As the stars shoot past
lone survivors making
wishes beyond longing
for a dream, I recall the
gentleness of the lonely,
when solitude was more
than just a single number,
curled up in satisfaction
of something more, with
possibilities of the infinite
bound inside the realities
of one plus one equaling
more than just you and me,
where all the mathematics
blended into nothingness
until the stars shooting past
carried more than just wishes
of a change in the numbers.
I touched my own lips
in an attempt to remember
yours, where once had been
a gentle graze between two
hell bent lovers was a lonely
desperation- the days pass
in a slow haze, filled with a
longing since your absence,
rooted by the chains of half
memories playing on repeat.
I can do nothing but feel the
slow creep of numbness as I
count the tears that are falling,
making a wish with each drop,
for the redemption of our love
neither of us willing to lose.
I had not felt the gentle
stroke of a pen between
my fingers in an almost
near cycle of the moon,
back when I was trying
to capture your beauty
in lyrical rhythms from
my heart, to have and to
hold, as though I could
actually cage part of you;
I had failed words when I
failed you – left to gravel
between the ink stains for
my final second chance at
a happy ending with you.
The weight of my world
bared the absence of three
days of life, nestled in the
crook of my shoulders and
left with a weight I could
not carry – three days over,
yet three days weaker with
the constant absence rooted
into my skin, tainted with a
marking left to represent my
pride, as though absence had
become my savior and I was
only weakened by the weight
of a world I no longer knew.
I crashed into sleep last night,
tumbling down a nightmare of
a rabbit hole, where love was
obsolete and solace was sought
after like a sacred form of drug,
mythical and scarce, as though
I wasn’t accustomed to comfort
inside my lover’s arms- I broke
by the minute, reaching out for
an arm to hold, only continuing
to fall further in a delusional and
obscure hell, where I was both a
ringmaster and victim, bound by
my subconscious, searching for
the remains of my piloted dream.
Bury me in the autumn,
propped against the dying
willows, so I can whisper
alongside them until the
mornings end – carry me
past the river, where the
roots are growing plenty,
caught inside the daze of
my lengthened goodbyes.
Remember me in autumn,
when the trees have faded
into whispers beyond the
river, where the age of my
innocence and youth still
linger in the roots; and if
the winds shall no longer
reach the willows, miss
me, in my final goodbye.
I blocked out words
falling from my lips
in blue ink stains on
the page; where my
imagination was left
to fight back words
attempting to escape,
I sought out freedom
from the truth, all the
while still dreading
the certainty of losing
myself inside broken
verses strewn across
the page, littered in
ramblings and debris
of a story not my own.
With a thousand thoughts
of the unknown, blurred in
shades of ash and charcoal,
running in frantic directions
through my head in between
the coldest hours of four and
six, when the sun was only a
promise and the moon was in
a daze of whispers amongst
the stars, I had lost a trace of
hope that only settles inside
your embrace – I was alone
again, saddened in the truth,
expecting nothing to change.
Where the edges
are burning inward
and the smoke still
rises at dawn, where
the scattered ashes
lay entangled across
memories, left to
desolation in the
wrong – there is a
sadness among the
trails where the
butterflies used to
be, where death has
become the neighbor,
opening doors with
sighs against the
smoke, in order to
finally be free.
Scraped together in mementos
of happier days and longing nights
are pieces of rubble from a broken
heart; cast in half light candles of
that first evening we spent beneath
the stars, with notes gently battered
back and forth, written in the keno
crayon that we’d slide across the bar
as though we could not get enough
of showcasing our love, by way of
stolen heartbeats and a future mapped
out in beer stains and crayon – left to
gather together in daydreams lost as
debris, stuffed in a shoebox, as worn
as my heart, filtered away in hope, set
to hold all pieces of my memories.
Storylines in Verse 