Worn photograph clutched
Tightly in the mind's eye
Faces faded, edges rough
Light preserved by hopes lie

Lush garden terrace
Woven through with thorns
Soft smile turned sharp grimace
Scarcely healed scars torn

Fairytale truths delude
Poison apple dreams
The really-real world
Seethes behind the seems

Dark mirrors reflection
Bends reality
Echoes of connection
Charm eternity

There's something amiss in my desperate laugh,
A misty, wistful wish, an algid disparate draft,
Finest thread of dread winding its way throughout,
Vines, verdant, spread, binding my hope to doubt,
Booming drum shaking foundations made of sand,
Tinkling of breaking glass creations out of hand,
Spilling out and over, released lest the dam burst,
Consuming as if lover, heedless of best-verse-worst,
Best nightmares, worst dreams, in the end, it's all the same,
Unheard cares and thoughts mean, play the grandest games.

Let nostalgia and what-ifs,
Should-of, would-of, and could-of,
Be no longer curses, but gifts,
Not the pain of loss, but the memory of love.

Let the years seem kind in their passing,
Let me revel not in the present but celebrate in giving,
In helping, in loving, in laughing,
Not just one closer to death but another year of living.

Let these words ease angst,
And soothe long-suffering sorrow,
Let the past be wreathed in lights, not pains,
Not days passed but another chance at tomorrow.

Today I've decided I've outgrown these tears,
I'm yet younger than the mirrors wrinkled clues,
So here's wishing you all the best of my years,
With a wink of these birthday blues.

Ice blue chilly
Shadow dark
Trapped in memory
Entropically stark
Struck by epiphany
Zeptoseconds for a quark
A self-fulfilling prophecy
Bitten by its bark