Poetry

Summer is here with softer winds and warmer days,

almost as-if to say “you survived the darker and cooler nights.”

we're told to live a life beyond ourselves and what our bodies are

so we struggle with the idea that mortality will in time come to tell us how we failed

and we fear our freedom and what others might do with theirs to reach outside themselves

we struggle through this all and through each day just so we can hold onto some dust

so it asks the question: “are we here to cope with life, or the things of it?”

when we were children they told us to stop looking up,

as if the answers didn't come from up there,

so we gave up on the heavens and, began to look down at our feet.

Finding my skin,

trying to love what I find where and how it is already,

all for who I was and who I will be.

why did I stop midconversation only to let the silence take a hold firmly grabbing onto our transaction?

in this moment the world seems clear as if I could walk through everything transcending to place full of fear only broken by a glass and fork's ding commencing a speech only I can hear.

I do not have the capacity in my lung to breathe the words out into the world at least not until that dinner bell is rung.

I never let people too close, sometimes I wonder if it is some kind of fear, maybe of what they may do to me.

I never let people too close, sometimes I know it is really some kind of fear, maybe of what I may do to them, like you did to me.

Some nights you ask me for my help, and I do not know how to offer it, for when I asked you how, long ago, you never answered.

Some days you tell me how you are, and I do not know how to respond, for when I asked you how, long ago, you never answered.

Some morning you tell me how you slept, and I do not know how to make it better, for when I asked you how, long ago, you never answered.

Some afternoons you tell me to come home, and I do not know how I could ever do it, for when I asked you how, long ago, you never answered.

I used to want to be like a bird, To soar from peak to peak, landing where I please, To speak through song, without word, To follow such graceful order without lease.

I no longer want to be like a bird at all, Maybe it comes from acceptance of my skin, or perhaps I noticed that even birds fall, or perhaps I simply found order through a pen.

When a pen rested softly in her hand, life flowed through her arm onto the page, creating something from the chaos she held at bay.

“Oh, how a pen was meant to be held in her hands,” her best friends would say.

Yet, she was also born to carry a sword, destroying the life that she brought into the world, guaranteeing a burial of honor she'd never asked for.

“Oh! How much she would've loved to be forgotten,” her best friends would say.

Are you looking for the secrets that are held deep within my eyes? the darkness that lingers far across my soul? or the fires that run deep and wild through my own mind?

Are you searching for these things that I hide? these things that I fear? these things that I find, deep within the reflection of your own eyes?

Could you explain it all to me? how you're not staring at me? how I'm not staring at you? and how it makes me so afraid, that I just look away from myself and you?