Poetry, prose, and quotes.
If you ask me about
being strong,
or resilient,
or brave,
I’ll tell you about unfolding edges
and rebuilding
from a million little pieces
despite the wreck that remains;
and digging the dirt to bedrock
to fracture and shatter,
splinter and break.
I’ll tell you about going downward
and inward, and meeting with sorrow
and speaking to pain;
and when hell spills from your bones,
that you’ll fetch seeds from the
dried-up darkness and grow gardens
from graves.
I go up to the attic
and light some candles.
I put on Pink Floyd’s
Wish You Were Here
try to summon your ghost
but you don’t come.
I wait for you
in the frigid room
of this vacant house
where windows rumble
with rattleboned hope.
At midnight calm
when day is undone
I talk into the dark
counting spirit orbs
but you never come.
At forest’s edge
whispering wishes
when the birds have flown
nine, ten, eleven
I wait for you.
This is a piece from my upcoming book, Hungry For Ghosts, and it will be available for purchase on July 29.
I miss those September nights.
Being soft,
floating
between your smile
and the things
I can’t explain,
like how some things end
before they ever begin,
or how something
so beautiful
can be so destructive.
I’ve looked love
straight in the eyes,
the sweetest heartache,
dressed in white.
I’ve rearranged my brain
just to wrap my heart around it
and somehow,
I still find myself
bound to you
in the softness of those
September nights.
I thought we’d make it,
I really did.
But fate had other plans for us
in the end.
I thought I saw you
out of the corner of my eye,
but it was just your ghost
playing tricks on my mind.
Your ghost lives
in my peripheral vision.
It whispers in my ear,
I’m still here.
It speaks to me through
muffled voices in crowded
places, in and around the
everyday shuffling.
It makes contact through
the eyes of countless strangers,
who I don’t really think know
what it is to be haunted or surely,
they would turn away and
spare me your gaze.
DISMANTLED 