I ate tears for food
Love comes at a price
For some a little, for some great

I ate tears off porcelain plates
Had I known the price up front
I would choose to starve

I keep you here in this big box.
You are aged and brittle around the edges.

The white album is now yellow,
A Jim Morrison poster is tattered.

Love beads with a peace symbol tarnished,
My Jimi Hendrix in psychedelic paint faded.

You all carried my teenage angst,
Now in this box I carry you.

Go celebrate today
For you won’t be able tomorrow,
Nor will you feel like it.

The golden age has turned orange.
What you thought was gold
Has proven to be faux.

(My great-grandmother lost most of her family on the forced march, which came to be called the Trail of Tears.  Indigenous people were moved off the land they had been on for thousands of years, no doubt.  This poem is for them.)

Dancing Rabbit dips one paw
Into clear creek waters. Pink nose wiggle,
A shake of the head to ready thoughts.
Leaps into the unknown histories of a people
Who knew these lands long before blue eyes.

Echo, I cry out
Echo, my words bounce back
Echo, a controlled narrative

In this vast echo chamber
I cry out the words I want to hear.
Then I no longer hear the truths

Which causes me to fear.

The facts become a strange thing
As truth has flown on fragile wings
And all sound reason with it.

What could extinguish
The last glowing coal of love
Whose embers still faintly cling
To that flaming life it once had.

And who would deny it life?
I cannot, and so I shelter it
From rain, through storms,
With gentle breaths, I keep it

Forever burning in my heart.

Inspired by a comment on Sabrina Benaim  

When you realize
What you didn't know,
You are well and truly
On your own.

You fight alone.

Self-awareness is
A lucid torment of
The cruelest part of anxiety,
Mental unrest.