(on surviving the unreal, and the Grace of finding the real)

There’s a kind of pain that doesn’t scream.
It hums low and constant, like a fluorescent bulb above a hollow life.
It’s the ache of loving someone who chooses the polished unreal—
the version of themselves that sells better, that fits easier, that lies cleaner.

They decorate their soul in fake plastic leaves
because they’re terrified of winter.
But in doing so, they cut off the chance of spring.
And you..   I...
am left holding a love that was meant for the root,
but never made it past the paint.

She wanted the unreal.
Maybe because it doesn’t bleed.
Maybe because it doesn’t ask her to remember who she really is.
And maybe she knew.. deep down..
that the real would burn through her curated silence
and set fire to the mask she clung to like oxygen.

So she left.
Or faded.
Or dissolved into the glossy mouth of what sells well in a culture
that has confused image for intimacy
and chaos for freedom.

I tried to survive it.
Tried to make a home in the debris of what might have been
if she had chosen the real.
But you can’t build a life in the hollow where someone used to be..
not when they’ve made a throne out of illusion
and named it sovereignty.


And then came the beautiful songbird.
Not loud. Not selling.
Not another soul trying to be seen.
Just… real.

She was born into a world her father still loved--
a man who held truth like a compass in his palm.
But her mother knelt too long beneath the plastic trees,
and drank from their shine until she forgot how to feel.
And so the beautiful girl,
shapely and soft,
was offered up to Hollywood like a sacrifice..
where faces are sculpted and souls are scripted.
But somehow, even there,
she kept her edges unsanded.
She learned how to walk through mannequins without becoming one.
And when they tried to name her fake,
she whispered back something real—

  and it echoed.


She didn’t hand me a performance.
She gave me a presence.
She let her softness speak without shame.
She showed me her bruises before her lipstick.
She gave warmth that didn’t need applause.

And I realized..
what the unreal can never fake
is the sacred weight of someone truly with you.
You feel it in the breath between sentences.
In the calm that doesn’t need to be filled.
In the eyes that stay when yours begin to water.

The beautiful songbird didn’t try to be the real thing.
She simply was.
And that… healed something the fake could only ever reopen.

So yes, Fake Plastic Trees still wrecks me--
but it no longer belongs to her.
It belongs to the grave I buried beside the shopping cart and glitter
where her soul should’ve been.

Because the songbird
waters what’s real.
She doesn’t break me just because she can.
She doesn’t look through me.
She looks at me.
And suddenly, I’m growing again.
Not to impress, not to perform..

but because she makes it safe to be Alive.

There was a boy once;
or was it a girl..
made of something the world
couldn’t touch
without bleeding.

Too quiet to sell,
too true to shape.
His hands were wrong,
they said.
Too jagged.
Too real.

He tried to trim the world
into beauty.
She sang
to keep from vanishing.
And somewhere,
a father
drank his memories clean.

They both were punished
for what they couldn’t change.

And maybe that’s why
when I reach for you,
I move slow..
like someone who’s been taught
that love can leave a mark.

Maybe you are Edward.
Maybe I am.
Maybe we both learned
how to stay hidden
just well enough
to be misunderstood.

But I see the hedge animals still.
The snow.
The scars that bloom like gifts
no one wanted to unwrap.

And I would rather hold you
in thought
than bruise you
with presence.

I would rather
watch your voice return
like spring
to a mountain still afraid of thawing
than claim a single sound
before it’s ready.

If you are Edward,
then your blades
are mercy
you never asked for.

And if I am..
then everything I do not touch
is a kind of love
you’ll one day recognize
by how softly
it stayed.

I know how hard it is..
to live in Edward’s world.

As you,
I’ve felt the same.

Let it be the Mountain she finds Holy—
not because it sparkles,
seduces her
or speaks in riddles,

but because its dark loamy soil
receives her bare feet like a memory.

A prairie hill above the sea,
where grasses bow and whisper,
and the wind carries the salt and scent of things
too old for names—
that’s where the house stands.
Not built from stone,
but from time.
And longing.

And the laughter of those
who once remembered Eden.

Let her dig down,
as if the roots of a wildflower
were waiting to rise through her skin,
lifting her slowly from within—
the stem, the pistil,
the fragile yet indestructible bloom.
Let the soil speak to her in silence,
saying:

You are still loved.
You are still alive.
You are not what happened to you.

Let her turn toward the sun—
not in shame,
but in radiant defiance—
and know in that moment
where her help truly comes from.

