Poetry

My imagination has always gotten the best of me.

I set it free too often, and now it knows no bounds.

It sprints through fields of fictitious heavenly daydreams

adjacent grandeur.

In my daydreams, adorned with honeysuckle and senecio,

and the light brushing of wild grass against my shins,

the sun shines as it sets behind the horizon

allowing the air to cool.

And despite the beauty of it all,

of silence interrupted only by chirping birds preparing for restful sleep,

nothing compares to the touch

of your fingertips gracing my bare skin.

Out of all of my daydreams,

the single memory of what was real, what was once, and is no longer,

brings me profound peace —

for a moment.

Then, the daydream dies.

The honeysuckle sours and the wildgrass dries,

and the birds wail their anguished cries.

The delusion I have drunken

cannot possibly function

and the hope of it all has sunken.

But then my brain swirls a new dream:

I begin to picture what could have been

if the grass never died, if the birds never cried,

and if you stayed there by my side.

Soft pressure from your lips tickle mine

and I chuckle, like I did on your couch

when my hair fell into your face.

It smelled like honeysuckle.

It’s a beautiful dream.

I am an ocean.

So many see me, but look over

my complexities. Their gaze

stops at the waves calmly dancing

on the surface, not concerned with

how there’s so much more to be

heard. And just for once I want to be

heard.

I’m yearned for by

guys who want to feel the

sun shine and light them up

off my skin. And when night comes

I still glisten, but no one knows

this is the time I rhythm

most beautifully.

You see, when day’s rays

hit the ocean waves, there’s no

struggle to differentiate which

fish are good and bad.

They know the minnows below

are harmless, but when shark

fins swim and get too close,

no one goes near

the water.

Only if they’re hot, or

like mastering sharks, will

ocean depths be considered to be explored.

There’s no worry of danger

because it’s only a game to

be played before the sun

goes down.

I like the ocean’s depths.

The world sees monsters to not

falter with. Leave it alone!

It will kill you!

Everything is uglier on the inside.

So they fantasize about ribbons

of light across what their eyes

choose to see. Nevermind the

life beneath.

The ocean is most

gorgeous at night. That’s when

crashes against rocks knock

loose what will, one day, be a

home. Settlement mounds

found by turtles, or crabs,

and they’ll burrow down

and rest, moonlight fully brightening

the way.

The ocean roars during

the day, but the prettiest waves

are black as blood and echo

across the state. They are too loud

to hear the mighty sound of

nature changing — a future being

made. They hate what is

stronger than them.

So they stare. They tear

apart the ocean’s glory and

ignore its obvious fear. Hurricanes

don’t care if you find them

beautiful.

The storm enrages, they curse

the waves they once erotically

adorned with praise.

The deal they made was for only the waves.

Dumped their waste, ejaculated

shit and made her sick.

Now, they spit at her damage, too thick

to admit their part in making her

scarred, in making her hard

to the eternity of trash thrown at her.

Disgusted when it washes

on shore.

The good without the bad.

They misunderstood what they had.

The ocean is growing, revolting

to how the world tried to change her.

Saving her became a bedtime story.

Watch in horror as she brings

glory back to herself.

The lights laid low

and the humming glow of old light bulbs

in lamps paid gauche homage to the euphoria

of the evening.

Resplendence of dazzling dancers

and babbling freelancers drunk off of

champagne bottles left open all night

echoed ghostly through each empty hall.

And the unadulterated bliss of each

newly buzzed kiss on brand new lips

tickled feathers across my breaths

inhaled, held on to, and let go.

Fallen confetti decorated the floors,

finding spilled liquor to playfully cling

its colors to, unbothered of the mess

that it was leaving behind.

There was something I was searching for:

a feeling my gut was churning towards,

but all it left me was the sweating beads

of an adrenaline rushed heartbeat

trying to clear my veins and liver

of alcohol stains and cold-sweat shivers

that always come with withdrawal

of an addict too dirty to get clean.

“Lonely soul, party of one!”

And all I wanted was to be done with the isolated

chills that burrowed so deep, my hangover swill

could not evict them from the heart they called home.

Haunting ghosts in foggy gardens

made from diseased reverie nightmares

surrounded truth hardened.

Evil lurks in the palace among

the innocent souls, and manipulation

soaks pure minds thereof.

Though Cupid’s arrows bring joy,

there is deception in false love

manufactured through wicked ploys.

The pain, however, rings honest.

Fraud a poisoned blade to the heart

that heals not in rooms of torment.

In grief, tears drown and paralyze

like muddy waters dispositioned

choking slowly, its victims unwise.

Yet vengeance removed, and forgiveness suffered

can the body be cleaned of sin.

No devils reap from anger uttered.

This above all: To thine own self be true.

And I understand to best serve

myself would be to leave you.

When her heart broke, it was demolished.

No longer could she hear the beats she would listen to

as a child with toy stethoscopes and nursing kits.

When the tears fell, they fell in rivers

pouring into oceans of salted grief that suffocated

any thing that tried living in it.

When she lay there, she lay alone.

Only pillows held her — faux lovers feeding a fix that

no one else was willing to.

Alone, where the light was stolen, walls opened up into caves,

echoing the trauma she heard all of her life:

“Your truth isn’t real; your smile is calculated;

your love is manipulative.”

Gone were the skips in her feet like rocks over the lake by her house.

Gone were the fingertips that traced her waist in the middle of the night.

Gone were the walls she spent decades constructing, only to get blown apart by her own grenades.

When the sun cracked dawn past her window, she was able to see

the monsters hiding under her bed, grabbing at her feet,

were old sweater sleeves, limp and lifeless.

When she sat up, she sat tall.

She sat alone, wrapped in her own embrace, knowing that

the love for herself was enough.

And when she stood, her feet were firm in place.

She walked out of her empty tomb, risen from the dead,

leaving behind promised princes and daydreamed dandies and beds of wilted roses.

She learned to grow cautious of spinners with silk threads,

who weaved pretty traps she used to fall into,

and she watched as getaway cars rusted in their parking spots.

She thanked God for the gravel roads she used to walk on,

for the callous made her strong.

And she knew that without each broken bone, each dagger to the back,

each scar that closed over — healed, but marked forever,

through 2am tears and mismatched portraits,

in either twisted fate or unfortunate fortuity,

she never would have ended up where she was going.

Here.