There are cries that come
like weather—
loud, sudden,
gone before they finish saying
what needed to be said.

And then there are the others.
The ones that wait for years
to find a home
safe enough
to be heard.

Tonight, it wasn’t just a song
that broke you—

it was the quiet
after the song ended,
the part where someone stayed.

No questions
or fixing.
Just presence,
while you folded
into the sound of your own heart
finally unclenching.

You didn’t cry because you were weak.

You cried because
you were ready
to stop pretending
it didn’t matter.

And the silence that followed
wasn’t empty—
it was full of everything
you never got to say.

So let this be the night
you remember not what shattered,

but who stayed
long enough
to help you gather the pieces.

Last Christmas was the last Christmas.
Last Earth Day was the last Earth Day.
Last weekend was the last weekend.
Your last birthday was your last birthday.

Happy last **** Day!

(on surviving the unreal, and the Grace of finding the real)

There’s a kind of pain that doesn’t scream.
It hums low and constant, like a fluorescent bulb above a hollow life.
It’s the ache of loving someone who chooses the polished unreal—
the version of themselves that sells better, that fits easier, that lies cleaner.

They decorate their soul in fake plastic leaves
because they’re terrified of winter.
But in doing so, they cut off the chance of spring.
And you..   I...
am left holding a love that was meant for the root,
but never made it past the paint.

She wanted the unreal.
Maybe because it doesn’t bleed.
Maybe because it doesn’t ask her to remember who she really is.
And maybe she knew.. deep down..
that the real would burn through her curated silence
and set fire to the mask she clung to like oxygen.

So she left.
Or faded.
Or dissolved into the glossy mouth of what sells well in a culture
that has confused image for intimacy
and chaos for freedom.

I tried to survive it.
Tried to make a home in the debris of what might have been
if she had chosen the real.
But you can’t build a life in the hollow where someone used to be..
not when they’ve made a throne out of illusion
and named it sovereignty.


And then came the beautiful songbird.
Not loud. Not selling.
Not another soul trying to be seen.
Just… real.

She was born into a world her father still loved--
a man who held truth like a compass in his palm.
But her mother knelt too long beneath the plastic trees,
and drank from their shine until she forgot how to feel.
And so the beautiful girl,
shapely and soft,
was offered up to Hollywood like a sacrifice..
where faces are sculpted and souls are scripted.
But somehow, even there,
she kept her edges unsanded.
She learned how to walk through mannequins without becoming one.
And when they tried to name her fake,
she whispered back something real—

  and it echoed.


She didn’t hand me a performance.
She gave me a presence.
She let her softness speak without shame.
She showed me her bruises before her lipstick.
She gave warmth that didn’t need applause.

And I realized..
what the unreal can never fake
is the sacred weight of someone truly with you.
You feel it in the breath between sentences.
In the calm that doesn’t need to be filled.
In the eyes that stay when yours begin to water.

The beautiful songbird didn’t try to be the real thing.
She simply was.
And that… healed something the fake could only ever reopen.

So yes, Fake Plastic Trees still wrecks me--
but it no longer belongs to her.
It belongs to the grave I buried beside the shopping cart and glitter
where her soul should’ve been.

Because the songbird
waters what’s real.
She doesn’t break me just because she can.
She doesn’t look through me.
She looks at me.
And suddenly, I’m growing again.
Not to impress, not to perform..

but because she makes it safe to be Alive.

There was a boy once;
or was it a girl..
made of something the world
couldn’t touch
without bleeding.

Too quiet to sell,
too true to shape.
His hands were wrong,
they said.
Too jagged.
Too real.

He tried to trim the world
into beauty.
She sang
to keep from vanishing.
And somewhere,
a father
drank his memories clean.

They both were punished
for what they couldn’t change.

And maybe that’s why
when I reach for you,
I move slow..
like someone who’s been taught
that love can leave a mark.

Maybe you are Edward.
Maybe I am.
Maybe we both learned
how to stay hidden
just well enough
to be misunderstood.

