Watching someone fade
Is like building a sand castle,
With bare hands and dry sand.
It takes a lot of energy,
To be naive.
To be constantly hopeful.
Grains of sand
Are cups of tea,
A Sunday morning donut,
A smile on a face,
They are what keeps you going,
What keeps you building the towers,
That stand guard against the rolling black clouds off shore,
Until all you are doing is looking up.
Unaware of the ground crumbling beneath you,
Unaware of why the castle is getting smaller,
Unaware of why a laugh is making you feel uneasy,
But you knew.
You knew before your soul wanted know,
You knew that it was all slipping through your fingers,
Like dry sand and bare hands,
You lost all control.
Now a laugh is a symptom,
A donut is now a reminder,
Of what could make you smile,
And tea is what I have when I think of you.
Tag Archives: feedback
Fading
Trauma
Wind waves pass,
Saying hello,
The house stays still,
Not wanting to play,
Ignoring the breath,
Staining the window.
Only the sound of time,
Remnants of moments,
That were once inviting,
Now covered in layers,
of distance and neglect.
A shell
Of a life once lived,
Etched with meaning,
Within its organs.
Trees are ever changing,
Waiting for a jolt,
From a storm or
An awaiting rainbow,
To bring a pulse,
Back into it’s walls,
And the wind,
Will come dancing through
As an old friend.
Filed under Poetry
What Was Needed-updated
My Mom says I have a look,
She can see every emotion behind my eyes,
As if there is a movie playing on the walls,
But she didn’t get the invite.
So she watches as a bystander,
Helpless to the thoughts that churn in my head.
I tossed and turned as my nightmares broke through the mirror,
So used to filling the cracks with ink,
Constantly making touch ups until the scenarios become clear,
Until I can make sense of the reality,
A tortured soul lays bruised and bleeding,
Gasping for a breath of virtue.
Reality has turned itself into a padded cell.
I sat in a great common room,
Indian style, hands in my lap.
Wait for the roar that does not come,
Visitors don’t come and go, food does not slide under the door,
Just the silence and the glass on the floor.
Six months:
of no words
of no therapy
of guilt, pain, and confusion
of stab after stab after stab
of darkness.
Drowning,
A new sensation to master.
A notebook and pen my deserted sidekicks.
I was lost without their guidance,
The medicine they produced,
Pushed the water from my lungs so I could float back to the surface.
My lungs heavy,
I was falling and I couldn’t see tomorrow.
My thoughts were frozen in a forever loop,
In the Starbucks line, during my favorite show,
The face that my mother talks about,
Becoming a permanent fixture,
My eyes, the doors to an internal war.
I was gliding through my days when
I noticed a hand print on my shoulder,
In a mirror, I glanced at a pair of hands on my back,
on my chest, another on my wrist,
And the fingerprints woven with words from familiar voices,
Doing the job that I thought only my poetry could do,
Keeping my head above water.
The owners gave encouraging smiles,
Laughs that made my face break character,
Text messages to make sure I was eating,
And when I couldn’t see past the darkness,
They built a campfire in my bedroom,
So at night when I awoke from the nightmares,
I could see their messages of hope on the ceiling.
I leaned on those hands for support until I was swimming,
Full force in open water, no longer weary of unspoken dangers,
Towards any shoreline that could be my new destination,
My anxiety turned into rustling leaves in the bottom of my stomach,
My mother no longer asked what I was watching on the walls,
The darkness now just a scar on my heart,
Six months for it to turn from my present to my past.
I now know what it means to have more than my four walls,
To have more than the words that I wrote down for my sanity,
But my heart still soars while I’m drinking my morning coffee,
A familiar feeling of a fleeting metaphor flies in my mind,
I smile, allowing the words to simmer on the edge of my conscious,
I might get light headed if I move to quickly,
So happy to show them what I have learned in their absence.
Filed under Poetry
Always Learning
I didn’t lose a part of me,
I wasn’t so lucky this time.
My fingers walk along my skin,
A hidden roadmap to my being.
It’s there along my rib cage,
no warmth or pulse.
A reminder, a battle wound,
I give it respect for its determined permanence.
It jolts my heart with every graze and brush.
I look at where I was, a shell filled with pain,
shaken to the core beyond myself.
Hours, minutes, seconds,
my only medicine.
I’m strong.
I’m strong.
I’m strong.
The only mantra worth repeating.
It will be there at every junction,
It’s there along my rib cage,
but I know these streets,
I will soon learn a detour.
Filed under Poetry
A Lost Thought
My life is a constant,
but I choose the variables.
The reactions of what life
throws in my direction,
are based on my choices
of what I decide to give
back to a world that
doesn’t know the meaning
of a slow and steady race,
but throws curve after curve,
until I lay breathing
in a corner of truth,
determining not whether
I will stand again but
rather which foot will go first,
until I stand tall enough to see
over a city of my hurdles,
that I am too strong,
to have a moment without
meaning. With no meaning,
we give up the control we
gain when we know the
weight of what we are given,
but have the knowledge to hold it
preciously in our hands, like a
feather that just might blow away.
Filed under Poetry
An Everyday Girl's Outlet 