0

clean.

|

they see my trash piled up,
spilling its insides to the floor;
my endless stacks of paper,
teetering, toppling, towering;
they look at me and say
“you must not care –
about anything.”
the weight of their words
crush me into the wall
i’ve built for myself.
their disgust buries me,
like the floor,
and i make some excuse,
something about time
and other things,
my brain is screaming,
i’m so overwhelmed.
they’ll leave,
and i’ll clear a space
to hold myself
and rock and rock and rock
until the next person
comes to say,
“you must not care –
about anything.”

Advertisements
0

nostalgia.

|

I let myself miss you tonight;
for a fleeting moment I remembered
the you that you were
when I loved you the most,
not this being that you became;
I catch glimpses of you,
sometimes while I’m out.
I can see you in the bookstore,
on the couch, on a side street;
it’s just a memory,
you aren’t really there;
just a vague nostalgia
that leaves me with the taste of history.
I hope you are well,
be well, stay well,
wherever you are,
in whatever you do.
I hope that once in a while,
you might think of me too,
just for a fleeting moment,
I hope you miss me,
just like I miss you.

0

Present.

|

Tonight, I walked the streets of a town;
dusk had settled an hour ago,
streetlights lit a cracked sidewalk.
It was a lesson in being present;
to simply be wherever I was in that moment.
The drive-in diner smelled like summer grease.
My feet took me past the freshly churned earth
of a construction site. Smells of dirt and mulch;
the way the world would smell if it were untouched.
I stood in front of the church and found,
as I always have in the dark in front of a cross,
a peace that cannot be found any other place.
For a moment, I wonder if maybe Jesus is real after all.
I moved on; place to place, moment to moment.
I felt the sidewalk under my sneakers;
broken, uneven, hardened; bearer of memories.
So many stories have come across this place;
Flowers, purple. A tree that smells of pine.
The dut,dut,dut of fingers across a table.
A metal sign, dewy to the touch, shining silver.
Cars going forward and left and right and stopping,
softly speaking to the world; gasoline and diesel smoke.
The end of one moment is the beginning of another,
softly forming; circular.
For a short time, I was wholly present,
as I walked the streets of a small town.

0

alive.

|

there are people who say that
you will forget words and actions,
but never the feelings.
those people are right.
i can barely remember your face,
or your touch or your laugh.
i can’t remember the depths of your eyes,
or the way you smiled.
i can’t remember the shape of you,
or the feel of you against me.
i can’t recall the moment that i decided
that i. wanted. you.
the first time i saw you?
the first time i kissed you?
the first time you touched me?
no, i can’t remember much about you at all,
except that for a moment in time,
i was alive.
i was trapped in your fire,
burning and smoldering,
and yet,
i was more alive than i had ever been.