the poet

the colours are going to change the leaves are going to fall, spiral, drift, fly without wings down to the ground. and they will hit bottom— dead. but they are not the end, just the possibility for a new beginning for the leaves will return fresh again & darling, take this bracing assurance  wherever you go that  so will you

the night knows me better than i know myself. 11am has seen my desperate struggle for breath, my choking as the sheets tightened their wind around my neck; 12am has seen my earbuds pushed deep in my brain, a melody spreading like a stain from one ear to the other- 1am has seen my empty gaze, my vague silence because i just - can’t - sleep; 2am has seen my furious scribbling that i have to get out or die; 3am has seen my aching heart, pounding itself against my ribcage to be loose; 4am has seen my violent screaming that i can’t stop inside my head.

there’s a great deal of space near the beginning of fall-time. all that summer was has shrunken in its skin and molted, and left behind a great aching space that the fall has not yet filled. it feels that the only way to occupy it again is to lie down in the grass, now cool with the burn of the sun, and breath the crisp air and feel how it scorches your throat like smoke and wind your fingers around and into the leaves to hear them crackle, and then slowly, slowly, the space will be filled until it is near overflowing and fall will have come.

-but still, i rise

when i die, when they lay me in the ground and scatter me over with dust, i pray to leave behind a legacy of overstuffed bookshelves and hearts flooding with warmth and a rushing feeling that i have done something worthwhile. and i hope to look up into the blinding light of how i imagine new life to be and hear the words, “well done good and faithful servant”, and even if i had doubts before nothing will ever prepare me for the torrent of relief and love and worship that will fill me to the brim at hearing that voice

I remember a time where truth had one meaning and wasn’t hazy like breath on a glass; where i didn’t have to worry about picking myself up from shattered fragments of my wrong choices, where the lies had slithered in between us and guided my hand. i remember a time where truth was white, and lies were black— but now everything’s grey and i hate it, i hate it. now it’s all a mess where we question everything we heard; where suspicion is a killer that surfaces between us  and seizes our words and crushes our meaning and returns it, broken and battered and saying something else entirely. now a foreign voice, not me at all. i remember a time when i trusted everything and everyone trusted me, and the things that the world tried to wheedle into our minds were just feeble inventions that we knew better than to listen to.

dusk creeps softly through the city, so slowly at first you hardly notice. it dips down, weaving itself into chinks and alleys and narrow splinters until everyone is aware that it’s arrived. it settles onto the things that in the day aren’t so frightening.  not so frightening, perhaps, but far less pretty.  and the stars follow quickly behind