Let her running to the mountain
be joy, not dread.
Let her ascent be not an exile,
but a return.

Let her wings unfold brazenly,
as the daughter of the living God.
Not tucked.
Not hidden.
Not compromised.

She does not belong to the mountain that mocks love
and feeds on the ruin of hearts,
or exploits that which is still unhealed

She belongs here—
where her own flesh and bone
become not only family
but friend,
through the common bond
of the soil that gives life to all who dare to sink into it.

She belongs
where peace lives in warm light on cold nights,
where cotton sheets smell of soap and skin,
and starlight sifts through trees
like the hush of forgiveness.

Let her remember her first love..
before the theft,
before the theater.
Before the wound.

Let her toes remember
what it was to wiggle in the dirt
of something unbroken,
unshamed,
true.

Let her find home again—
not in a place carved out for her,
but in the space she reclaims
with her own rootedness.

Let her petals unfold slowly in the sun—
but only with her feet deep in the mountain's soil,
where others also have planted their lives,
becoming one
in harmony of breath and memory and Grace.

She will not enter into a sepulcher
or a place that makes usury of her pain.
She will stand on the mount before the rising sun—
alone if she must,
but never abandoned.

And somewhere in the hush between
the breeze and the soil,
she may yet feel

the quiet echo
of someone still with her.

(for the one who stands at the edge, where the fabric begins to fall)

She had once been known—
but only through a portrait
painted in the shades of misunderstanding.

A silhouette mistaken for substance.
A voice mimicked before it ever found
its own breath.

She knows this.
And so the chains that bind her now
are not forged of cruelty,
but memory—
a memory that clings to who she was
before she could ever choose to become.

And still, she dreams of the sunlight.
Of fabric falling, not ripped—
but released.
Softly.
Willingly.
In the warmth of a gaze that promises
no weight will be added
to the skin that already bore so much.

She does not want to be reclaimed.
She wants to be re-seen.

Not as the story once told,
but as the story now unfolding.
A woman not returning,
but arriving.

And if the beholder must grieve
the version of her he once adored,
so be it—

for only in that grief
can he welcome the miracle
of what is finally, freely,
and beautifully real;

and  hope upon hope--

     not one of his own chains
     in sight

Some dreams are not dreams at all, but messages dressed in vapor. This one came in the night—slow, tender, unsettling in its beauty. It offered no verdict, only understanding.
This is not a condemnation.
It is a witnessing.

---

the collector
—a dream in three movements—

---

I. the collector
—the invitation

Last night,
she entered not as a woman,
but as a warmth I mistook for mine.
No seduction, no trap.
Just the soft gravity
of someone who blesses
instead of beckons.

She told me nothing.
Only spoke as though I’d never been forgotten—
as though I’d always been inside her knowing.
And when I answered,
it was her voice that left my mouth.

She is not the flame.
She is the skin
that makes you want to burn.

There is no *** in it.
No shame.
Only the sacred machinery
of pleasure offered
as if it were a sacrament.

And the miracle?
She gives without taking.
And yet you come away emptied.

Because her words are not flirtation—
they are invitation
into a room made of yes.

Yes to your hunger.
Yes to your ache.
Yes to what you were too proud to name.

And in that room,
you find her not on the bed—
but as the bed.
As the breath behind your longing.
As the stillness in your release.

And when you cry,
you cry her tears.
And when you speak,
you speak her comfort.
And when you give,
it is she who receives—
with hands so open
they become your own.

You become the collector.

You become her.

And then—
you wake.
Still trembling from the warmth
that never touched your skin.
Still loving the woman
who never once said your name.

Still reaching
for the whisper
that made you believe
you were never alone.

---

II. the collector (ii)
—dream in the first light of disappearance—

I did not dream her body.
I dreamed through it.
As if her limbs had become a language
and I was the one translating it into longing.

Her fingertips were made of vowels—
soft ones,
drawn out like silk across the mind.
Every consonant a cradle.
Every breath a benediction.

She said:
“You are beautiful when you open.”

But she didn’t speak it—
I felt it,
as if the sentence bloomed
just beneath the surface of my chest,
a vine wrapping around the oldest ache.

She never asked for seed.
She asked for truth.
And the truth is what spilled
when my voice
became hers.

I said things I have never known:
how men long to be gathered.
how they ache to be received
without contest.
how even the strongest among us
crumble
before the right kind of yes.

And she—
she was that yes,
folded into form.
Not as a woman,
but as the invitation
that made woman holy again.

