***
Happy to discover that a long line of failures has made me into someone quite exceptional.

Tiles

Your hot tears and endless breath
Counter the cold tiles against my face
I wish you’d leave me in this place
Broken in pieces but in peace
You have never understood
I do not wish to be saved
And the attempts that you have made
Rush to darken what is left inside my soul

The challenge, she said, isn’t to figure out how to win the game but to find out who else is playing along.

***
Believes each day is a new opportunity to shine some of her spectacular all over the world.

***
I inquired about the empty jar tucked between leather bound chronicles on the shelf in her bedroom that was labeled “love”. I told her it seemed sad. She explained to me that when she gives her love away she gives it with a penny. If it’s returned then the love is lost and she much prefers a heart full of love to a jar full of pennies.

Sepia smile

She dangles her legs over his lap
Running her plum colored nails
Lightly up and down the nape of his neck
While her other hand is enmeshed with his
They have nowhere else to be
But a park bench, surrounded by fallen leaves
Burning bright against the dying grass
The sound of the river against the rocks
Is not enough to drown out their laughter
Or the love between them
Her heart beams through her eyes
And her sepia smile
Caught forever behind glass
And placed upon the mantle
Full of moments that made her complete.

Bare

I haven’t climbed a tree since you
But today I find myself
Skinning my knees
To perch on a branch and search for you
The laughter we shared
My first kiss
In pig tails and June sun scorching
Our freckled faces
As we hid in the leaves
And planned a life together
So much has changed since we were teens.
20 years and I don’t even know the girl I once was
For once you were gone
A part of me disappeared too
And no matter how hard I search
She is not to be found
Nor is the boy that made my heart flutter
So I sit in a bare gray tree
With a November wind
Whipping through my jacket
Bitter and cold
Like a life without your smile.