never let my pain
Take its place
So when I think of fast falling
When the edge is calling
I see your face

I know you’d go with me
On the way down, down
Told me once
I’d never feel alone, alone
But, I know at the bottom
We’d go our separate ways, way
Because heaven is for angels
And those who know how to pray, pray

I stop to think
Sway a little in the wind
Kick some gravel from the edge
My ancestors are dust
My hopes are ashes
I think of you
Of the flowers we picked
In the summer fields
Every memory of you
Fills the honeycombs of my mind
With sweet, sweet syrup

I can’t burden you with it
There’s no where
In your soft body
To hold my hurt
I can’t burden you with it
There’s no where
In your soft body
To hold my hurt

And I turn away from the edge
Light as pollen in the wind
Weightless
Weightless