No, it's really alright.
It's alright. I'm okay!
I stumble in my shoes as my heart falls out of place.
Are you awake? Wake up! Can you hear me?
I can tell you dead-on that you're here and I'm there,
I can tell you that just fine,
I just can't wash my hair. Or sit in warm-ish water for more than 4 minutes, or carry my breath while feeling safe in it.
How can I feel better like you're urging me to?
I will feel better, I swear, and as a matter of fact, I think I already do!
It will leave me alone; it will never happen again...
it will read every report and study my own eyes have read.
Then come back with a venegance,
with some sort of vendetta, a foe --
and make me unthink all the things I think I already know.
So ***** the dinner table, Mom's house, New Year's Eve,
***** looking tearfully at my parents, telling them that I need to leave.
***** the medications, MRIs, and echocardiograms
and ***** every time the symptoms performed these tests with empty hands.
EKG's normal! You're alright, and so's your blood pressure,
so get out the hospital, get some rest, and be reminded to always remain less & less sure.
Exercise, eat healthy, get plenty of sleep..
but don't mind being dizzy more than 5 days a week.
Because you're just fine! You're good! Just keep your mind in it.
I sure will, thanks a bunch! And be sure to tell the same to your kid,
because that's all I am, a child at heart.
Whose heart can't tell time, so when I stopped growing, it'd start.
I thought I was safe when I reached twenty one,
deadlifted 210, drove for a bit, couldn't see what was in front.
I don't need to be rescued,
I don't need you to care,
just don't get offended if you look over and I'm not there
dazed and confused, heart at an abnormal pace
stumbling, shuffling,
as it falls back out of place.

sad, and heart-wrenching. you don't know how else to describe it.
you're approaching graduation, and slowly starting to see your campus, your home away from home (that eventually became home), through the eyes of an alumna.
Slowly, yet instantly, your lasts begin to accumulate.
Last coffee & pastry from the arts cafe.
Last paper printed from the library.
Last haphazard multiple choice question selection.
You picked "c" again because it has always felt safe.
And don't even get started on the last moments in your dorm.
Your last classes.
Last walks around the lakes.
The best and worst thing about lasts is oftentimes, you are not aware (fully at least)
of the true finality of these experiences.
But that's what commencement is for... right?
Not directly, but sort of. Because commencement means 'beginning', not 'end'. We talk about all that we have done to get to this faithful graduation day, and it is good that the end is about beginning, but even the beginning ends.
So that space between the beginning of the end and the end of the end is quite strange.

You realize you will no longer attend school here, or maybe even anywhere, starting in just a few days.
Yet you're walking through the student center listening to a song you listened to when you walked around campus for the very first time.

Except everything seemed faster then.

Now, it all seems slow, perhaps even            frozen
           in                                 time.
Years ago, you didn't know the ins and outs of how this place was laid out; how it functioned.
You didn't see fuzzy memories at certain tables and buildings, and in certain nondescript corners.
You couldn't hear the ghostly 'Hello!'s echoing, familiar voices greeting you that now haunt the sidewalks
instead of traveling along them.
You are no longer in the moment when you started to call
this place home.
Except it's your last day of classes, and you've been here
quite a while, but it is, in fact, still home.
But something is fading, unclear in this
space
          between
                          spaces
The­ faces aren't familiar anymore,
and years ago, that would be something you
jokingly wished for, perhaps just to be left alone so you didn't have to pause your music.
But now, you long for that closeness in some way.
You'd find comfort in that sort of chaos.
And maybe you already started your post-grad job
before graduation because you needed to distract yourself
from the fact that it is all
so liminal.
a place between places, spaces between spaces,
a life lived between lives.
Where you're able to recognize that though your worst times were hosted there,
your best times also were.
and maybe it all wasn't truly just a well thought-out blur, because you found so much safety here, and learned to create that for yourself.
Without this place, it would've been tough to deal with what had been dealt.
This place lifted you up, showed you what you could do, and you created a life and love for yourself that you're starting to see now that you're through.
It hurts, yes, I know: to say goodbye to this chapter.
but it remains part of you, now and thereafter.
side note from the future: don't rush into things, just listen to yourself, because you are all you have
and the rest is what you have felt.

