And really
How quickly
Can you watch time - go

You did so well
With the lot you were given
Quenched your thirst
On a hundred short straws

She took it
A minute at a time
So that now
I can enjoy hours, days, moments

You remain such as you are
If only all things beautiful would
I fear to destroy you with a touch
The glass between us is necessity
Though in my folly
I think you would be beautiful
Even in the change
Is not death the most beautiful of all
It kills my humanity and that is my anchor
I will behold you, in this light
May I be granted one more day
That I may look upon you again

Because what I do
And what I say
Are two completely different things
I have been called;
Hypocritical
Fake
and a
Liar

Because what I do is small
And what I say uses big words
I have been asked;
What is the point of your existence
Or the meaning of your words?

And I can only say this;
to listen and be heard

I do the day wrong
And the night right

Just to see the stars
For we die without light

Don't want to rush any moment
Or try to stop the time

But I love the rush of life
We don't color in the lines

We drive between
Yet we cannot be confined

Always looking out
But we avoid the signs

We will figure it out
Do you want to make it work

I look at you
But you just smirk

I love the lines
That trace your face

I hope you never ever find
Someone worth taking my place

To sometimes be apart
But never be separate

What it takes I have to give
But you are temperate

Earthly and wreathed in shadow
In the world ever depth of darkness

Let the fire breathe into you
Make you more, never less

You were born from your mother's religion of peace
You came from your father's belief of war
With a rosary in your hand for your sins
And a bullet clenched between your teeth to remind you of both strength and weakness
Every battle you fight with your hands is nothing
Compared to the war you wage against yourself

In this infinite you have wrought moments
I run circles in my head, this is how I know the way back to you so well
What is complexity, but understanding that I have not yet grasped
I have failed, and this is life
And I am fallen, yet if a rising can be made then their is no shame in such

Falling through the endless void
Yet the darkness, while empty, if it can contain me
Let it hold all things even as it let's me go
This light behind my eyes
A spark, a flame, a childish existence
Where is the fault
Will the blame rest upon me
Or upon the soil you bury your secrets in
I wander, as do my thoughts
And in the back of my mind
I turn these thoughts over
As if they were restless in their grave
As devout as you make yourself to be
Your prayers have fallen on deaf ears
Am I a little wonder?
To those who lack wonderment
You are blind, so you see with your hands
Why then do you withhold your fingers from my skin?
I am not beyond your grasp, but you let me slip away
Still I see the tears in your eyes
Even as you wipe them away with the back of your hand
I clench my jaw.
What is this?
It rises in my chest
Flowing through my arms
To fill clenched hands
Oh anger why do you find me now
I have run from you
Since I was a child
Why do you find me now
Just to catch in the back into my throat
These fingers know old secrets and bitter words
I would pound them into the earth  just so you could know my secrets
Rhythmic.
But even this you would not remember
Even this, a whisper on my tongue
You could not taste

I speak to anger
Only to ask that she leave

I went to the edge
My spirit falling back into my own body
I know nothing of this host
Burdened with consciousness
Do you too weary of your frame
What would you name your mortal coil
What tethers you
Love
  Flesh
     Mind
What is one without the other
Symbiotic in nature
They war
Preach peace
Labor your gentle touch against me
Unburdening my humanity
Of its languishing hold
You will fall one day too
One day soon
Know me now
Until the cliffs teach you of gravity
And bear your rebirth

How can I not cry
When your words honor a broken soul
This humility is a kindling
I thank you for your fire
As you thank me for my words
Tomorrow will remember this
As beautiful as today has learned it

You speak with a tongue that has walked a thousand miles
And I, so dry in my response, it would seem mine only knew deserts

Light of my soul
Sing your last song

You fit religion into my mouth like a metal fillings
Before my tongue even learned the curvature of my own name
My thoughts hold no inkling apart from that which you bound to me
Such as I am empty
Fill me up, with no doubt for my cracks and chips
I am a humble vessel

To give you my love
Would make me a fool

To take your love
Would make me a thief

To share out love
Would change the world

I lay awake
And I wish it was to question the wonders of the world
You are one of many thoughts orbiting my consciousness
Though clouded by one hundred and seventy eight bad decisions that I have made before
They wind themselves around my wrists
Tightening only when I think I have made myself free
What a fool am I
What a fool I am

Honestly,
At this point I think the demons hide under the bed because they are afraid of me.
Nothing terrifies me more than what I see reflected back to me in the mirror.

