Listen

I’m sending wishes
on a starlit trail
through the pinhole sky
so choked with dreams
unclaimed.

Hope that meaning isn’t lost
and thoughts don’t fade
into the night
to be swept up
with the light of dawn.

Darling, listen to the breeze
and if you hold your heart just right,
perhaps you’ll hear the love
I sent a thousand nights ago
as it echoes still.

The Cup I Left Behind

I became trapped in a pixilated universe—
a virtual reality, I invested in a world
of people I couldn’t see or touch, but
I heard them. I heard their cries and laughter
in the middle of the night, I read their words
of fears to failing and joys of loving, I watched
them broken and bleed and throw up. I witnessed
them glow and grow and glide. I learned to love
and about power of a pen and to fear
the grey masked men who brought both
secrets, admiration, and hatred.
I became fooled and a fool. I became
a warrior with painted skin, and I laid
naked on a white sheet for all of them too see,
crumpled and vulnerable. They accepted me,
for my imperfects and defects. This universe
created itself into beauty, I became a larger
part of the world, we dreamed of isolated islands
and love affairs and tragedy. We are writers,
dramatic, dark, delusional, beautiful. The walls
turned to honey, sticky with desire and sweet
with satisfaction and I knew I had to move out,
I had to find my path in the real world, with real
people. I packed what few belongings I brought
and waved my goodbyes and cried in letters.
I left a coffee cup in an empty cabinet
to mark my existence there, saved for
morning coffee and newspaper prints
When I return for vacation, happy to see
familiar faces, watch homemade movies
of memories made, and still experience
the pixilation of a world created on words.