the taste in my mouth is sour.
how typical of you to take over my senses
like this.
i envy the past, it deceives me so quickly.
driving into a foggy, caramelized darkness
until midnight.
i hear the wind, and feel the strands of my hair
once again
i would get the chills, the cold wind smelled like freedom.
it would billow out of the window,
and your hand would be entwined in mine.
i still feel the touch .
i didn't mind your thick skin.
but it played me so well.
it peels now,
i can still sense the old you.
and thats what makes me purse my lips.

i need to find my senses again
just like you need to find yourself.

oh mother
you are so beautiful.

oh mother,
you have endured so much pain.
you have braved an entire lifetime more than many.

oh mother,
your bones are strong,
and your smile resilient.
your hands may quiver but they are passionate with the hands of life.

oh mother,
your soul is pure and the elements are jealous.
if only the sunset could radiate your colors.
if only flowers could uphold your strength.
for they wish to
uphold you.

oh mother,
do not be weary, remember who you are.
for the leaves of green must return
to their original state
and remember who they were before the cold
even if it means becoming
bare.

oh mother,
even the sunflowers rest in the winter and
I know you cannot.
but the brevity in your existence,
the elegant movement of yourself is
needed.

oh mother,
lift yourself like the lords rein.
for you have carried crosses,
but only the strongest ones walk
alongside Him.

oh mother,
I love you.

if i stare at the empty wall
for any longer, i fear that i will
start to mimic its lifeless brevity.

simple. but heartbroken in its execution.
refined, but lonely.

i can hear the water drip
drop
from my sink.
if i listen any longer i fear that
i will start to mimic its monotone nature

forgotten in its own space.
but embracing its own flaws.

i fear.

i have spoken
to the ghost in which
resides within the depths of
me

for it resonates in my heart
and lives within
the ache of my chest
       it haunts my home
  &
       my body hurts
it crawls like the spider
spindling through my veins
deforming the vessels that once
so beautifully sculpted me
nobody said you weren't beautiful
for the sunflower that grows,
nay,
      thrives
even though i hadnt tended to it
lives on without me but

maybe it was the ghost

because
i have spoken to it ,
for it dictates the lack of
productivity within me  
      (they had mentioned that the
economy was weak)
however,
everyone told me that she was beautiful
but even the arc de triomphe
is flawed.
i wanted to believe otherwise but

maybe it was the ghost

who are you?
because i had heard that the ***** dishes
in
     my sink
weren't going to get washed unless i found
out who you were
you blasted old thing
      rotting away
                   at my soul



i bet you had
heard otherwise but

maybe it was the ghost

i visit the lake at night.
darkness of the hour engulfs me &  casts shadows upon
the painful silence.
invisible waves
                   crashing  
is unsettling yet
welcoming


                                       home.

an addictive aspect lives within me as i stand
willingly, accepting the change of scenery that i
inevitably
experienced  three hours before.
what had occurred in those three hours was painful
the innocence of daylight
laughing lovers, seagulls
they are gone now
but i stand willingly
                    accepting


                                      my mother.

calls me to come back
she is worried.
but i stand
                  willingly

i knew that (you) had changed
and i (accepted) that
people grow, for better or for worse
estranged individuality is truly quite a
beautiful and conceptual concept
for (me,) i have endlessly tried to morph into
someone whom i am not
and cannot be
(the girl who) is touched
but untouchable
and not to lie through my teeth when i say
that i cannot give you what you need
the complication of my entirety
is much too complicated
i do not trust
and
i (loved) every minute of it
but all of that love died when i became much too
exhausted
to be the person that (everyone) wanted me to
be

my college professor always told us not to be spiritually unhappy. he told us to search up and down and sideways and abide by all truths and rules instead of teaching us calculus. he told us to let the flowers on rolling hills and a man walking alone in paris to be the most beautiful things we have witnessed and the boys snickered and the girls cracked their gum but i listened.

my college professor once told us that somebody, someday, will look at you like you were the best thing in the world, and i could tell that he'd been hurt before. then again the word hurt could mean an infinite amount of things.

he was young, about thirty, and i could imagine him with his excuse for a girlfriend sitting on a park bench with him at two in the morning cautiously blowing smoke into the air like it meant something more than happiness. and tears running down her face mirroring his in the limelight. street lights glistened at the appearance of any human body at this hour.

“have a cigarette with me. what were we talking about? do you remember?”

her own voice echoed in my mind. oh god he was happy. he liked the way she dressed in all black on saturday nights and she appreciated his company because smoking cigarettes in the park alone just wouldn't be the same if she was without him.