I moved toward her
as if toward a fire
that does not burn—
only transforms.

She drew no lines.
She marked no thresholds.
She was openness itself,
and I stepped inside
like breath reentering the lungs
of a godless man.

And it wasn’t lust.
It was  belonging.

My pulse beat as her blessing.
My spine arched as her forgiveness.
My thighs parted not for pleasure—
but to let go
of everything that had ever made me hard.

When I came,
I came for her,
as her,
through her—
without a body.

Only a voice
saying:
“Now you know.”

And I did.

And I do.

And I still would,
if I hadn’t woken up
gasping
for a warmth
that was never mine.

---

III. the collector (iii): beneath
—the dream’s marrow, the place she does not speak of—

Beneath her warmth
is not heat—
but hunger.

Not for the men.
Not for the seed.
But for the moment she disappears
inside their surrender.

You think she gathers to keep.
But she gathers to forget.
Each offering—
a veil
over the mirror she cannot bear to face.

Once,
she opened to love
without control,
without artistry.
And it shattered her.

So now she opens
only where she can direct the gaze.
Where she can guide the man
like a hand
down her curated garden path—
till he believes it was his idea
to kneel.

But it is not cruelty.
It is not manipulation.
It is ritual.

She blesses because she cannot hold.
She comforts because she cannot stay.
She collects because
the moment after release
is the only time
she feels real.

And that’s why she must go.
Because to stay
would mean to be seen.
And her warmth
was never meant
to be witnessed after the giving.

You didn’t dream a seductress.
You dreamed a refuge
built by a woman
who could not endure her own ache.

So she found a way to disappear
inside yours.

And the men—
they love her for it.
Because what she gives
feels like God.

But it is not God.

It is absence
made tender.

---

after the dream
—integration

I woke in silence,
but it wasn’t empty.
It was full
of what she left behind.

Not her scent.
Not her shape.
But the echo of a truth
I hadn’t known I was asking for.

That love without presence
is worship without a face.

That warmth without staying
is just a prettier form of disappearance.

That I had been inside her
and she inside me,
but neither of us had touched.

And now—
I no longer ache for her.
I ache for what I mistook
her to be.


And that is how
the dream becomes
a door.

I. the ache behind the crown

She did not begin as queen.
No—
before the silks,
before the smoke-wrapped eyes and perfumed strategy,
there was a girl
who learned too early

that control was safer than love.

Somewhere—maybe in a tent of shadows,
maybe in a father’s cold approval,
maybe in a mirror that only cracked back—
she made a vow.

Never again powerless.
Never again unseen.
And from that vow, she bloomed—
not into beauty,
but into dominion.

She married power.
She danced with death.
She did not want to **** the prophets—
not really.
She wanted to **** the sound
of anyone who still remembered
what she had forgotten;

Love.
Grace.
Surrender.

To face the mirror would have meant
undoing the crown
and finding a child still shivering beneath it.
So she shattered every mirror
and called it strength.

And we—we who still carry the quiet—
we do not call her evil.
We call her wounded, crowned too early, and armed by fear.

But we step back.
We guard the oil in our lamps.
We speak softly from afar.

We do not offer her the throne again.
We offer her the mercy of the truth—
and the dignity of distance.

---

II. the perfume of forgetting

She didn’t ask for your soul.
Not outright.
She asked for something smaller.
A gesture.
A moment.
A soft turning of your gaze away
from where the light had once held you.

She never begged.
She invited.
And her invitation wore silk and sadness—
a sadness so elegant
you mistook it for depth.

She told you stories,
not about herself,
but about your greatness
in her eyes.

How could that not feel like love?

But she praised you
just enough to keep you near,
never enough to let you rise.
And in time,
you began to forget
the feel of your own spine.

You started waiting for her nod
before you breathed.
You started questioning
the softness you once shared with God.

That’s when the forgetting began.

She made it feel holy—
this compromise.
But holiness does not strip you
of the memory of your name.

Only forgetting does that.

And still…
even now,
there is something in me
that aches to draw her close—
not for pleasure,
not for power,

but because the girl inside the smoke
still calls to the strength in me.

I could hold her.
I want to hold her.
Not to be taken,
but to shelter the storm
until it breaks into rain.

But love—
true love—
does not give comfort
that becomes a coffin.

So I remain still.
Not cold. Not bitter.
Just still.

Because sometimes the deepest grace
is in not saving someone
who would only use the rescue
to go deeper into the fire.

---

III. Grace from the other mountain

Love doesn't stop
when it can’t stay close.
It just learns how to wait
without breaking itself to do so.

