I am caught in the twisted loop
of a broken record;
the conversations that seem to
repeat themselves;
the questions I ask and answer
again, and again.
I find myself speaking the same
words only to
get back the ones that have
been given to me
before.

I’ve been talking since I could
walk and yet
how many times have I walked
the same route?
How many times have I talked
to reach the same
conclusion?

The parallels I draw between each of
your voices
make my own sometimes shake,
and what I catch myself sharing is
nothing new,
nothing I was never told to
give away. 

The words have always been right.
In my heart I’ve felt the power of a poem--
the lines that catch in my throat to keep
me from crying;
the phrases that break like ice, hitting
the ground with resonating power;
the words that draw pictures in my mind,
teaching me to understand the beauty
of the world.

It has always been a game
of make believe.
Of pretending I loved other things too,
of pretending I didn’t want to do this
with my life.

It’s not hard to convince yourself
when everyone else believes.

But when I fall asleep to a newly
filled page,
when I spend hours to commit
lines to memory,
when I sit on the side of the road
tapping words into my iPhone
because I can’t wait to write them
down any longer,

I know.

That the words have always been right.
and the words have always been there.
And I’m trying to figure out
if I love poetry enough
to be poor.

When his eyes blink shut for the last time,
yours fill with tears.
Forgetting the bad days
to draw up the good ones,
we mourn,
and remember,
and cry.

What is life but a blink, anyway?
I try to recall those better years--
Velcro shoes,
pennies and diners,
childhood memories
of ridiculous stories that always
made us laugh.
But these memories are no more
than a flutter of eyelids--
there one moment to be forgotten
the next.

And I can’t push away what I remember
best from the last years--
his unyielding stubbornness,
his biting, bossing words
and most of all,
his sad, gaping loneliness.
But for this my heart doesn’t hurt,
because it is so easy to forget
the bad days if you
close your eyes.
And he was never really alone.
Despite it all,
you loved him,
and so I did too.

My eyes don’t blink back tears
until I embrace you. 
When finally I let go, 
my heart aches,
for though I didn’t know him
at his best, more than
anything,

I can’t stand to see you
cry.

You invite me to share
with you the intense words of my poetry
in the tent we’ve made to
find ourselves closer to nature.
Halfway-outdoors,
we trade poems like secrets,
seeking, searching to be a part of
something greater.

But the thin layer
of the tent’s bottom between
the ground and you and me
serves as a reminder--
we are not a part of this,
we are never going to
belong here.

For we are not made of beauty.
Not made of the stuff of the earth,
just caught accidentally in its orbit,
we're too complex to ever really
fit in.

But here, with you,
I’m starting to see that poetry
can capture that simplicity.
In words I find the beauty
I can’t find in myself,
a realization that has yet to
make me sad.

Though the tent’s top zipper cloaks us
from seeing the stars,
it falls free with a quick pull.
And so we share the poems we’ve strung together
as the layers, the thin layers,
fall away.

Our existence will never be simple but
tonight, that is enough,
for beneath these blinking stars
I am made of words, and
I have never felt more alive, I have
never been more beautiful.