What is your smile?

A rigid, winter breeze
Wrapping around my neck
It gently presses
And for the briefest moment
I choke
Lose all air
The ability to breathe
Taken
But not sought for
I should gasp
Yet I need
I long for you
To crack your perfect
Painted lips
Mar the surface
Not for the world
Hide it
From the Earth
Against the heavens
Give to me
Your brilliance
Your cover
Your boundless
Smile

Red

Paint me
Red
Baptize me in the color
Of blury, furious nights
I'll lose my breath
Gasp for air
Paint me
With fire
I beg for the heat
The burn of my brother
Please
Paint me
With angry, euphoric red
I once tasted
Once wondered at the fragility
The devastatingly sustaining strength
Of hot, sticky summer stains
Still flickering flames
Leaving me seeing the world
Through rose colored shades
I ache
I starve
Hungry for boiling blood
I like you
I'd like you
To paint me
Red

Love poem.

I can't love perfect
Can't love in the seamless
I would fog the mirror of my own
Reflection
Should I place my heart in the flawless
Love is dirty
Love stays in the broken
Grows up through the cracks
A grand canyon
Fortified by perpetuation
You mark me
And I mark you

Welcome, Autumn.

Last night, I left the Cafe I work at in a hurry. Completely ready to escape the pace and the heat of it all, I stepped out into a dark relief, free from artificial lights and any thought but my own. The air out wasn't quite cold, it was brisk. It was a sharp breeze that could cut through any sweater, yet leave a gentle coolness across the skin, forcing one to feel the wholeness that is the body, that is identity. I began to walk to my car when the dulcet sounds of a church bell began to fill the empty space in the sky. Familiarity was felt, for who has yet to hear the ringing of a church bell through a slightly bitter night? I stood still in the street, considering the perfectness of solitude with in an overpopulated world, and I breathed it in deeply. A cold, slightly rainy bit of air encompassed me. I was not warm, yet understandably, fully alive. I inhaled memories, good memories of seasons passed; yoga in front of my open dorm window last October, the pulse of a cold hand I held in a love two years sour, the white, nit sweater my Grandma gave me and I wore every winter day of my eighth grade year, a steaming shower after a particularly long snow day, coming home to my mother's toothy smile and banana bread, hugging my Great Grandmother on her porch that last Thanksgiving, long and senseless drives with my brother and our favorite album. I inhaled every song and every meaningful vignette painted with lovely, solid people. I let go of negativity created by me and pointed at others. I inhaled good. I inhaled me.

My Best Moment

Somedays I worry
If it will happen
The climax
My pinnacle
Is it today?
Is today the day that I am
My best
Is there a day in the future
Where I look back
And say
"I wish I was then
I wish I was as capable
I yearn for my own
Zeal
I want for that time
The moment I was
All of me."

The Plea of the World

I don't have music
Playing when I'm alone
But I do listen
I do give attention
Lending my ear to the cricket
In the early morning
He plays
He gives a song of searching
Of longing
For love
No
Companionship
Maybe he's been searching an entire evening
The tune grows desperate
A bird
Belting good morning
Gives the cricket pause
Yet he begins again
Fearlessly
Or with a greater fear
Perhaps the poison of seclusion
The bird
Changes its melody
It is strident
And more keen
Quick and more primal
The bird searches
But the cricket is relentless
He has waited and invested
His time
Himself
The two duet
Dangerously
Out of hunger
Out of familiarity
The bird stops
The cricket's solo
Goes from longing
To telling
From pitiful
To relatable
Justifiable
Major
Silence

The shadow.

My shadow is
me on the world.
A light shade,
a glimmer of my whole self
lying for the world
to see,
to wonder at.
I wait for it
to embed into the Earth.
Some days the light is pale.
Somedays I ask
if I will ever see
that dusky depiction of me,
reflected on the pavement.
Maybe I don't stand so tall.
Maybe the light is falling
just over my shoulder.
Somedays there just isn't enough
of me.
Somedays I'm looking for someone to stand next to.
Somedays I'm looking
to cast a bigger shadow.