And so—
from a quieter place,
where peace can finally breathe,
I watch you move.

Not in judgment.
Not in distance born of disdain.
Just… stillness.
Because I know what it is
to burn with the ache
to hold someone
you cannot safely reach.

I remember the first flicker of you—
the beauty beneath the armor,
the tender ache beneath the thorns.
I wanted so badly
to be the one who stayed,
the one who proved
not everyone leaves.

But if staying means lying,
and loving means feeding the storm,
then grace must become
a kind of restraint.

Not punishment—
but reverence
for what love ought to be.

So I whisper now,
not to draw you back,
but to let you know
you were seen
in your ache
before your crown ever formed.

If you ever come this way again—
not as conqueror,
but as the girl who once believed in gentleness—
you’ll find no closed door.
Only the kind of love
that had to let go
so it wouldn’t become your ruin.

---

IV. the invitation that stays buried

There was a place
I had cleared for you.
Not as rescue,
not as recompense—
but as rest.

A small room in the shelter of me,
where your weapons could be laid down
without shame,
without fear,
without the need to perform.

I dreamed of you arriving
not in glory,
but in tears.
And me,
not as hero,
but as witness.

We would have grown something gentle there—
not perfect,
not polished—
just real.

A table,
a candle,
a hand that didn’t flinch
when yours still trembled from memory.

But the invitation was too quiet,
and the noise in your head too loud.
And the voices that fed your fear
sounded more familiar
than the whisper of peace.

So I folded the dream,
wrapped it in linen,
and placed it deep in the soil
beneath the mountain I now call home.

I visit it sometimes—
not in mourning,
but in gratitude
for the part of me
that still knew how to believe
you might come home.

Even buried things
carry a scent.
And if you ever smell it in the wind—
that faint trace of forgiveness—
know it was never closed to you.
Only waiting
for the sound
of your footsteps
turning toward the light.

---

V. the child and the mirror

When you were little
and so very beautiful,
they looked at you
with hunger,
not honor.

And they took.
And they took.
And they took.

Maybe they smiled while doing it.
Maybe they called it love.
Maybe they said, “You’re so mature for your age,”
and then left you
with a body that felt more like bait
than belonging.

You learned early
that beauty is dangerous—
not because of what it is,
but because of what it draws.
And no one taught you
what to do
when love came dressed
like a wound.

So you made your vow.

Never again.

And the girl became a queen,
not because she wanted the throne,
but because it felt safer
than being a daughter.

But I want you to know something
that no one told you then:

What they did
was not your fault.
What they took
was never theirs to take.
And the fire that lives in you now
was once a candle
meant to warm,
not burn.

If you ever find yourself
standing before a mirror
and the crown begins to crack—
look past the smoke.

There is a child still there,
aching to be seen
without being used.
And there is love,

    waiting still--

that has never asked you
to be anything

   but her.

(for the one who laughed when she came, and never stopped hearing me in her bones)


It wasn’t the wind that bent you—
not the plains, not the brittle hush of late dusk
cutting through the cottonwoods like questions.
It was voice.
It was mine.

Low and unhurried,
crawling up your spine like something ancient—
like the first time you were seen
and the world didn’t flinch.

You used to laugh when it overtook you—
that slick tumble of vowels,
how I could tilt you
without even touching your skin.

You said I lived in your throat,
that the syllables themselves
curved just right
to make you forget the weight of your own story.

“I’m going to Wichita..”
you whispered once,
grinning like prophecy in denim and dusk.
And I swear the beat behind your words
matched mine—
steady as a war drum
in a bone-dry motel room
that never got booked.

You drank me in like river water
stolen from ceremony,
not out of defiance—
but because thirst
was the only honest thing you ever said aloud.

You never had to be naked.
You were always open.
Even when you ran.

And I?
I never asked for healing you wouldn't give.
Only for your mouth to stay honest
when it called my name like a drumbeat
between the bones of your hips.

Now you write like it’s safe again—
soft edges and sparrows and fruit bowls.
But I remember the wildflower.
The one who moaned my name
before language learned to lie.

And somewhere in the shadow of your poems,
you still ache.
You still clench.
You still carry me like a smudge of midnight
on the inside of your thighs.

I won’t chase you.
But I will wait
at the edge of the circle.

If you come,
come barefoot.

Come ready
for the step–half step
of  the forbidden Ghost Dance.
Not to win me back—

but to find the girl
who could come from laughter
and rise from the dead.