I remember you outside
in the cool breeze    in the sunshine
dust, dirt, sweat
inviting green grass
freedom, joy
blue sky      clear   and   endless
energy and people
I remember you these ways

I saw us again in Galway,
And again it felt as if you weren't dead,
You were young,
And I was younger than today,
You had your journalist's notebook and pen,
And so many things to say,
You looked ahead,
I melted away,
Past the crowd of gathering wolves,
Through the cinnamon rain,
To the narrow road winding through the hills,
Like a fleeing possum's tail,
Never still,
A pulsing membrane,
A hospital bed,
A naked, dying flame,
The road you chose to take,
Red with sweet precipitation and pain,
I still remember when you told me you were ill,
I want to die, you said,
What I wouldn't give to know once more your head,
Where your thoughts used to play,
The way your body swayed,
When you saw life's ugliness but refused to look away,
For your spirit I yen,
Faintly remembered by the markings of your pen,
In notebooks in an attic,
Living words floating above dead eyes,
Shrouded by the spice of time,
I desire to wipe it away,
But I'm so terrified of what I might find,
In dreams, I still see your face,
What if in wakefulness, I find an emptiness in its place

Two dark sides converse in glinted eye,
we judge between few subtle signs,
vibrations bend which speed up time,
what sad masks we wear, when occupied.

Allow yourself some pause for thought,
searching around inside of you,
whichever form this may flow through,
to find that place of peace and solitude.

Importance of imprinting reflective memories,
we hold onto questions of our visions set,
remembering of what was and came to be,
a fabricated formulae.

The varied receptive connections of others,
helps us engage respond and occupy,
to release the grey that builds inside,
heaviness escapes through focused sighs.

Five years ago,
you asked me to sleep in your bed.

I was torn between the divine circumstance of laying beside you and the tragic irony of dividing blankets.

When I woke up in the middle of the night,
your face was inches from mine.
I adorned you with my stolen gaze until your breath betrayed you.
In those infinite seconds,
the world stopped turning,
and the moon existed only to shine on your lips.
Nobody could have deserved the sight of your resigned body
or the gravity of your scent.

We dared to stay there, if only for a moment.

You turned from me, and time began again.

We never kissed and we hardly touched,
but when I woke up next to you that morning, I knew love.

I'll never forget when
we were so young,
you lived next door
& we did everything together.

I'll never forget
that time I came over for your
birthday party
& we accidentally locked ourselves in the bathroom,
crying & screaming on the floor
because the handle broke off
and we thought we would never be found.

I'll never forget
when we were sent outside
of the classroom because we talked
to each other too much.
We sat on the side walk
in silence.

Staring at a crushed, sticky candy apple
glowing bright artificial red in the beaming sun on the pavement
leftover from last night's
school carnival.

I'll never forget
how we could play outside
A L L   day long
until the sun went to sleep
and we smelled of freshly cut grass
with wild flowers behind our ears.

The way we would
swing so high until the tips of our toes
would touch the leaves at the top of
the trees above.

And we'd laugh nervously
when we swung back down
as our stomachs would release
a kaleidoscope of butterflies.

I still remember...

And I still smile...

The separation stretches for more than twenty hours,
I wait and wait and wait...
At the lonely station
For a train that gets cancelled
After getting delayed for so long,

I yearn for the journey
The destination beguiles me,
So, if not by train
I'll cover the distance imagining
the time which tied us together like spokes of a wheel.

it doesn’t have to mean anything more
than a crumpled up dollar bill in an open guitar case
i hope one day i’ll learn to keep my head down
to keep walking instead of getting stuck in front of windows
it feels like i’m loitering in the parking lot of everyone else’s lives
a heap of squeezed ginger ale cans
and candy bar wrappers crowding my bare feet
i guess eventually i’ll have to leave and find out
things always look better through a side mirror
i glance back and see the orange trees in the median
a runner almost getting hit by a left-hand turn
i’m so glad i didn’t have to watch her die
instead i watch two college students nervously laugh
shifting their weight from one foot to the other
beside the crosswalk button and i sigh a little
they are on one side of the glass and i am on the other
i seem to miss the things i made sure would never happen to me
tuck myself into bed buzzing with the engine of
a snow-covered train, a reckless ellipses
it is comforting to want what i cannot have

Shattered
broken to bits
I tried to clean up
but I sliced my skin

Scattered
into the fray
I pushed them out
'til they all washed away

Weathered
time's funny like that
the edges have softened
and the waves washed them back

Remembered
as I walk along
colorful and harmless
pressed to my palm