"i’ve written my number and my name on old benches clutched my sweaty palm to the edges, too afraid to ever give up the security of a lone object that quite frankly had quite a bit of meaning to me.” she said.

she found herself sitting on park benches alone  not because she had to rest, or maybe another destination to go to, but because she liked the feeling—

"everyone in this world is all together but we’re apart. alone. it doesn’t matter whether the man standing next to the bench will sit down or not, i sit on park benches to be anonymous. even if somebody did ask for my story, i could make up anything i wanted, and that person would fade away and another would come along and i would make up another story just to pass time,” she said.  

and that made her spiritually happy.

and maybe thats just the reason why our professor wanted to pass that along to us.

the heaviness of my heart
collapsed upon your arrival
and welcomed itself
back into my arms
upon your absence

three words that linger
in the stale, blatant silence
horrific statement

if i had to put into words
the sour feelings in which i had toward your
hold onto me; rather an explanation of the joys as well,
i would start by analyzing your complex personality to
my hair.
as if a security blanket of tiny strands had not been enough
to hold my satisfaction.
too afraid to cut off, and watch fall to the floor
the pieces of the past.
the dead and dry ends of your humor
these feelings: an etching of the damage i so willingly forced
to make it look absolutely perfect in my eyes.
they say, they mock actually,
the presence of change in a woman,
a mark of symbolic movement into the future.
a haircut.
well i have changed
just as you have
but the maintenance of it as well; has become much too expensive for my taste.
the highlights were always too bright: but remarkable
because not only did it change the way my hair looked
but my whole appearance.
isnt that silly; to compare you to a completely
unrealistic dead component of myself.
yes i think so as well.
but as i am changing i realize: that you are very much alive
and so are you growing.
and with it bringing back the joys of the past; a new root in our bond  
the ones i should have remembered
before the haircut.

dont be disgusting
you say
like i had a choice when i spoke
like that thought wasn't
rotting within us to begin with
it isnt like that at all

im thinning
youve never driven me this far before
not in the dark like this
a sticky
sugary
dark
where cavities are opened
and emptied
and what you say isnt quite true
even when you say it twice
it isnt like that at all

i want to use you and she
interchangeably
so there can be more or less distance
between us
not armrests
or elbows
or six months
but a world
a breath
a ******* butterfly epiphany
it isnt like that at all

and i think even to this day
you are no more grown up than i am
but now youre driving
and youve suddenly decided that
i am the innocent one
it isnt like that at all
how disgusting

i love you.
so much more now than i ever have.
for the incredulous love, passion, and sentiment that you have held.
for the heartbreak, self imprisonment, and emotional torment you have
been dragged into.
not because your soul has made it out even more beautiful than before,
but because of how you have grown.
i love you.
for prospering in a world where others only told you
that you couldn't do it
or it wasn't practical.
because you are growing older now,
and it is no longer about the outside voices.
it is about what makes your heart throb
your body shake
and your bones rattle.
because someday,
you will look back and regret
every moment that you did not cherish.
so stay here
right here
where i can always
love you.

the world has
asked me why I have become
so blatenly cynical,
when the irony is within the way
that it has so
willingly wounded me.

i am selfishly lost in my own dictation and imaginary metaphors.
i have blatenly forgotten to thank you
for making me feel the essence of innocence that has been so eternally masked behind my insecurity of loneliness.
the way you express your body language,
as if it were a puzzle -
a mystery to keep away the longed clarity.
unfortunately, the tactics you hold to be true about yourself, have been unraveled. mistakenly poured out into the air, and
have landed into my arms.
my whole being is engulfed in the comfort of
the warmth you so willingly radiate.
I promise to hold onto it.


oh
and
thank you.

do you ever sit
quit, still
and wonder who
may be thinking about you
at that very moment

do you ever sit  hunched over in lecture
wondering
if your car is the car
someone has picked out to watch
speed by on a rainy day
passing the time

or ponder
if your car headlights are the ones
shining in through the little boys window
at midnight
singing him to sleep

have you ever thought about
who is longing for a way out or
what the person on the train
sitting next to you has to say about
polotics

do you ever smile at a raindrop
cascading down glass
at a child lauging
or being right in class

how about the wind
on a humid summer day
or the way you can change someones mood
by the little things you say

have you stopped and held the door
for the man that walks with a cane
or wondered why
others cant do the same

have you stopped to thank those
who have helped you succeed
who have clothed your back
given you everything you need

have you looked in the mirror and
said hey its okay
i like this better
than eating a salad anyway

when was the last time
you held out you hand
for someone in need
and said yes you can

have you been the best you
have you ran the extra mile
have you high fived
yourself
and finished with a smile

do you ever sit
and wonder of things to come
or imagine all the things that
you could have done

sometimes, the body suffers.
and the once warm and undoubtably
skin caressing,
hand held goosebumps cover the surface
of porcelain skin.

but, much like a clock and its gears,
if one piece is missing,
the heart cannot work.
and if the heart cannot work,
sometimes the body suffers.

cold for no reason other than the
pocket of regret.
but,
fortunently, the amazing thing
about the human body
is that
it heals itself, painfully, slowly through time.
these times are forbearing but
sometimes, the body has to suffer.

i find broken tree branches littering the floor of your bedroom, and as ive searched forward, i have come to the blatant realization that the physic resembled closely to your very own build. your own kind of relative nature. cut down and abandoned and stripped of your blossoms once quivering through the wind and giving into the storm. a frail heart etched into your side, telling a once colorful story, now rotting away at your roots.

i liked watching you grow, how your roots shared your thirst, and entangled with mine.  but your roots have been exposed and mine along with them. now the earths crust splits to welcome us home. you, already being picked again, watch as i lie next to your replanted seeds.

when i was younger i was afraid of the dark
but now, i frequently find myself stuck in it
when i was younger i could turn on the lights
but now, my lightbulbs just seem to burn out
when i was younger i could run to mother
but now, i am too old to hold
when i was younger i used to be afraid
but the dark taught me that it was time
to realize that i had to grow up

and being afraid of the dark
was the only thing keeping me young.