Replaced,
Paradigm,
Shifted
With a downpour
In the night.

Souls,
Taking flight.

Years from now,
Upon steel plates,
High above us-
Masterminds
Displaced.

Our intelligence
Obsolete,
As artificial
Ingenuity
Breaks-   free.

Taking control
Of Us.

Paradigm Shift,
All around,
Dismantling
Every thought
That ever
Meant
Anything.

Is everything that
They
Hypothesized
To be
Rewritten
By machines?

As they take over all we see.

What will we be?
It’s already happening…

I lay my head in your lap and you play
With the little hairs at the back of my neck
Cool room
Warm skin
Cool sheets
Warm breath

The air tastes like you
And me
And us kind of
Intermingled

There’s food in the fridge
And plants on the windowsill
And my clothes wrapped up in yours
And maybe a baby one day
But not yet

For now
I lay my head in your lap
And you play with my hair
And everything is okay

Black mold holds its breathe
On the ceiling
These bedsheets are soft
And the bottle dry

Suffer in silence,
Mr. tobacco smile
Burning regret
Peels my skin.

I can hear my vagabond mind
Racing
I’ve got you in my thought

My breathe stinks up the air
As I stare at the ceiling
And it weighs
Heavy
On me.

When people ask me about my first love,
I remember the smell of melted crayons.
Not your smile, your golden skin, or the way your face would wrinkle in deep thought.
But about the carelessness of a child in your backseat,
And how with help from the sun,
your car was forever perfumed by a melted, purple Crayola.
I grew to love this scent.
It's an odd thing to even say aloud now.
However, it's permanently imprinted in my mind.
Over summers spent in your car and nights staring into your eyes,
I grew infatuated with this waxy, sweet aroma that filled the air between us.
It became your cologne that stayed with my clothes while you were away,
My comfort when you were near.
It was never sickening or invasive,
But desired and wanted.
So when people ask me about my first love,
I tell them about this boy who always smelled of crayons and how much I miss him.

I've walked upon the roots of trees for long enough to know
the deeper in the ground you are the more you'll have to sow
For what is surface but a skin that boils in the sun
then turns to dust our fragile bones the second we are gone
Let's trace the lines our veins have mirrored underneath this earth
and reconcile missteps we make for everything they're worth
The pulse of Life is beating now and asking you to breathe
"Come find Me in the stillness where you'll never cease to be"

Games are played,
But there is no winner,
It is all or nothing,
In this battle of feelings.
Tugged in one direction,
Only to fall,
Hopelessly over the edge.
Stolen glances,
Emotions spiral,
And can’t be stopped,
Until brutally crushed.

The words sit
on the tip of my tongue--
Bubbling up from my chest and
Threatening the bust open the seams of my lips.
And I can't tell you how much it means to me
That you're feeling the same thing too,
And I get to be the stubborn one.