Stuck

This is no Northern Lights
Some Heaven-made magnetization
Just particles collided, we
Trauma-charged
Bonded

This is no Home Sweet Home
Though fires burn in us
For in our eyes we see
Never land, and
Invalidating mothers

This is no You & I
Each Saviors, for we can’t
It’s you
It’s me
The Devil we know better

Fluorescence

As light on eagle’s wings

You and I shone no more alone

Us, a part

Of one grand lumen

A candelabra

An abracadabra

Were we

*****

Separated particles now

Conjuring ended

Never again to sense

Green and feathery fingertips

Glow gone

Darkness in your midst

Did I reach you

Art Credit: Tiger R., age 11

Trespassed

both hands on the steering wheel
direct impact
no hands on the steering wheel
no hands
steering wheel into flesh
the soft
then the crushing
crushing of ribs
an explosion
an exhalation of breath, lungs
lungs pushing
pushing the heart upward outward
no more breath
no more heart
no more air
no more blood
blood everywhere crushed now
I know what it feels like to love

Photo Credit: A.P. Cook

Keeper of Keys

Old
Habitual, rote faithfulness
Adherent to rotational, gravitational patterns
Latchkey Love
Learned avoidance, practiced to perfection
Like clockwork, the thrill won’t work
Time, you are becoming
Old

Done

Sub-zero warmth on planet You
Editing me

One hundred percent chance I’d be puzzled
Morning, noon, and night

Your steady rainfall left me
Adjusting, crash-landing

Unsure now whether I survived
The fiery-attack I thought was your love

Looming Anniversary

I originally came to complain
To cry so silent here that just my Creator could make sense of this outpouring
This graffiti-papered grieving
To tell the sky what it already knows
My disdain for the wafting scent of muscle on the backyard grill next door
My need for mercy for the muscle and might ripped from my chest
To scream to the sky of this guy, who took
And took
And took what I gave readily — easily — from love
And kept, and refused to acknowledge was gifted to him
Yet looming, this anniversary, I can neither complain nor cry
After all
For all the love letters
Eternal
Penned by lovers, that, too, paper and letter the sky
And God gave a garden and set my eyes
That I would see
Gardens of flowers for me

Friday in French

A wind I’ve not heard before
Today
A rush upon the rain
An energy
A constant speaking, the whirring
A struggle to understand
Some language I believe in
And cannot yet decode
Thus, a dread

Faith filled,
I will not prophesy
But beware