Why do you think I close my eyes?

It is not to sleep. It is not to rest, it is to escape this harsh reality.

For the back of my eyelids are blank, unlike the thoughts that haunt my mind.

Only fools go there.

Depth of longing
Not unfathomed
To see you again
Stars falling
Faster than before
Watering the sea again
I am no sailor
Of oceans or galaxies
No master of bough
I merely tremble under starlight
To know humility again

You are all my dreams never put to paper
You are every star in the sky
You are the fog resting on the lake in the earliness of the morning
You are the wish I make before I blow the candles out
You are the heartbeat in my chest at the top of the mountain
You are the leaves clinging to the trees in fall
You are the rings in the trunks of fallen trees
You are the yearning of the earth for spring
You are everything that has ever been beautiful
You are anything that is strong
You are all this and more

You say sleep when we're dead
I'm tired now

I'm not as patient as I could be
New trials today
In yesterday's courts
I am humbled
Against my faults
Bare witness to me
Hands open
Palms bleeding
I will not forget
The weight of your words
Be they shackles
Around my neck
Bracelets on my wrist
An unbeautiful adornment
There are no forgotten here
Among tombstones
These etchings belong to ghosts
Hollow souls filling up the earth
She was barren once
Now she lays in sonder graves
Of her children
They do not acknowledge her
She spins her regrets
On wooden looms
Memories woven
Back when the earth was black
I lay here, still, unmoving
Formless and void
Fill me up again
Let me taste of laughter
I bit it once
From your lips
This is the craving
That will not abait
My veins know better
Than the wisdom of my head
Lay me down
In the valley
Between the mountains
I knew you once
Called you by name
Will you answer me again
In gentle humility
We are all on fire
I can't sit, to watch you burn
You are not made of sun
Stars, or the sky they belong to
Flames forget
I remember
I remember
I knew you once
Call me by name
I crave you still
Give yourself up
I will surrender
I remember

Self care
Is the harmony of body
With the acknowledgment of soul
And the intentional wellness of both

I was a different person when I thought these things
Oh that she could return to me now, and shake me from who I have become
This mind is futile in many things
I cannot remember all that has passed before my eyes
Concrete is poured in, to the cracks in my memory
There are so many holes and yet the faces remain the same
The faces in the back of the mirror, the faces on the other side of the window
And the faces that I know I would see if I opened my eyes in the night when I am paralyzed with fear
The dreams then come and go, and come again to haunt me
The fear she is here and she stays settled in my stomach
I remember much, but it is still to little
I was but a child but I did not know
I am grown now but still I do not know
Such I have become that which is inbetweeen
I am threaded between memories and reality
That I have felt but cannot remember the taste on my tip of my tongue
Do you know of me or why I made these scars
Have you seen me in the dark of night daring not to move a muscle
I could bang my head against the wall again
Counting up until the hundredth time
I clench my hands to draw blood from my palms
So that it will match the scarlet and ebony of my wrists and soul
I am made of dreams
The paint the wall of my mind
I am made of memories
They claw their way out my eyes

Oh the wolves still chase me
And the faces appear
This is life, and this is fear

Beyond my own walls
These kingdoms we built
Stone in our sentiment
Delicate the cornerstone of our delight

There is only what we know as forward

I know you did horrible things to my body
Before you killed me
Why do you ask my ghost to comfort you
Have you not burdened my soul enough
We are all afraid of being understood
Being known
Then we are powerless
We cannot play these games
If you **** the other players
Who is the winner
You would break me
Take my beautiful pieces
To complete yourself
They will rot in your body
With the stench of guilt
Odor of revenge
I do not exist
In relation to your hunger
I have shut you away
Before you would dare to consume me
I will not satiate
Will not sedate
Not stumble over my words
Unless mine is the last voice you hear

You ghost write my life
And now my bones are haunted
You were the demons in the dark
And now I am just a possession

You cratered into me
And it pushed me into orbit
As though I had never seen the sun this way
Never seen the stars
I was moved
As only a young heart can be

I am nimbled fingered
Braiding flowers
In the devils hair
If he wants
To know my secrets
I will whisper
Them into his ears myself
About how susan
Got her black eye
Queen Anne
Tore her lace
When the summer lighting
Thundered down
How much golden rods
Are really worth
I am a wild flower
Spinning in fields
Winding vines around your leg
Until I crumble to Adam and Eve dust
In a primrose casket
We love
With fingers crossed
Behind our backs

Lately, when asked, how are you?

