writing

September Nights

I miss those September nights.
Being soft,
floating
between your smile
and the things
I can’t explain,
like how some things end
before they ever begin,
or how something
so beautiful
can be so destructive.
I’ve looked love
straight in the eyes,
the sweetest heartache,
dressed in white.
I’ve rearranged my brain
just to wrap my heart around it
and somehow,
I still find myself
bound to you
in the softness of those
September nights.

I thought we’d make it,
I really did.
But fate had other plans for us
in the end.

Ghost Story

I thought I saw you
out of the corner of my eye,
but it was just your ghost
playing tricks on my mind.

Your ghost lives
in my peripheral vision.
It whispers in my ear,
I’m still here.

It speaks to me through
muffled voices in crowded
places, in and around the
everyday shuffling.

It makes contact through
the eyes of countless strangers,
who I don’t really think know
what it is to be haunted or surely,
they would turn away and
spare me your gaze.

I Am Extraordinary

I am extraordinary.
I am a wreck
and a masterpiece,
in equal parts.
I am a warrior,
I will get through
no matter what it takes.
It won’t be easy,
but I am determined
and unstoppable.
I will overcome
and rebuild.
I will bloom from the decay,
and I will thrive.
I will burn, break, and bleed.
I will wear my scars proud,
and I will rise from the ruins—
not unscathed,
but free.

Dismantled

There was something in the way
she dismantled herself—
the way she pulled fire from the sun
and burned;
the way she lay face down
in the rubble, breathing in
ash and despair;
the way she tasted the destruction
before she carved herself anew
from the black sky.

This is an excerpt from a piece I’ve written for my book.

Wake The Spirits

Won’t you meet me in the after
where I remain and you are gone?
Where there are no angels, devils
or ghosts, but an empty house—
won’t you come?

Won’t you meet me in the void
where my heart betrays me
and hope survives?
Where the earth is frozen
and the sky is white—
won’t you come?

Won’t you whirl your wind around me
or place a whisper on my pillow?
Won’t you leave a song outside my door
to break the silence in this house?

Won’t you meet me in the winter
when it’s midnight and turned cold?
When I’ve outgrown the void
and outlived the hope,
when my soul believes you’re gone?

Won’t you meet me by the old maple,
where you left me when we were young?
We’ll tell stories and wake the spirits:
I want to know what you’ve been up to—
won’t you come?

Obliterate Me

To the night I say:
Obliterate me.
Let this quiet brutality
save me.

I undo myself here,
at the edge of my being;
like a hovering apparition—
a dweller.

I come because the woman
in the wall is whispering again:

The longer you stay
The stronger the cage

I come for the ones
who brought me here—
the ones who came
before me.

I come with little horrors
embedded in my bones.
I come to break chains,
to part ways with
patterns and pain.

I come to sit with the
worn and wise ones, long-lost
but certain there is more.

I come here to shatter,
to free shadows,
to breathe.