I’ll see you again
The orange glow of the sun that morning,
burning you into my mind and memory
I once had the dream of one day,
knowing you but losing you too soon
The orange glow of the sun that morning,
burning you into my mind and memory
I once had the dream of one day,
knowing you but losing you too soon
The scritch-scratch
of this blue pen
mimics the spinning thoughts
wheeling round my head again.
In this life ephemeral
ripples on a foggy pond
why are we even here again?
Whatever god
or eldritch horror
beyond the reach of the palest starlight
coaxed the cold flames
from coals that coalesced into my consciousness
couldn’t you have left me well enough alone?
I didn’t ask for these atoms,
synaptic connections,
this blood and these bones.
We’re drifting listless
a sinking ship on a slate-grey sea.
At the end of it all
the cold hard line
at the edge of the world
what did it even mean?
Revolutions on tilted axes
nowhere and everywhere
simultaneously.
There’s a sifting going on.
My life is shifting.
The contents are getting mixed and sorted out.
I feel the lifting.
From heavy ladened,
To elevating.
I just can’t stop crying
Over the lightning bugs
One of my most favorite things,
That our species is the reason
I just can’t stop being sad
About the bees
The pollinators
How we need them
I can’t stop thinking about
People being forced off of land
That belongs to no one but
Mother Nature herself
We are the same species
I don’t even watch the news
And yet I still see tragedy
After tragedy
I just want peace
I just want true freedom
I just want the bees
And dammit,
I just want the fireflies to stay forever,
I just feel despairing
Fog tumbles through the valley and
settles upon a town
the road keeps winding
cattle slowing down.
Big Sandy swells beneath me
weathered bridges stretch and strain
the sky hangs low and heavy
with whispers of the rain.
Rusted rigs lie silent
where mountaineers are always free
graves abandoned but not forgotten
nearby crooked trees.
Alone upon West Virginia’s valley
the Appalachians blessed this ground
I chase the fog like shadows
lost, I refuse to turn around.
She meets me where I am.
Cold and bloodied soul, cracked and soiled,
entrails rotted by the toil of living
as we are.
She too is scarred and beaten,
burn marks from the “radiance” of Life,
patches of bruises stick sickley to the skin
as a cat’s yellow eye.
She’s been through so much,
as I have too.
Yet, she reaches for me with gentle hands,
takes me into her tight embrace,
a loving mother to a child
she is destined to meet.
And I weep and I weep and I weep,
dampening the connecting space of our souls.
The weight of her grieving heart
a glorious prayer made true
by nature’s vicious cycle.
I think there was a part of me
who knew her
before I knew the sun setting
wasn’t permanent. Maybe
even back to the seventh day:
God rested, and in God’s dreams,
she was tracing with her lips
the line on my chest
that my brassiere cuts into
when I wear it too long.
And God did not wake up
from this nightmare,
because it wasn’t one.
It was good.
When I close my eyes,
the light from the stained-green glass light bulb
still illuminates my skin.
She is drawing circles
on my chest. I do not
touch her. To touch her is to shatter
what we have left.
She made that clear from the beginning.
“I don’t need you to touch me.
I just need you there. To feel
your heartbeat. To hear
your breath hitch. To taste
you even after you’re gone.”
I don’t know if she remembers, but
sometimes, I smell the damp air,
and I remember how her tongue tasted.
It lingers, and I wish I could compare the two.
Though, now, I wonder if her taste would burn
like alcohol, or holy water.
For her, I would burn again.