I roll down my sleeves, hiding scars on my wrist that don't cut as deep as the words you left wringing in my head

Lately, when asked, how are you?

I wonder how quickly your promises dissipated in the mist of time when I no longer lay quiet to your objections

Lately, when asked, how are you?

I hope for you to pick up the phone, ask me yourself, find words for your emotions licking the face of friendship torn apart

I asked you to take a step back, you took two steps forward, three steps back, I dug my heels into the ground I am not moved, I am not deaf, I hold hope in my hands currently waiting for you to ignite coals that have not completely burned out, to breathe life into a husk withering before harvest, to fill a half empty glass with salty tears, to unburden yourself, you need not carry this

Be no martyr, victim, savage or fool
Be grace, be a listening ear
Find me, when I bite my tongue at foolishness, wring my hands of blood not wanting it to drip down your wrists

You shackle your hands, beseeching me for a key you hold under your tongue
I hold no ill will for you, an ounce of heartbreak on a scale you will not let be tipped in either favor
I know of the tears you cry, I feel your heart breaking
I do not know if you will accept comfort from me, accept comfort at all, pity is for fools and I am full of it

My prayers for you are sweet sleep, gentle days, birds singing in your window, wind in your hair, hope in your heart, heart in your hands
I hope these prayers find you, I hope you let them in, I hope you remember, not with tears, I hope you know joy, I hope you ask her to stay even as I have left you, not as far as I will soon be

Lately, when asked, how are you?

I hope you are well

Open air hangs between us
A bitter cloud
Your hands could slice through
Fingers, freshly sharpened blades
Your words cut
As they are spoken
I cried once
You said you had never seen
Eyes so blue with ice
So bright with fire
So void of hope
I tell you I am drained
I pour my waters
Over the cliffs of time
Into your cupped hands
Are you waiting for me
Or waiting for me to leave
I prayed to my old gods
For you before
I fear they did not give me
Wisdom or strength
Shutting my third eye
To the appearance of truth
The glass of transparency
Is not a mirror
The shadow that is your name
Written in the sky
Casting it's hollows down
These are not stratocumulus
Not nimbus
Not shapes we know
Not the silver lining
We prayed for you
I went to the well to draw water
Why do I still know thirst

We talked about being buried one day
Letting weeping willows grow
From our carcass and ashes
We were summer once
Under the stars
Two bodies terrified of being cold
Pressing themselves into the earth
They will not bury us yet
Though we whisper of our own attempts
We opened our minds under the stars
Our hands intertwined
Constellation thoughts
Milky way minds
I saw you
Though perhaps not as you always appear
The self is a shadow
And you passed across my moon

and maybe we all
                              relapse
                                         regress

fall back into what we were

while still
              desperately
                                clinging


to whom we think we are now

and maybe it is all in
                                   futility
                                              or
                                                  weakness

but that is okay

because things done in the struggle of
                                                                  darkness

may be worth more recognition

that those
                 done
                         in the light
                                             of day

what you cannot see changing

has no
           reflection

on the value of that change

My name tasted sweetest in your mouth
Why did you turn your head and spit it out
My kisses slipped down on your cheeks
You my scornful lover turned me away
So the night fades now into the past
I will not call for you to return to me Nothing but broken love and trust hurts like this
Your guilt will follow you like a shadow
My name will be found in my own mouth
to sing into the light what you could not
How could I expect you to cherish my heart
When you yourself my friend, did not have one to share

you are green now
changing color, healing
I am not the same
won't say I've changed
we named each other once
I think I am finding my light again
I pray you are not heavy hearted

There are those in the world
That will try to take the best parts of you away
Like a flower plucked from the earth
Such as soon as it blooms it is cast aside
Be not that way
Dig your roots within the earth
Turn your face to the shining of the sun
Because you are the beautiful things
This world needs

When we are done here
I will save the parts of us
That make beautiful fiction
I do not always want to acknowledge
The unhealed parts of my self
That seep into my clear waters
I do not expect you
To kneel at my muddy banks
And drink
Know that I would see you quenched
Not thirst
How long will the threshing floor turn
While I wait hungry
For the grain to separate
From my sins