Imagine me
unlocking your eyes
in such a way that
heaven and earth in their
full boundlessness
pour unto me,
osmosing into the depths
of my being

Imagine me
falling

             deeper


                                          into





                                                                                         you

Imagine
how commonplace:
you, asleep
in my bed, my blanket
covering you all the way up
to your chest
where I lay my head,
my fingers through your hair.

But imagine
how peculiar:
you cuddled up
beside me,
his sweatshirt fastened
to your chest by
your forearms. your
fingers curled softly
around the plush cotton fabric
makes this all
quite peculiar.

I just want to love you
Until the end of time
I’d prefer to hold you close
Rather than this distance putting us into a bind

I just want to love you
Unconditionally
There are still so many years
To fall in love with you more
traditionally

In the past, the concept of love made me dubious
I had my trust broken, misconstrued and deconstructed
But now I can see having kids and a husband
With you?
Not sure,
But you erupt like Vesuvius

My feelings for you are volcanic and I wish I could hold you
Cradle your head in my arms, flesh resting on floob
I love you most in these moments of utter simplicity
It’s during these times where you speak more transparently

I want to protect you,
Don’t get caught in my life
It burns bright and red hot and
Lava flows,
putrid sulfuric sin

I just want to love you
Even (more) when I’m with him
Because I’m reminded of you
When our song comes on
On a whim

I just want to love you
Even (more) when you’re with her
Things may work out better there,
But my deeds have more flow

I just want to love you,
Hold you close and tell you it’s alright
And lay with you- no pressure-
Until dew glistens in the morning light

I see you everywhere in the corners of my vision
It feels as if it’s all a  dream, or perhaps a
Nightmare, and in it, time rewinds, the scenario switched,
But you would completely change your decision

You wouldn't want me, and I wouldn't want you
We’d lose sight of what drew us together
We’d get competitive, restless
And it would no longer be a question of whether

But I still just want to love you
In a world without end
After we’ve seen it all
And we’re both on the mend

I still
Just want to love you
Somewhere we both don’t know
In a place far away, fog settles,
And under a quilt we burrow

I want to find you again in a place so anomalous
Filled with neon signs, bright lights, and visual overdoses
I will see you seated at a bar, thinking of why you’re here
I’ll approach you
So much having changed that we seem anonymous

The cloud.
I am nearly suffocated, forced not to speak of it.
Or else it will hear me.
It will mutate my whispers into horror stories,
stories one hears only when they are wholly
unwilling to.

One second, it's just a sliver of darkness
peering through the slight crack in the door.
Then, the door opens
without my consent,
letting it all in.

Then,
the cloud occupies my mind,
and
the darkness occupies my existence.
Everything is contorted into something
that it is not.
And I completely
lose sight
and right mind
of who
I
am.

Read between my lines, I tell you.
Read between my lines.
It shouldn’t be so hard for you to understand
That I love you more than anyone ever knew.
Please just read between my lines
And decipher the code
That I will love you ‘til the end of time
And I hope you love me too.

Read between the lines, my sweetheart
Before I depart into the snow
For I need you to keep sound in your mind
The fact that I will never let you go

I know I may sound crazy
But all I say is true
At least to me, and I know
It’s true to you,
Too.

You were the darkness
To my light
Where I shine the brightest,
You will always take my light away.

I wish I could only see you
in black and white,
as the fog settles and you walk quietly
in the streets,
tranquil and graceful.
I wish I could only see you
in black and white,
where you dance in the rain puddles in red boots,
tinted grey by
the black and white world
you would exist in,
only in my head.
I wish I could only see you
in black and white,
for when I see you in color,
you are too exuberant and blindingly vibrant
to the extent where I cannot comprehend
or appreciate your being.
I wish I could only see you
in black and white,
for I know that color is not where you
belong, and not where I can
admire you to your fullest potential.
I wish I could only see you
in black and white,
for you do not belong in my present,
you belong in my past.
That does not make you any less beautiful,
for things seen without the use of color
prove their authenticity.
Seeing you
in black and white
depicts you as something so magnificent,
color is not needed to enhance your being,
for you are beautiful enough
without it.