cake

we got dressed up in turquoise
and you got a little high
in the church yard
hiding behind the evening
light
that disappears like white
paper beneath black ink
the July crickets sang
their legs dancing
musical windmills
we loved the picture
we were living
staying up to outlast
those night stars
every one of them
good loving takes time
and we'd watch them go
to bed
in their milky abstinence
our love aching to
burn like the sun

in December we'll make
a wedding cake from snow

candle

the moment passes
and we crave yesterday
all we missed
the torn edges
of the books we
meant to read
we were living them
flatlining from life tests
and failing from cold
storms of our own 
creation
lying on couches
window to the world
open
guilty of dreaming
being frozen to the now
classically sad, elegant voices
slip into our lives and
pretty lips are homesick
for those gone and those 
leaving
the moment passes
and the candle we crave
no longer dances

paper thin

blue veins
blood like glue
voice is rusty
separating the one
we were 
back into two
laughter a memory
I think I can't think 
anymore
my heart works so hard
just to beat
love encased inside this
explosion 
lost on thin paper
in loveless ink
I don't want to build
an empire
I just want to 
breathe

resist

night lights resist
faulty
and on rainy nights when
ghosts walk
they turn off
you need a reason to leave
your thoughts
you need to buy a magic rug
that you know must exist somewhere
to take you to anywhere but where you're at
you spent your money for food on books
and went to bed with garden dirt on your face
the window is stuck, you're stuck
feels like the whole damn world is stuck
no use to admit it out loud
silence might mean it isn't real
you felt too deep, cried too much
your money jar is empty
your mailbox is mad
the message you want will never arrive
it was downed like a paper airplane in a hailstorm
you can fly, you just don't want to
you're waiting and if you wait too long
you'll become someone weaker
and you're done being that
you wrote prose and skipped your prayers
they wouldn't miss you
you'll remember today but not the way
things happened
but the way you wanted it to be

wasting in white noise

while waiting on sleep to visit I glued some elephants together
I took pictures of lightning and shrunk the sky to fit the lens of an iPhone camera
my cold breath became the color of white prayer and was orchestrated  into a winter sunset 
I buried your name in a bottle and marked a grave for it
then I got homesick for the way light used to glow beneath our door
I was drenched in memory by the way we slept on Sunday's when it rained
Now I miss getting lost in the sound of your breathing, my white noise lullaby
I said farewell to the mail you left on the counter, spoke the word hello into a phone that never even rang
I set an extra place at the table for pain and wrote a hymn for those adorning stars 
I turned my mind and the moon upside down, listened to Delilah on the radio dial and lost myself in the confusion of lost loves and the delusional take me back theme of the night
I wondered what it was like to be in love with a man named Bogart
and counted the names of those who don't love me anymore
As my muse slipped and tripped out of the bottle to the back door I finally closed my eyes and said goodbye to all the old monsters and 
familiar ghosts
Love is a hyphen, now just a glimmer of a forgotten, secret unused password 

she misses him

she misses the candy cane lazy days
of freedom
now is a portal to the grass blades
she mindlessly slips through her lips
and the taste of blood reminds her
she didn't learn the last time
therefore repeat

she misses the lace that used
to thread through her dark hair
the wind catching and sailing
it on moonlit walks
her feet bare on magic summer
earth
she misses him

she misses roads so close
to heaven it looked like 
God himself
forgot he put them there
she misses books read beneath
a hundred year old oak
that had grown so tired
of sheltering
that even it had drawn a
weary breath and split

she misses her love
the one who never knew
she ever missed him

moving on again

we can choose what we let change us

and the beauty of timing is we don't see it in full color

the mistakes we choose

we don't always know the ending or even see the beginning of whatever's coming

the night brings out what the day won't let the shadows speak

we dream or don't dream on pillows beside those who don't or can't love us

we wrap up war,  excuse it in love and fight for things in ten years time won't matter or be remembered

our feet will grow tired on journey's that were set in motion by kindness or ignorance, sometimes fear

romance dies and we look the other way

don't want to be alone

small victories earned that no one knows about 

losses and failures add up but no one knows about that pain we tell ourselves