Calm,
What a weird,
new feeling.
Stripping anxiety from my bones,
searing itself in its place.
Causing the old ache to seep from skin, my soul.

Hi, new friend.

Please stay.

Envelope my body,
Cause brush fires with my smile.
Lower the humming bird beat of my heart,
Let me join you every night with my head on your pillow,
Until I finally sleep.

Has your soul ever been displayed,
Framed by thick wooden-glazed borders,
and set up in the gallery of another's life?

Can you say the painting of you
Beams with joy through heavy clouds,
Sliced by sharp shards of glass-like light?

If not, may you then brush-up yourself,
Quick blots of pink on sunken cheeks,
Lighten the shade under each eye?

Or will you draw the curtain,
Blind me to me, and you to you,
Pinch out the last flicker of fight?

In the wildest place,
my mouth stopped with stars,
I came to the end of words;
the parched mint, bitter
paper plank

where I lost my balance,
on one foot teetering
along that roadway where gold-
flashing fireflies stand effortlessly
on air

to send their fragile signal
out,
every night a nocturne
of one less
til I and the last firefly

danced alone
in the wildest place
sending our last ignition
out
to find our kind

or else fall quiet
and one
with the wild that
will neither be spelled
nor known.




©joyannjones June 2023

Heavy, is your loss
"Pitter-Patter" of claws, silent
A lack of weight, weighs.