That's what I would paint you as.
Bold and bright red.
I think that's why you like them:
not because of the taste, but because they're the closest nature comes to telling your color
And I know you've got a thing or two against nature.

If I were Deaf I think it would be easier to look you and everyone else in the eyes.
I'd sign that I love you. And I'd sign a joke.
I'd say I'm proud of you,
and that you can do better.

I think you want to be that bright-red
confident
desirable
intense,
intimidating

want to be de
                       vo
                           ured

and secretly you dwell on that bitter-inside-of-your-seeds
that crunch, you imagine people might tire of returning to you

I just wish you knew that nobody doesn't eat pomegranates because of the seeds,
it's because they have to spend forever peeling away the outside just to get into the wonderful insides of it; they have to cut into that beautiful exterior hoping that the inside will be just as bright
and let's just say more people go for the red apple

I'd like to one day call you an apple
It has no secrets
and it is just as beautiful

I'm still stony from the storm.

Sitting cross-legged in the grass. Half of me is underwater.
Half of me sings praises to the sky.

Staring at empty hands:
all I need is air, world, here is my cup.
Offer my tears to the ground,
all I have is flesh and I'm sorry.

The familiar is translating into a shifted perspective,
mapped through my hazy half-watered views.
Questions bubble to the surface, they always do.
What is you? What is me?
Who are my companions, here?
Hands shrivel to a close, I am empty somewhere

so many of you: hiding your sorrows in the drink,
in the non-speak and waters-flowing-greening-the-path
of self-discovery-through-phase-denial;
pain for later,
pancakes for now.


I am so old,
my wrinkles are bared in the sun-exposed rock,
heart beating beside me, cup full of storm-water
and storm-blown watery eyes
dripping softly into the scenery
behind me

the world is infinity

next to that I am a pinprick that never fully bled nor healed

Look, I just want to be childish and sunshine
running through underpasses playing with paper planes
dragging you into the snow because
life is something to celebrate

A long time ago
I found myself there, with you
me being me
you being you
The cold night warmed my rusty insides
It wasn't so bad

But the world wasn't all that, love
We can't stay so sheltered forever
This last storm rocked a city cold-
colder than can be considered warm, I mean-
and while I want to read your words and remember your breath and bones
and fall into you I'd really just be
falling
nothing romanticized about it.
No one wants to leave all of their solid ground forever.
some of it, yes, but not all of it.

I've always been an all-or-nothing kind of person, in some ways
but life is about letting parts of yourself go
so you can grow
and I can grow

We're just two plants, you and I
not in the same pea pod, or even the same planter
but we both miss summer's glow and are jealous that our neighbors are sprouting flowers.

And at the end of it all, we'll both be fine.

The wind,
In your eyes,
That night.

That was the first time I saw true passion in a person.
The first time I thought about what it means to laugh while swimming upstream.

Nobody forgets moments like that.
Your eyes seared
forever in
mine.

Gently scattered cares
floated away to find another soul

And I stood bare holding a flame

It's like this I've been
trying just to hold your name
in my hands
for a minute.

Before they were close,
(and you were closed),
I soared with dreams of clouds.
I pulled them to me,
they passed me by and brewed into grey.
A hurricane crashed against another shore.

Even the slightest sunshine breeds confusion, in places like this
drizzles of complaints, dazzled me white,
you drug me down. I cried floods about
rivers soaking rainbows through the streets somewhere else.

It doesn't make sense, this other-world where
the sky throws tantrums and people hole in
and life goes on
and people like you don't communicate,
don't ask about the sky and its sorrows and the wandering stars,
don't ask about the gray and brisk and colors,
you of all people I thought appreciated, at least, the contrast.

Well here's a contrast that you're obviously oblivious to:
silence.
The sirens have stopped.
The lights will rise with the sun while a city sleeps,
walls on the ground. Switched perspective.
Broken glass...
remembers sand and the origins of perplexion.
I am a grain of sand, softened to sweet simplicity,
flowing through rivers and settling in a new home.
Alone,
and alive.

these, these,
                                                                                                                      knock
this stranger's words on my screen
                                                                                                                       knock
reminding me of me
                                                                                                                        knock

In my stomach, a sinking
                                                                                                                                         slow
In my chest heavy. Shoulders
                                                                                                                           solid
want to crunch into each other
                                                                                        want to erase
Helpless sad
                                                                                                                   pain from
leans bone into back
                                                                                            your words
back-bent behind birds and beeches
                                                                                                             I found
Dreaming for seasons, I
                                                                                                              the sun
miss the sun
                                                                                          speak
silent
                                                                                       please
miss the days I numbed myself while it was cloudy
                                                                                                   I'll drown
even with a good chance of clearing up before noon, I
                                                                                                          in your words
don't remember any of them
                                                                                   remembering
The flavor of my thoughts
                                                                                       not
was lost



What do you say to the corpse that is lying in your grave?
                                                                                                                            caustic
You learn to accept that you're still here.
                                                                                                                              golden
You look yourself in the mirror and decide each day that you'll
                                                                                                                  stay      constant
shake love out of your living limbs
                                                                                            sorrow
into the earth
                                                                                      love
with each step.
                                                                                                is like
Step.
                                                                                                                   DANCING
You become grateful for the beat.
                                                                                                                move with me
Beat.
                               &

leads to hyper-    
active hyper-                                        
dependant
carbo-
fffffffFFFFIIIIiiiiIIIIIZZzzzzzZ
                             zzzzlleeee     pOP
               aggggaachugggggggaaaNGGGulp.
-nated
people
who fin
d
it hard to face the
sugarless silence