Thursday, December 24, 2009

Never What I Remember.

Never What I Remember

This single day of joy,
Bedecked with merriment and youth
And plagued by dreams of that one toy
That will prove to me this season's truth,

As a child, was so wondrous.
And all the days leading unto it,
My cheer was pure and boundless,
And the glee born then was a conduit

That would last me all the year.
But time has long since grown,
And with each passing season I fear
That the magic I once had known

Is now gone for all my years.

(For the joy I now try so hard to find is never what I remember.)

Written 12.25.09 @ 12:10 AM

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Lonely Shoulders.

Lonely Shoulders

I had a dream
A dream more like a memory
And in it I lay napping
As I do now

But the difference was
In the dream you were there
And you came up to me
And laid alongside my back

Your arms preparing to wrap
Around my sleeping shoulders
But before I could drown in their love
I suddenly awoke

And there were no arms
Upon my lonely shoulders.

Written 12.17.09 @ 3:32 PM

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Sunset Fair.

Sunset Fair

The heart that beats
Within your chest
Let it rest, let it rest

It wants not of hate
Or great divide
Only to ride, only to ride

Into the setting sun
Of true love's fair
But unaware, so unaware

Of what awaits it there.

Written 12.16.09 @ 9:59 PM

The Soulmate That Never Was.

The Soulmate That Never Was

Soulmate:
Why did you teach me this word?
From the time I was born
To the first glance from a boy
This word you drilled into my heart,
Programmed into my head

And all it did was set us up,
The children of all ages,
For failure, for heartache

Can't you see:
There is not one
And never was
For love is all around
And it is lost and found
Time and time again.

Written 12.16.09 @ 1:49 AM

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Five Years.

Five Years

It's 6:10 in the evening, and tears stain my face. The words he said run through my mind: "And at 5 years, the survival rate drops to 50%." Half of the patients who receive a bilateral lung transplant die within 5 years. That's HALF, in FIVE. In his white coat, with his gently combed strawberry blonde hair and his sensitive but knowledgeable face, he explained that this means a patient wouldn't want to go through transplantation too early. The patient being me. For instance, he explained, if you thought you have at least ten more years to get out of your original lungs and you went with the transplant, you could be cutting 5 years off your life. Thus, as he so rightly surmised, it's a judgment call. Listening to him speak, hearing these earth-shattering words about a patient's odds, MY odds, I had to fight back the tears. And through these latent tears I wondered to myself, Can I live 5 more years on my own, on my original lungs? And honestly, I don't know the answer. But I feel in my gut that it's not good. And the whole idea got me thinking about my fate in general and how quickly everything can and will come crashing down. The thought didn't occur to me until now, but my life will most likely become drastically different in the next 5 years. What kind of fate is that for a 22-year-old, one with so much passion and dreams that I feel like at times I could burst, but with so little physical ability to chase after them. Where will I be in 5 years?

Written 12.10.09 @ 6:34 PM

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

It's in Their Foreign Hands.

It's in Their Foreign Hands.

The stage is calm and black
And I stand with my heels to it
Palms down and moist
Heart poised and quietly quivering
Inside my unknowing chest

The lights have yet to come up
And the audience sits waiting
With authority and mystery
And my fate in their foreign hands
What will the verdict be

Freedom or failure
Life or death
Either way,
We all eventually rest.

Written 12.9.09 @ 12:28 AM

Monday, December 7, 2009

How does my story end.

How does my story end.

I did not want to see the end
Our faces fading black
I wanted to keep us here
In this eden
In these arms

But the earth
The blessed, knowing earth
Keeps sending smoke signals my way
And I wonder if this eden
Is perhaps only an illusion
Waiting for the right moment to decay

First the bracelet
That you gave
Dripping with love
Unraveled before my unwilling eyes

Next the air-dried rose
Preserved from our six months
Of childlike infatuation
Disconnected at the stem and ovule
And I wept upon its irreparable fate

Then the last, and most tragic,
Was my surprise gone awry:

I planned a gift for you
To say the apologies that my heart could not speak

I went to develop the film
Of our trip to the bandshell
When our candid embraces
Were snapped by our friends,
When we were still basking in eden
And in each other's
Love-saturated limbs

But when I went to remove the canister
From the vintage camera
The film was not inside it
But instead lay exposed to the light
On the canister's right

And all the stilled images
Of our still-then pure love
Were swallowed into blackness.

Written 12.7.09 @ 11:01 PM

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

The Distance.

The Distance

They say that having the distance between you
Makes it easier
When things fall apart.

But it doesn't.

Because on cold and lonely nights like this,
I used to find solace
In feeling the warmth of your future hands,
And the love of your future kiss.

But tonight,
On this cold and lonely night,
I have only the ghost of your past hands
And the faint memory of your lingering kiss.

On the cold and loneliest of nights like this,
Only my memory exists.

Written 12.2.09 @ 12:24 AM