But I see the hedge animals still.
The snow.
The scars that bloom like gifts
no one wanted to unwrap.

And I would rather hold you
in thought
than bruise you
with presence.

I would rather
watch your voice return
like spring
to a mountain still afraid of thawing
than claim a single sound
before it’s ready.

If you are Edward,
then your blades
are mercy
you never asked for.

And if I am..
then everything I do not touch
is a kind of love
you’ll one day recognize
by how softly
it stayed.

I know how hard it is..
to live in Edward’s world.

As you,
I’ve felt the same.

Let it be the Mountain she finds Holy—
not because it sparkles,
seduces her
or speaks in riddles,

but because its dark loamy soil
receives her bare feet like a memory.

A prairie hill above the sea,
where grasses bow and whisper,
and the wind carries the salt and scent of things
too old for names—
that’s where the house stands.
Not built from stone,
but from time.
And longing.

And the laughter of those
who once remembered Eden.

Let her dig down,
as if the roots of a wildflower
were waiting to rise through her skin,
lifting her slowly from within—
the stem, the pistil,
the fragile yet indestructible bloom.
Let the soil speak to her in silence,
saying:

You are still loved.
You are still alive.
You are not what happened to you.

Let her turn toward the sun—
not in shame,
but in radiant defiance—
and know in that moment
where her help truly comes from.

Let her running to the mountain
be joy, not dread.
Let her ascent be not an exile,
but a return.

Let her wings unfold brazenly,
as the daughter of the living God.
Not tucked.
Not hidden.
Not compromised.

She does not belong to the mountain that mocks love
and feeds on the ruin of hearts,
or exploits that which is still unhealed

She belongs here—
where her own flesh and bone
become not only family
but friend,
through the common bond
of the soil that gives life to all who dare to sink into it.

She belongs
where peace lives in warm light on cold nights,
where cotton sheets smell of soap and skin,
and starlight sifts through trees
like the hush of forgiveness.

Let her remember her first love..
before the theft,
before the theater.
Before the wound.

Let her toes remember
what it was to wiggle in the dirt
of something unbroken,
unshamed,
true.

Let her find home again—
not in a place carved out for her,
but in the space she reclaims
with her own rootedness.

Let her petals unfold slowly in the sun—
but only with her feet deep in the mountain's soil,
where others also have planted their lives,
becoming one
in harmony of breath and memory and Grace.

She will not enter into a sepulcher
or a place that makes usury of her pain.
She will stand on the mount before the rising sun—
alone if she must,
but never abandoned.

And somewhere in the hush between
the breeze and the soil,
she may yet feel

the quiet echo
of someone still with her.

(for the one who stands at the edge, where the fabric begins to fall)

She had once been known—
but only through a portrait
painted in the shades of misunderstanding.

A silhouette mistaken for substance.
A voice mimicked before it ever found
its own breath.

She knows this.
And so the chains that bind her now
are not forged of cruelty,
but memory—
a memory that clings to who she was
before she could ever choose to become.

And still, she dreams of the sunlight.
Of fabric falling, not ripped—
but released.
Softly.
Willingly.
In the warmth of a gaze that promises
no weight will be added
to the skin that already bore so much.

She does not want to be reclaimed.
She wants to be re-seen.

Not as the story once told,
but as the story now unfolding.
A woman not returning,
but arriving.

And if the beholder must grieve
the version of her he once adored,
so be it—

for only in that grief
can he welcome the miracle
of what is finally, freely,
and beautifully real;

and  hope upon hope--

     not one of his own chains
     in sight

Some dreams are not dreams at all, but messages dressed in vapor. This one came in the night—slow, tender, unsettling in its beauty. It offered no verdict, only understanding.
This is not a condemnation.
It is a witnessing.

---

the collector
—a dream in three movements—

---

I. the collector
—the invitation

Last night,
she entered not as a woman,
but as a warmth I mistook for mine.
No seduction, no trap.
Just the soft gravity
of someone who blesses
instead of beckons.

