battlingsunlight

I see you in the bluebird— sky of mourning, hear you in sorrow’s— soothing sound, rain falls—the world forever turning, it is in your absence— I am learning: to be lost only means you can be found

fighting tooth and nail for love is not love, is not safety feelings are not weapons, are not warfare chaos is not comfort, is not home so why I reside here, not even I know   a lost cause is one right step away from finding footing, is one right step away from finding solid ground so, I ask myself do I even want to be found?   inside this glass box of confusion, the other side vacillates, sometimes it is real, others, a mirage, sometimes, I reach for it, others, I do not   inside this glass box of confusion, the truth is two- faced, is living a double life   inside this glass box of confusion, if I am brave enough to look, my mirror image reveals the truth that   so am I.

divisible by two— sided against reason I am between the walls of myself scratching for a way out surely one exists it’s how you got in rearranged the rooms where my truth lives grubby hands, oil fingerprints on every switch you flipped to turn my light dim— call it treason how I dismissed my own constitution, how I overthrew my own government, in a last-ditch effort to justify loving you— what am I to do but divide myself by two until I no longer can? at some point I imagine I’ll become just a figment of imagination, just another vessel for a soul to be trapped in.  

in the iridescent glow of the morning moon pearly white and fully bloomed the sky blushed pink so, did I, too, as my thoughts engulfed into flames of you

with one look from those river eyes, I was hypnotized, you could’ve led me to the far reaches of reality, to the delirious depths of despair, I swear, I would’ve followed you anywhere— but it was right then, and it was right there, in that sluggish September afternoon heat, where luck finally reached out and found me, standing nervously outside of bean & barley, and offered me a seat, little did I know that when I cautiously agreed, I would find my future sitting right across from me.  

I am the sum of all parts dark and light and dark again, I met you somewhere between love and lost and found the end is but only where we begin, could you fold me in your arms? the scent of home lives on your skin, I spent a lifetime running from all the walls that trapped me in, never could I have fathomed what resided on the other side, for all the grief that life has caused you were worth it every time.

if grief is a beacon, love is the light refracting off the flares I’ve been lighting in the middle of the night and if memory is a graveyard, then dreams are the ghosts, how they haunt the subconscious and wreak havoc on their hosts

thoughts melt like wax sliding down a candle from both ends burning the whirring is loud today skin abuzz in a swarm of feeling, recognition travels the circuit- sending zaps along the spine, i hum with electricity the whirring is loud today memory pushes like a gush of wind against closed doors, their hinges rattle the whirring is loud today the needle of awareness skips across the record repetition makes an impression of a line that never fades the whirring is loud today

dance, the white butterfly, the dragonfly, among the lilies dressed in sunset, the water falling off the rocks— into the mouth of forever, where nothing ends nor does it begin, where something neither is nor is not— swims, the eternal mystery, the beckoning abyss— promising to anyone who will listen, a truth that never could exist.

i thought of you splattered across a pavement far more broken than what had just become of you and in that moment i became the tarry particles that held your aftermath, all too aware of how heavy a soul can weigh, even dismantled. i thought of you strapped to a gurney hovering over what was left of everything you never amounted to, of everything you could never hold as close as the bottle that aided you, so backhandedly, in your time of need and in that moment i became the wind being chopped into slivers by giant propellers just to hold you upright (and in order to heal, you sliced through me and i, through you). i thought of you sprawled lifelessly upon cool, white sheets, heart thumping in rhythm to machines and the steady drip of medicine lulling you to sleep and in that moment i became a dream inside of a dream, of a little girl twirling, colorfully, illuminated by the gleam of a youthful sun, and i was trapped beneath the impenetrable glass of a comatose state, awake but asleep but awake and i knew what it was to exist without being alive. and i knew what it was to become a prisoner to a mind.

Loneliness sets in like a fog at dawn I am no beacon, just a porch light you forgot you left on and I shine just bright enough so you can see where you went wrong Seems I’ve been burning forever but I’m not sure how long.

above, the buzzards circle nebulous blots of ink mar the azure sky white and bony, a sycamore contorts its body, twisting limbs, to offer bare palms over steely river an eagle, still juvenile, fights a strong punch of wind to perch there a kingfisher, streaking blue shrieks downstream hungry, i devour every last detail, hopeful to digest the beauty, to store these moments safely in the folds of my memory to be a flashlight in the tunnels of sorrow, to keep me company in the winters of loneliness.

and there you stood; on the other side of agony, the other side of loss, those heavy wooden doors i had to bust open, had to give all that i got, after tunneling through heaps of despair, packed tight and higher than the eye could see, with a blistering cold and sorrowful wind whipping fiercely across my cheek, yet for all the terrors and the frights, all the nightmares and the ghouls, for the many times i nearly dove delirious into the harrowing pools of depression like the sirens of pain beckoned me to do, for all the courage and the strength i had to magically pull out of thin air, all the times i had to saw myself in half but found a way to still stand there, for all the minefields and the mazes, all the chaos and the calamity, and for every last thing i had to do, it was well worth the wild ride that led me here to you.

life flashes before your eyes when you’re struck with love, when you’re struck with loss everything gets amplified, everything rushes to a halt strange how the best and worst things to encounter elicit the same response two sides of a coin, it’s just a matter of how it lands after the toss.

we sat on our shoes as the sun slowly dipped further and further into the ocean and watched the orange course through the waves as they collapsed in a heavy sigh on the shore before us- a lone sandpiper skittered by, scavenging for dinner and i remember us pointing and marveling at his quickness- out on the horizon, a pod of pelicans flew single file right through the blood of the setting sun, the tips of their wings hovering just inches above the crimson water- and in those fleeting moments, everything felt possible, and in those fleeting moments, everything felt infinite and free, and in those fleeting moments, i looked at you, and in those fleeting moments, i saw forever looking back at me.