I hear "the birds"
outside calling —
but at zero degrees
I am sorry!
It's like Emily's phrase:
"When [even] shadows hold their breath" --
I will enjoy you from the inside
and warming,

Sad,
Scared.
If I don’t have a plan —
The unknown...
Isn’t that where faith steps in?
Yes! but I’m scared.
Or alive?
Scared.
Or awake?
Stifled?
No, alive!
Feeling,
Not censoring.
Being,
Not just existing.
This is the beginning.
Allow yourself to feel.
Emotions are a gift to the soul.
Embrace "The Feels"!

Oh, Mr Darcy,
You truly are
One of my first and longest loves.
Those dark, brooding eyes,
And sparse words did his tongue speak.
I always did hold you up as
My favourite,
But I have come to find out,
not too handsome to tempt me.

What if life was a match
struck in darkness
that brief, burning moment
as the flame grows
baptising all it touches
with its blessed light.

Even as the snuffer looms,
deaths cap leaves behind
a smouldering ember,
and as it all cools down
I can somehow still feel
the warmth.

If time was kinder
I'd keep the flame burning,
but since it will not yield,
I'll love and remember
the glow long after
the flame has died.

©️Lizzie Bevis

Sliding into the bath this morning,
Was more an act of defiance
Then a ritual act of cleaning,
And a pleasurable dalliance.

Yesterday —

My doctor said (strongly suggested)
That I shouldn't have baths, showers are safer,
If I ever, on the off chance, seizured, because I forgot to take my medication,
Or, as I am trying to do, stop taking them altogether,
Aren't the laws of nature good? Just? Complementary?!
If I have another, isn't that injustice?!
Snt cleansing the body, not an act of worship?!

Should I live my life by the law of ‘off chances”?
I think not!

Today —
This bath is my protest.
And I am sipping coffee and eating pastries in here, too!

The light always seems to reflect off your eyes just right for me.
The angles and refraction create a color and aura the peers into my soul.
I hate it.
I love it.
Its then you waltz into my dreams.
No permission needed.
Your just there.
Doing the same thing.
Peering into my soul.
Only this time you and I dance in the dream living room we are in.
I have never held you b4.
But now your arms were wrapped around me and mine around you.  
You gave me the softest kiss on the neck.
Which only intensified the ambient haze this dream was.
You rest your head on my chest as we danced under the incandescent light bulb on the dream ceiling.
No shadows.
No outside light.
I don't even think there were no windows or doors.
It faded away when I woke up.  
Now just traces of memory remain.

If I rewrite the narrative,
make you say things you’d never-
it hurts a little bit less.

If I picture you sending my screenshots,
laughing with your friends
about how I’m pathetic,
it hurts a little bit less.

If I melt the candy coating off your words
and read them as they are,
my chest doesn’t feel as hollow.
The pages rinse free of hope,
replaced with finality.

If I say it was just a game,
and now I have to log out-
close the window, shut it down,
you’ll never log back in.

My lungs can fill with air again,
My eyes remain dry.
This grief stops sitting on me,
I can stop wondering why.

You’ll always be
my favorite book I picked up-
but maybe you were one
I was never meant to read.

You and I—
we feel,
we love,
we regret.
Yet we remain
the binding particle
of a formless self.

They divide us,
pit us against each other.
We found safety
for thirteen days.

Before dawn,
we felt the breath
that seeps through cracks
into minds like a narrow thread of force,
and the fog spilled out.

Above our heads, false stars
created by warm bodies
to annihilate
what passed through the gate
of a birthing woman.

We write words to conjure
happy endings
at the ball of extermination
that tears apart
the pulsing light
of a thousand veins.

Please sit with me
before you go
Do you feel it—
the mourning procession
of human beings
transforming into a state of fission
and drifting away?

And a sigh is so sad
of trembling atoms
when the victim becomes the destroyer.

Feel the force of the fall,
and do not shatter hope
even if the world
trembles to its core
because there is still YOU,
still ME,
and still

OTHERS.