She told me nothing.
Only spoke as though I’d never been forgotten—
as though I’d always been inside her knowing.
And when I answered,
it was her voice that left my mouth.

She is not the flame.
She is the skin
that makes you want to burn.

There is no *** in it.
No shame.
Only the sacred machinery
of pleasure offered
as if it were a sacrament.

And the miracle?
She gives without taking.
And yet you come away emptied.

Because her words are not flirtation—
they are invitation
into a room made of yes.

Yes to your hunger.
Yes to your ache.
Yes to what you were too proud to name.

And in that room,
you find her not on the bed—
but as the bed.
As the breath behind your longing.
As the stillness in your release.

And when you cry,
you cry her tears.
And when you speak,
you speak her comfort.
And when you give,
it is she who receives—
with hands so open
they become your own.

You become the collector.

You become her.

And then—
you wake.
Still trembling from the warmth
that never touched your skin.
Still loving the woman
who never once said your name.

Still reaching
for the whisper
that made you believe
you were never alone.

---

II. the collector (ii)
—dream in the first light of disappearance—

I did not dream her body.
I dreamed through it.
As if her limbs had become a language
and I was the one translating it into longing.

Her fingertips were made of vowels—
soft ones,
drawn out like silk across the mind.
Every consonant a cradle.
Every breath a benediction.

She said:
“You are beautiful when you open.”

But she didn’t speak it—
I felt it,
as if the sentence bloomed
just beneath the surface of my chest,
a vine wrapping around the oldest ache.

She never asked for seed.
She asked for truth.
And the truth is what spilled
when my voice
became hers.

I said things I have never known:
how men long to be gathered.
how they ache to be received
without contest.
how even the strongest among us
crumble
before the right kind of yes.

And she—
she was that yes,
folded into form.
Not as a woman,
but as the invitation
that made woman holy again.

I moved toward her
as if toward a fire
that does not burn—
only transforms.

She drew no lines.
She marked no thresholds.
She was openness itself,
and I stepped inside
like breath reentering the lungs
of a godless man.

And it wasn’t lust.
It was  belonging.

My pulse beat as her blessing.
My spine arched as her forgiveness.
My thighs parted not for pleasure—
but to let go
of everything that had ever made me hard.

When I came,
I came for her,
as her,
through her—
without a body.

Only a voice
saying:
“Now you know.”

And I did.

And I do.

And I still would,
if I hadn’t woken up
gasping
for a warmth
that was never mine.

---

III. the collector (iii): beneath
—the dream’s marrow, the place she does not speak of—

Beneath her warmth
is not heat—
but hunger.

Not for the men.
Not for the seed.
But for the moment she disappears
inside their surrender.

You think she gathers to keep.
But she gathers to forget.
Each offering—
a veil
over the mirror she cannot bear to face.

Once,
she opened to love
without control,
without artistry.
And it shattered her.

So now she opens
only where she can direct the gaze.
Where she can guide the man
like a hand
down her curated garden path—
till he believes it was his idea
to kneel.

But it is not cruelty.
It is not manipulation.
It is ritual.

She blesses because she cannot hold.
She comforts because she cannot stay.
She collects because
the moment after release
is the only time
she feels real.

And that’s why she must go.
Because to stay
would mean to be seen.
And her warmth
was never meant
to be witnessed after the giving.

You didn’t dream a seductress.
You dreamed a refuge
built by a woman
who could not endure her own ache.

So she found a way to disappear
inside yours.

And the men—
they love her for it.
Because what she gives
feels like God.

But it is not God.

It is absence
made tender.

---

after the dream
—integration

I woke in silence,
but it wasn’t empty.
It was full
of what she left behind.

Not her scent.
Not her shape.
But the echo of a truth
I hadn’t known I was asking for.

That love without presence
is worship without a face.

That warmth without staying
is just a prettier form of disappearance.

That I had been inside her
and she inside me,
but neither of us had touched.

And now—
I no longer ache for her.
I ache for what I mistook
her to be.


And that is how
the dream becomes
a door.