I hike down this path and arrive at the witch's altar
I bow and worship this sadness that has become my martyr
She whispers in my ear, why have you done this and what have you done?
Why couldn't you have made the right choice once
So I hit, I scream and I fall into this hole
My breath leaves my chest
They say I don't deserve my soul.

The witch takes me to an apothecary down the hill
Where they sell joy, all wrapped inside a pill
Our unique character
Our consumption will slowly kill
Just swallow it down before you break the rules too hard
And stay right there, stay inside your backyard.

-

My sickness
so ambiguous
I see a crowd in my mind,
With natality exceeding the morality of my inner ghosts
I am not just me
Rather I am more than they perceive in a single body
So tell me how may I handle the pressure of being surrounded by the dynamic flesh of other people
When I am already in conversation with thousand masses within me.

-

Let me know if I have what it takes,
Push me to a point , I'll never break.
Remind me again, what I'm doing this for
Then let me go and I'll fight for more.

I'll sail in agony absently
for my thoughts are bitter and free,
Send a cavalry to rescue me
Play pretend, scene one act three
And even though I've drifted apart,
I'm still a sailor with a heavy heart.

-

The stray eyelashes plucked so softly off their cheek, collars adjusted mid-sentence, the ladle passing back and forth as the chai simmers and how she blows it gently to taste and still - "it's hot, careful", - and then - " more sugar?", " more ginger?", " five more minutes?" - (yes five more minutes). Humming in the room, happily distracted, and no one there to hear it, to know about it but you and you listen. Stopped in the middle of whatever you were doing, to listen without saying anything, without walking in because it is a moment entirely theirs, not for anything but listening to, knowing that your place is just to be there, to hold that moment, because it is a gift beyond words and that you are lucky enough to be there to hear it until the humming stops and the world comes back and all you can do is go back to your task, aware how delicate, how fragile all of it was.

-

In the agony of a storm,
A bluebird was born,
From the eerie depth of good and ill,
from the mystery, which binds him still,
from the ocean and the fountains,
from the red cliff of the mountains,
from the sun that grew cold and old,
from the autumn tint of folded gold,
from the same source, so much was taken,
he kept the score, he could not awaken,
As the cloud took the form of a demon in his view,
He flapped his wings in the dark, as the hypocrite blue flew.

-

There's a mist of winter kisses where I tried to double park,
The reality was vicious, the human was in charge,
It was nothing, it was business, but it left an ugly mark,
I've come here to revisit what happens in the dark.

I was selling dreamy lies, I was dressing kind of sharp,
I let the cat in the kitchen and a panther in the yard,
In the prison of the gifted, I was friendly with the guards,
So I never had to witness what happens in the dark.

-

To live content with small means, to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly, to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart, to bear all cheerfully, to all bravely await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual unbidden and unconscious grow up throughthe common.
This is to be my symphony...

-

Please, dear reader, do not say I am hopeless, I believe there is a better future to fight for, I simply accept the possibility that I may not live to see it.

I have grown weary of telling myself lies that I might one day begin to believe.

We are not all left standing after the war has ended.

Some of us have become ghosts by the time the dust has settled.

-

When people say we have made it through worse before, all I hear is the wind slapping against the gravestones of those who did not make it, those who did not survive to see the confetti fall from the sky, those who did not live to watch the parade roll down the street.

I have grown accustomed to a lifetime of aphorisms meant to assuage my fears, pithy sayings meant to convey that everything ends up fine in the end.

There is no solace in rearranging language to make a different word tell the same lie.

Sometimes the moral arc of the universe does not bend in a direction that will comfort us.

Sometimes it bends in ways we don't expect & there are people who fall off in the process.

-

Solitude
So, now I shall talk every night. To myself. I shall walk, as I did tonight, jealous of my loneliness, in the blue-silver of the cold moon, shining brilliantly on the drifts of fresh fallen dew, with the myriad sparkles.
I talk to myself and look at the dark trees, blessedly neutral. So much easier than facing people, having to look happy, invulnerable, clever.
With mask down, I walk, talking to the moon, to the neutral impersonal force that does not hear, but merely accepts my being. And does not smite me down.

-