It's In The Sound Of The Crunch And The Texture I Feel In My Shoes As The Dead Leaves Crumble Under My

This dreary morning January rain Falling onto icy snow Makes my eyes feel Heavy and tired

Roads caked with slush Cars splash through Brownish gray waves And I fall Down into the sludge

I sink like this month This month of melancholy I am crumbling Into these dirty waters Let me sleep in them

Let me sleep until This downpour lets up Until then I am fatigued These rains Beat me into submission

You say, "A boyfriend sounds nice"

So now I'm sitting Here, Embarrassed For thinking that's What I'd been All these years

All these Years, years, years

All this time Our romance had been ancient History

There's a comfort in our conversations A hint of longing in our voices Do we pretend not to notice? We live our lives We make choices

You are the deepest blue I am the lightest of green Together we form the trees and sky We are the earth The calming scene

We walk on roads that are parallel Kicking the dirt up off the ground I carry with me our white flag Through the dust We make no sound

Ink spills across the page Quickly, compose One painting, one color From crimson to rose

You scribble your passion Inside the hues In galaxies, in thought Declaring your views

So drench the paper Stain it with art Brush strokes of the mind You're a writer at heart

Floating on my back Naked in the water I made a promise to The clouds above To never ask about their father

The sky turns gray And I feel cold I give my body to the earth Into her hands to hold One day she may cradle me When I am very old

I see the sun light up Below the horizon Piercing the clouds Warming the land That someday I will die on

Without my clothes I am the planet's creature Flesh and bone And limbs to feature This forest pond is a refuge And the wind's voice my teacher

I saw a small bone on the sidewalk The size of my pinkie finger I sat with it, wondering of the skeleton A truck drove by and honked loudly The bone rolled slightly on the pavement As the truck sped heavily forwards

Little bone from a little one I pictured you as a mouse, a chipmunk Maybe you were a vole or a bird I longed to touch your bone and know you But I was afraid of the reality That you lay there gentle and beautiful When the act upon your body was likely not

The church bell chimes Eleven and I count One, two, three, and on And then after the last The soft cooing of an owl Plays above the forest Echoing across the sky As if to outplay the bell To claim this simple land For itself as it sings Every one of us to sleep

I can't wish you happy birthday Because we are ghosts now Ghosts who do not linger On the same plane of existence

How abruptly we became memories While our lives were still Flourishing and so full How quickly the two of us vanished

I send you messages into the void Into the echo chamber of my heart Bouncing around in the dark I miss you, miss you, miss you

Sometimes I think I can see you Your face unchanged and wild But you are a wild dream That ripples away at my touch

Can you feel me reaching out Now that we live only in my mind? So many years since you disappeared The two of us remain only in me

My love for you is not Always declarations and Milestone celebrations Or flowery similes Of the moon and the stars And what lies beyond death

More often it is you Laughing across the room Because the cat farted And I am enduring it Because I want to cuddle Even though she smells

Now my eyes watch moths And spiders, crickets in the night, Infinity's glowing diamonds, The darkest skies alight.

I keep company in blades of grass That were browned by the sun. An eternity of passions passed, If asked, I'll say it's done.

Belong do I to the moon And what it does to all the sea. It cycles through all I have left, We're bound, the moon and me.