grief

It pulls you like a knife across an unwilling participant.
It pushes you in the middle of a song you used to embrace.
It makes you want to dance and march and parade around all your feelings
til you have none at all.
Or at least about that.
Because focus is better than that. It will take the place
Of where your joy used to sit
And hop
And hope
And highlight your moments of floating into the ceiling at the drop of a few hefty words, spoken just to you.

Disembodied, you feel, and angry and sad and all the sunflowers are not in the fields you ride by everyday. But the way that you see yourself is bigger and you're happy, true, whole.
By
yourself.

You are who you were created to be!
And don't you ever forget it.
This grief is a thing very real, very deep, and you are deep enough for it.
Pull up those bootstraps and put on your favorite scarf because it's going to be a lot of cold hard work
inside
Before you get to where you're going.

Sunflowers and dirt
trailing behind
and before.

Prison

It's easy for you to escape
While I'm trapped in these memories of us
I come home to my door
Solitary, a dark apartment waiting for me
Instead of the times I came home to a light on and you hiding behind the door
Waiting to kiss me hello.
It's easy for you to escape to a place I have never existed
While I am here in all the things we did.
The bus stops. The grocery. The people. The rooms. The comforter rustle.
It all reminds me of you and I am trapped
A prisoner to my own memories
Of my past future
With you.

Now all I have to hear me cry are the two clocks ticking in staccato
They mark the time moving without us
With just me
And I miss you so much.
This part just seems cruel.

strapped in.

you and I we swirl around this track I hope
will take us back
to the beauty whence we came.
but this time like
last time
and before
this war
I am the responder only
taking numbers like a punched phone
operator behind friendly fire
who never lets one ring by.
without a nod and a smile of
encouragement
at getting run over
and she signed up for this
her civic duty because if she can't fight
well at least she can answer phones.

they ring so painfully and at first she hopes there will be more
she can do, more to give and
support and throw herself into, anything to avoid the silence of her heart
when the ringing stops
don't stop please
when it stops
the ring of nothing
fills the space and expands the ties
and she comes undone.
because taking the calls is better than fighting the war.

but this once
she picks up a silent phone
and
dials.
it's the same roller coaster, I just strapped in this time.

run out

if only I could run out
of tears
maybe this pain would run out
too.

wringing my breath like my hands
before a test
this test of my
heart
strings
the frustration and helplessness
strings before me
and behind.
miles
and I want it to
run out.
if it can end so can this pain

'be strong melissa'
I whisper through the gasps
for breath as the
noises squeak out of me
like the involuntary love
beating around the anger.
because I can't stop it
at all
and I don't want to loose you and me
and I don't know how to stop from loosing you
when I already have you now.

run away from the old, and into the new
waiting for you
to say no to the emptiness
and
yes to the full
arms waiting for your
aching spirit.

run out.
these tears.

heady

sitting
around watching these flames
smolder and flash me by
consuming themselves and starting again
and again.

our words stand up for what we
believe
scotch and cigars hiding behind
our truths
timeless and our grandchildren will have these moments
I can only hope.

life is too short to spend it doing something you don't love, we conclude as the dirt hits the mound,
and joins pieces of our souls shattered and shared
trying new things and for heavens sake they are all new.
none of us knows
how what we are doing will turn
out
or into the best move of our history.

because all these aromas so rich, pulling with a river of hope so heady
we can't stop ourselves.
life is not for the lonely,
life demands to be met head on with all the gusto and guts we've got.

let it loose!
I am going to live so big!

we are enough.

I am trying not to let this get all out of control.

HUUUUUGE PICTURE
everything feeds into my every
waking
moment
and I am responsible for changing lives(!!!!!!!.)


tame that voice down a
little bit
and whisper it the truth:
life is brevity.

and we are all doing
the best we can to be
ourselves.
and that is good enough.
it is always enough.

all my dreams

when i think of your smile
the way your lips crinkle your cheeks and your
eyes get that serious mischief each time you see me.
the way your words climb the roots of my heart and twirl upward
into my dreams and float down on my upturned hands
waiting for yours to fill them.

when i think of you, my love, when i am not thinking of you
your shoulders creep into the corners of my future
and my back longs for your chest behind it.
when i dream of nothing i always see you there,
playing a character i didn't know was you until the end
right before i woke up
back here
in my bed.
at home.
with you from so far away.

but always, you are all my dreams.