I’m in a contest I can’t win
Or even come in second.
My bird has flown from the streetlight arm
And taken promise with it.

Another lands and then departs
To mock my hopeful prayers
The sky teems with symbolic fowl
But I can’t suss their meaning.

A big one flew straight over me
But I can’t read its message.
Was it promising good health
Or telling me it’s sorry

That I’ll only get just what I have
To get me through tomorrow
And if I am not strong enough
The game will then be over.

Why are birds the messengers
In answer to my pleas
They send me signals I can’t read
And I walk on in darkness.
ljm

Lying under the covers,
staring out the window,
I watch the colors changing—
with grace, so slow, yet swift.

From shades of gray and black,
and silver brushed with white,
to a deep and drowning blue,
then gold—the world alight.

The night’s low, humming silence
gives way to chirps, then song—
a symphony of whistling birds,
all joining in at once.

And through it all, I whisper
your sweet name, tenderly,
wishing it could bring you back,
just once more, to hold you close.

Like a flower fading first from its core,
water never reaching, veins running dry—
slowly dying, no one seeing the collapse,
as the colors burn ever so bright.

You were the rain that drowned me,
roots drunk, petals swelled with light.
Now, rot creeps in and mold blooms slow,
still I clutch the last drops of you, too tight.

i may have dug the hole
but you pushed me into it
now i’m stuck down here
buried in this mess

In solitude
I reminisce
of love that once was mine to kiss
but now
my heart is but amiss
as I mourn the love
I dearly miss.