Hello Beautiful

He told me he would visit after yesterday
What an obnoxious thing to say
Every sentence spoken was like water
leaking into the crevices of my rusty brain
yet he never meant to cause me pain.

I look at him and see a landscape
one which I cannot escape
For he is my sky, my ocean, my stars
but all he ever gave me was a scar
And I cried red tears.

I try to navigate the tangled branches in my head
For that was not the wicked life he led
Somehow he found me in the depths of my own mind
The path to calmer seas is impossible to find
Or improbable.

The sky is shattered by broken limbs
and squinting in the murky pool I see him
his breath fogging up the glass
he writes me a backwards letter
and although I can hardly read the title
I know the story
for he tells it every night at bedtime
"This one is your last"

I wake to see a world stunted by a blank, white canvas
waiting to be filled with swallows in the summer air
there is nothing there
No stone left to make a grave
so today is the day
I will behave

Dead End

Lamps flicker on in sequence,

nudged awake by the dusk that 

settles on a low ceiling of clouds. 

The final whisper of daylight retreats

to the horizon, where it peers

beneath a heavy blanket of grey.

The smell of damp pavement and magnolias

lingers in the air.

Pristine automobiles sigh on the edges 

of a winding road. An iron gate

severs the silence with a rusty yawn. 

There is almost a growing weight

descending on the rooves 

of the two-tiered towers. 

A dull electrical hum floats on the gentle breeze.

A cluster of gnats hovers in the glow

of the streetlights. The crumbling sidewalks are

empty save for the persistent weeds

sprouting up through the cracks. 

There is a sign of movement

as a silhouette passes by a window,

bathed in amber light.

All else is still.

No one could ever find their way through

that maze of cul-de-sacs.

The silence was lonely,

as though the world was muffled by broad oak branches,

their leaves telling hushed secrets on the wind.

Yet getting lost among row on row of empty mansions

felt safe, knowing that dawn

would come again. 

Translucent

Time begins to sleep
cherry petals falling like
petals from a tree 

If Only

The lake
It was frozen
"The ice is strong. It can hold me."
I walked confidently
never expecting the crack
or the plunge
into the frigid realm below
but it was too late
I should have known