I sobbed a moment,

then controlled myself again --


I can do that too.

Between my birches I do roam,
Across green plains and forests,
Between my little, secret spaces
That I call home.

I wish my tribe were here,
But it is scattered,
Around the globe,
And nowhere near.

The longing will not cease -
So this is for my tribe,
A bird's song of my home
Where my soul finds peace.

The snow crunched
Underneath my sandals
As I walked along the seashore.
It was there a grove of birch trees stood
Ever since childhood, I often swore
Yet I saw them stand tall no more
White as ever
And as banded as any snake
Yet their branches had broken and withered
In the time I had gone.
Ice had split the trunks in half and no matter how I tried to glue them back together
It was far too splintered and cracked
Winter had taken it's toll
On this Birchwood heart of mine.

I closed my eyes to the ocean of your eyes,
only to open them
to the drought of your absence.

Rainy days make me contemplate
What if I took her warm embrace
What if we shared our dreams and fears;
It is the cold that whispers,
Lonely tunes of an old radio,
Waking up emotions of faded hue;
The thought of you and me
How lovely would it be
If I could lean on your shoulder
As the weather turns colder.

What was once lost
cannot be explained in long poems.
No amount of stanzas
can hold the silence it left behind.

It can only be heard
in the breeze that presses gently against you
on an evening walk—
that soft resistance,
echoing a voice
that used to be
your favorite sound.

Or
you’ll see it
in places you once held sacred.
A room.
A bench.
The shadow of laughter against a wall.

It will reach for your hand
like nothing ever went wrong.
And her arms—
they’ll still wrap around you
in memory
as if they planned to stay forever.

A waving rifle
In a pain struck hand
A lonely boy
He forgot how to stand
A knife of beauty
Cut in his flesh
A trail of blood
New and fresh
A single breath
Taken today
Before he tried
To run away
A single pill
To end it all
A final hope
To jump and fall
A new letter
He didn't know why
A single phrase
"Please don't die"

A lonely girl
In a mistaken world
Another fight
About to unfurl
A single dream
Of another life
A large hope
To be more than a wife
A smile curving
Up on her lips
A plan folding out
In careful strips
A pen she finds
Carefree on the floor
A paper she grabs
Then walks out the door
A little plea
She sends through the air
Then throws it in
Without a care
A hurting boy
Will read this too
And she hopes he knows
"I care about you"

i was still there,
choking on my bitterness,
twenty minutes
after our session ended.

i felt awful. anxious.
he had a client outside,
waiting —
maybe also collapsing
under their own weight
they couldn't carry.

“look at the clock,”
i said. “let’s wrap this up.”
guilt eating away at me.

so he stood up,
reached for it,
and reset the time.

like it meant nothing.
like he knew healing
cannot be rushed,
because the minutes
are ticking.