When walking
home from school,
when she let you hold her hand,
that first moment
the sky exploded with the beauty of her,
so scared,
you purposely avoided looking in her eyes,
those first few steps,
until head tucked,
a glance,
and she was smiling
knowing you were looking,
and her hand felt wonderful
with each of your fingertips
touching her, this first time,
walking home.

I am walking for escape
Silence, darkness

It is sudden. Sound of
two-by-fours smacking grain
lit up in the distance,
                       the street

Maternal scream mistaken for
coyote howl, sticky-tongued
lamentation filling the space,
                       lockbox

Grey matter spilling
the street for a
beggar's mouthful

I could make known my notice
Or leave his peace at asphalt
rocking skull-bone;

marrow cut loose: free

Dead man walking
Did you hear
The news? It’s shocking.
Chatter, chatter
In his ear.
Oh fear,
The fear.
Glassy dead stare
Dead stare
Dead
Dead man walking

Fake friends talking
Jarring words
Barely heard
What’s been said?
Oh pounding head!
Focus instead
On my wish to be dead
What a surprise!
His old man cries
His young man has died
Old eyes, young man
Young man
Man
Dead man walking

The truth comes out
Jaws dropping, eyes of fury.
Waiting, waiting,
What’s your hurry?
My life is over
In a flurry
So don’t worry
Just keep walking
Keep walking
Walking
Dead man walking

I like walking in the cold on a stormy winter day just as the clouds darken and the sun turns golden and just before the little gingerbread houses set their lights a twinkling; it gives me an excuse for the constant chill I feel. So I bundle up as if it stops my chattering teeth and step out, my head watching the ground, my feet following the curvature of a path I've walked a million times and I try to stop the shaking. Not only of my body but of my tired mind as the furry veils of my eyes close. I notice the cracks in the road, and the gutters filled with rotting vestiges of life that once hung on these trees that now stand cold and gray against the even grayer sky, their roots begging for warmth just as my toes are. I heard a foot step startling my dazed thought about the cracks and I glanced about wildly to see what it was, a man walking a little brown and white shepherd with no tail, with A lit cigar in his mouth. I return to the road it was now curving just slightly to the left, it was hardly noticeable. I can smell the cigar smoke that man left behind just faintly drifting about in the air. Cigars have a sweeter smoke than cigarettes and thus were no quite as appalling, and the slightest bit *****.  It was in that moment I realized once I leave this moment of my life; I will never truly be alone again. It’s definitely an odd thought, to be concerned I will never be alone again as I abandon my friends and loved ones and yet it rang true in my mind, whether I was on ship, in the barracks, eating, even renting a home away from the base I would have a roommate of some sort whether it be a husband or a comrade.  I may never get to watch the cold winter ash drift down across my feet as the fall out of nightmares consumes the world.
I drifted from the road to a gravel trail. Instead of cracks I watched the moist pebbles drifting below me, their pattern was random, but it seemed to repeat. A little pink one always drifting just a few inches to the left of the others I was observing. On my right the bushes, all bare with yellow branches forming the mangled orbs that most bushes of the sort seem to form, melded into a wide stark white fence with gaps displaying the empty river below. I know the cliff there was a couple feet at most but as I watched the drifting pebbles the burred grass made it seem like a few hundred causing me to stumble and look away from my pebbles. I felt the cold stinging air float in and out of my lungs and listened to the gentle beating of my own heart, it’s tempo near matching that of my feet. A gentle tempo like that is not often found, the unique beat of one’s own heart has a sort of soothing rhythm and mixes with the cold wind rustling the naked branches if trees, a chilling melody was formed.
My trail drifted into concrete which drifted back into the dark chip road. Cars tend to speed up this road, I don’t know why, it leads up a dirt road into a neighborhood, there’s real no reason to go so fast, but it happens all the same. I hear one approaching and flinch as it goes by, absorbed in the cracks in the road I could never know if it was planning to end me or simply passing by. The lights are beginning to be turned on now but they are barely visible, their twinkling was futile against the lingering gray daylight yet they persisted. On this road I constantly had to trust that there were no parked cars and that , when it bent away from me, that I was just crossing a cross road. These roads are so interwoven that each one can form a loop with other, this endless circling adds to the bleakness of the cold evening, and even the gray skies do not change that blistering heat. And as I step under the same apple tree I've stepped under thousands of times, I was glad I wouldn't be alone anymore.

“It’s time for bed,” was never a problem for me,
I was good at sleeping, I could do it longer than anyone else I knew and they
couldn’t wake me if they tried,
I was in over my ankles, waist, chest and head,
Five hundred pillows and a duvet that was heavy enough to suffocate all the
car horns in my mind,
I didn’t have to count the sheep so they sat there and ate grass,
Because I could pass with all the flying colours refracted in crystallised
dreams,
In the pitch black I won all the altercations against those demons that bite,
The narcoleptic warrior is champion of the night, the steady rise and fall of
her chest, the flutter of twitching lashes like spiders legs, arms drawn
tight around ******* and waist for protection against the ties that bind,
It’s a **** art,
But I didn’t realise my excellence was subjective,
For my parents it was the ****** in the night,
Fox screams that would send them running to my side, only to find a steady
heartbeat and lethargic child, head to the pillow and snoring,
For friends and family who came to stay, for them it was wide eyed, white
knuckled, lying awake and clutching the sheets as I cried and whimpered in
the next room,
Trauma spilling over catatonic lips in the most wretched of yelling, pulled
out in a long, choking strings of invisible nightmare,
For my sister, it was ‘*****’, ‘cow’, ‘****’ and all the other curses that
I kicked or hit her with in my minefield of a sleeping pattern,
Bible versus, bolt upright, head spinning 360 degrees,
Charon won’t let me pass because someone wasn’t kind enough to put a coin
in my mouth and now I’m walking a shore I won’t remember in the morning,
I don’t remember in the morning, I’ve been buried in sleep,
Not until I see them unshaven and weary at the table, and I know they’ve been
leaking electricity,
Is it possible to be good at something if no one thinks you are?
I was good at it, once,
In over my ankles, waist, chest and head,
Five hundred pillows and a duvet heavy enough to suffocate,
To suffocate my talent, I lie back and count to ten,
Sleep mask, sleep tablet, sleep therapy, I try not to let it happen again,
I keep the nightlight on now, the sun my only sleeping scar,
How can you be good at something if no one thinks you are?
I don’t think I’ll ever grow out of it, but I’ve stopped reaching for the
pin-****** of white light in those starry night skies,
And now, when I lay awake in my bed, I’m afraid to close my eyes

I walk beneath the shadows of dragonflies and
in fields of stunted daisies
A witness to migrating monarchs
Whose voyage is eons from being completed,
when they only have 3 weeks at most to live.

I walk in pale fields of dusty sunbeams
and loud fading moonlight
Humming crickets play accompaniment
to solo pairs of feet, making way for still creeks
and large lily pads
to find a nice place to think.

From beach to beach to beach, glimmering shimmers of sand laden waves lap lazily at your feet. The seaweed masquerade of the crab clumsily dancing amongst the foam is paradoxically poignant but apt.
Sighs of relief as the soothing sensation of the sea on hot blistered feet capture the essence of the moment. The simple pleasures of the beach; sand ridden toes and remarkably veined geodes; the golden grains and barnacle encrusted rocks provide a unique treasure indeed.
And then comes the gentle pitter-patter of a sunshower- putting a literal damper on things- but uniquely completing the picturesque scene.

It hurt when you left
Not because of you
Walking away
But because when you left
You took a part of me
With
You