“I just can’t believe my eyes”, she said being extremely startled by what stood in front of her.

Early in the morning, he blindfolded her and drove her to this place what was a 10 hour drive.

15 years ago, it was a massive earthquake that not only took away their house but her husband and his father. Having no insurance at that time didn’t help either. Worst of all being that it was her birthday the day before and next day they lost almost everything.

Back to square one, down and out with no money and nobody to help, it was a nightmare that lasted a few years. No food for days, sleepless nights and time so dark that she couldn’t even see a future for her little boy. From everything to nothing, from satisfied and wishful to being lost it was just unfathomable.

Being introduced to drugs and alcohol by some other homeless strangers, it lead her to become a drug addict and alcoholic and to an extent that she would even steal for it. Drugs and alcohol seemed like friends that would help her forget the pain and the world she was living in.

However, it was one day that her little boy ran into a car while playing on the road and she was laying by the road with hardly any direction or energy to be able to help him while he laid in a pool of blood. Thanks to the people who admitted him to the hospital and brought her to the hospital that she came face to face with the reality of what had happened.

That was a turning point, drugs and alcohol were left far behind and this incident had brought her back to senses with a sense of determination. She now struggled day and night, working multiple and all kind of jobs to make him go to school and complete his education.

Everything had added up to make him an independent and self-sustaining individual. Now, he had been living with his mother and both had acknowledged their past, while concentrating on the present. He was differently-abled and he had known about how it all happened and instead of blaming his mother he chose to respect her for the fact that she had stood by him all his life and made him what he was.

He had bought the plot where their old house was and built a new one.

Caged in an eerie cell, I am, Without any doors to be knocked, With no way in or out; I am, Unaware of when I got locked.

Inspiration has been long lost, In my wild chase for liberty, When I didn’t know what’s its cost, My heart whispered, “words’ll set you free.”

Now that forfeit’s not a recourse, Rhymes are weapons to my escape, Stirs my pen for words fierce as swords, Whilst humanity reads agape.

I’ll write my durance to an end, My valour’ll be eternally penned!

We met at the same café

Twenty years later

After we had gone our separate ways

The lives changed,

Our hair lined with silver,

The choices we made,

engraved in our face,

Yet the moment our eyes met

Our hearts started to beat again

To that song we thought we had forgotten

Same place, different time

Will it work out this time around?

You left and forgot to take

that old sweatshirt of yours that I still sleep in,

those pictures of us smiling,

Your scent on my sheets and the memories that in my chest still scream.

You left without looking back,

new open skies before you,

and lingering behind,

me with a broken heart.

New opportunities and a wiped clean slate

while I am left with the dirty rag and ghosts of past glories and futures unrealized.

I sit here and reminisce about where we could have gone wrong and the answer eludes me of why

I was left on the wrong side of goodbye,

where all the tears and pain reside.

What steals this blessed sleep? These inner demons that night’s kiss seem to rouse while I toss and turn all night. Wanting peace and finding none, the thoughts keep churning in my mind. In darkness cloaked, things I don’t even know that exist but that lurk beneath. Who will save me from myself, from this torment that breathes in me? An apothecary’s potion might temporally quell and grant me blessed nothingness for a while but I long to be truly free and once again be at peace. Tell me who can grant what none can buy.

Time goes by and this currency, in plastic bottles. Pills, won’t pay bills but they will save lives. I strive to remember normalcy, you see, apothecary or not, time stops, for no soul. The night takes hold of fears, medicine, like a friend who went home, on the day when you needed him most. The doctor never told me, at night I’d live with ghosts. Reminder, this sidewinder, this minor rider that can’t find rest between screams. Seems torn from bedsheets, wrap bodies between night’s suffocating fingertips. Lips spit scripts about the loneliness of night. I’ve never felt less alone, too many memories to fight…

And I burn in this deep blue that lives in my heart, and the colors that fade in the dark. Few can understand and people talk about the emotion that I seem to lack, not knowing there is too much that lives inside. None to share and thus it spreads when I find myself alone at night. Life’s regrets like acid corrode any sanity that I have left. Would-have-beens and could-have-beens cold as icicles ignite and my only repose is to write. So I write and pour out ink in the dark deep night. Paper and pen wrapped around me like a blanket pulled over my head so I can hide from time. So I can keep what’s mine in the shadows tonight.

c. S. and e.v.e.

I don’t know how to look you in the eyes anymore. Like we’ve closed the door, two souls, once more, left standing idly across a crowded room. Hands that no longer recognize the others touch, what once was. Hearts left yearning for something more quite often find themselves longing for those things that they left behind

We’ve said and done things that cannot be erased. The wall between us too high and our wings burnt to ashes. Such a pain in my heart that must unlearn your face, the things we shared so we can be strangers once again. Darkness comes for us and we are helpless to deny the regret that tears us apart.

Regret… what a simple word, for such a complex emotion. This lotion applied by tired eyes that cry over skin left charred by deserts’ rise of scorching lies, Sunrays cast by hapless tongues leave burning memories, and these that we share should be more than enough for one lifetime but not mine, my heart still yearns to love, and memories serve pleasant feasts when you and I find time in longing minds…

When I think of you the pain still lingers inside and I still cry. No matter the time that has elapsed, the bitter taste of your goodbye, I still feel on my tongue. The heart yearns for the closeness we once knew but never again will we know, cut short by our words, by a winter we unleashed, so now every day feels incomplete. We walk among ruins of times long gone and battle with ghosts,two strings once entwined now live separate lives.

And I guess that’s why you cross my mind, quite often see this thing that we had, is like a sad memory clad with longing and sometimes I forget, why we quit, why things didn’t work out, my dreams still shout your name. A flame that will always burn though I no longer yearn for your touch. We’d been through too much. Maybe distance is the resistance our clashing words once called for. But sometimes I long for those feelings I lost when I walked out the door. Alas, I guess I will learn to take comfort in the memories cast, that last… alone in nevermore.

c. S. and e.v.e.

never gave her answers

You see one with pretty smile

never asked her questions

And the one that shines like a moon

never heard her story

But still she always look in brown eyes

giving all the answers while falling

in love the way she dances in the moonlight

repeating her story again and again

mirror