Even when all
the ruby shards
and splinters
had vaporised,

I’d pretend
to gather
invisible
broken pieces

outlined in chalk.

Take my hand and we’ll jump through the pastel chalk powder.
We can be a different creature.
Both of us can go and feel at home.
Not here.

This can be an ode to my friends and my closest family.
Because you are always so dear and understanding, especially now that we're here.
Finally.
Look now all around, it feels full of options but it still makes you nauseous, yes I know.

Take my hand and let me show you why I have to go through the pastel powder.
Let me be a different creature, I feel sick when I stick around.
Both of us can feel at home now when we jump right through the ground.
A chalk pavement painting.

Let's go right into the pavement painting.
Let me take you.
Pastel, not too bright but soft and light.
Comfortable.

This painting is an ode to my dear friends and closest family.
Because you're always so dear and some things you understand so well.
Come on let me take care of those wounds and soreness with a chalk powder.
A soft chalky powder smell.


And soft colours for strange creatures.
We can be.
A different kind of creature when we go through the chalk powder on the pavement.
Take my hand, we can be, we can be...

Soft.
Comfortable.
Happy.
Smooth.
Peaceful.
Loving.

When he’s standing in your doorway
Clean-shaven, distanced,
Recognize that once he was
Scouring the cracks in the blacktop,
Picking pansies with the weeds
And clumping them together to declare
The love letters he had written along the sidewalks,
Blue chalk sprawling beside her walk home.

And one day he was standing before her desk,
A medley of a bouquet lodged under his fingernails,
That he took to be the most beautiful piece of art.
Lips slightly chapped, chest rising quickly,
In a moment of unadulterated courage he ****** his arms forward
To present the best offering he could.
And all she saw was the dirt.

There is always a moment when you pull away from a hug. That is the moment when a kiss would occur, should the situation call for it. It is the moment when only your heads and torsos have pulled away. Your feet stay in place, tucked between each other in a pattern on the ground, and your hands stay where they are, but draped loosely instead of holding on tight. For a breath of time within this moment, you are in middle school. Your date to the dance sways across from you, your hands around her waist and hers around your neck. Neither of you know enough to hold on to each other, this is just how you dance. But you know to hold on now, in this hug. In this moment. There’s nothing you want more than to hold on. To lean in and make something count just a little bit more. The hesitation lasts longer than any breath you’ve held under the surface of a chilly lake in late May. It takes more air than you could win back in a lifetime. Hesitation rules for a synchronized blink of your locked eyes before it pushes them away from each other and your hands lose the grip they finally learned, giving up on what they longed for. Maybe your cheeks are pink. Maybe they’re used to this. And maybe you’re crazy, but you didn’t think you could miss the smell of someone’s spit.

I write to you

pages of my lost years

baffled

between the absent present

and the distant past

I write to you

my thoughts burn out

in my mind

and the smoke comes out

from my ears and mouth

the cloud weeps over my head

and the flower blooms inside my heart

I write to you

my words turn into chaos

into fictional stories

turns into a trifling joke

without meaning

without taste

I write to you

like an adult

would do

but your love taught me

not to grow up

to remain a child

and just let it go

I write your name

this time on the wall

with a yellow chalk

and sit there

watching the drops of rain

dissolving your four letters name.

Chalk


She is a rainbow of colours inside a black and white TV.
She is dancing in the streets of Paris with gaiety.
She is eloquence unnecessary, for she is perfect for me.
She is grace beyond call;
She is sympathy to misery.


She is what you would never expect her to be.
She is here; she is with me.
She is the One who would make Cleopatra suffer from envy.
She is beauty, she is tragedy, she is my remedy.
She is all things to me.


She is lost in a wish that may never be.
She is hoped for more than you could ever imagine.
She is an artist, she is relevant and she is necessary.
She is beauty personified…

Paint a chalk outline of me.


(C)2018 Aa Harvey. All Rights Reserved.

I found chalk on the holding
of sky shimmers, then I composed  
on the blank spaces that where
echoes of what was drawn in
memories of yesterdays dreams.

Barren slate needed the imagination,
woven between fingers streaming
across an arborealis of creativity.
I am the drawer of dreams that
were colourless and now fill a void.

I outlined the slumbering's  of what were
just blank smudges. Now revitalized,
I'm within this moment, a collage of
colourful wishes that I created before I
look smiling, tomorrows imaginings drawn again.