I know so many people who think tolerance is for those without strength of belief, as if not having the desire to control those around us is a sign of weak will or insincerity. I disagree. To love unconditionally is a challenge. It requires introspect, patience, and understanding that we can only be responsible for the good that we do. It demands the dismissal of resentment and anger and insists that we process things that we may not want to process in order to move past them and let go.

The fact that I will not persecute those who don't agree with me does not show a lack of fealty, in fact I think it's quite the opposite. I will show love to those who show me hate, I will listen and ask questions of those I disagree with, and I will both seek understanding and accept that there is much that I may never understand. I will do these things out of conviction to this doctrine: Warmth begets warmth begets warmth. This is belief, this is faith.

My summer reading list has close to 200 books on it as of now, which is unachievable and Herculean. I'm clumsy and scattered and probably don't have the attention span.

I guess sometimes you have to read someone else's story before you can write your own.

To write

The more time I spend
pen on paper
the less real it becomes
and suddenly it's gone.
I'm unwriting my own story
filling books with thoughts I think
beliefs I believe
all unfounded.
Lines bound like my hands in the war of forward momentum,
shelved and stored and otherwise set aside
until I feel I've grown
and might want to look backwards.
Is this a waste like so much else?
I could be scratching my own timeline into the crust of the earth
but I'm tracing written elements
into something that is so easily closed and forgotten about.

Climb

Such time has passed since our toes left the earth and we began our climb,

this ascent into a fervor we named "love".

I climbed blindly towards the sky.

Nights spent struggling against a new kind of gravity

left us sleepless and shaken,

but hand in hand we embraced the destruction.

We've come so far,

climbing vines that rip the earthen walls of this cavern 

while pulling the softer walls of our hearts,

and though the stones loosen in our grip

and the grotto is streaked with the color of blood,

the dust burning my eyes does nothing to blur your image.

July

I am reluctant, though not by choice.
Me: matters of the head over matters of the heart.
Eternally guarded and collected, forever taking heed.
But now days blur, I draw breath with a stuttering heart, and all composure is lost.
There is seduction in stumbling through a haze such as this.
I'm grasping at coherent thought
I never knew I could take pleasure in such blind terror.
I never knew I could take comfort in your hand on my throat.

Untitled

listen closely

and I will tell you these things I feel

in a code, broken and awkwardly

so you wont understand

glance sideways

and I will show you my everything

pulling back into shadows

so you won’t see

turn to face me

and I will sing to you in your sleep

softly, songs of thought and heartbeat

so you wont hear

look up once

and I will write these words down

and tuck them secretly into your back pocket

so you wont forget

The Last Crusade

tonight we ride
so pedal proud
perched on the handlebars

i'll crow the usual battle cry
in tribute to summers past
memories embroidered with gold and lined with silk
exit our lungs in a flood to the streets
this will be the last crusade
look to the ground
our shadows cast in streetlight wont seem so tall next time
we've crossed the threshold
the sky is a beacon
drawing us forward
and my last wish is to lay in the grass
and remember.

No Abandon

We dream like there aren’t ceilings

We wish like they’re no walls

We hope with no abandon

We’ll climb until we fall

Snowshoes

This place is still
Flakes of snow blanket us where we lay
We are elated at the lack of sound
Because here, our voices carry
And our songs will linger for years.
And here, we are immortal.

Astoria

The air feels warmer here, and soft like cotton sheets
With houses colored and tall that seem carved
Into these hills that roll down into the sea
Where your thoughts span streetlights and twilights
And you swear if you reach up, you can touch God’s hands.

Pond Creature

here I sit, at the pool where i first watched you sink.
i've skipped pebbles flat as your voice
across the point where my hand met your wrist
in an upward effort to bring you home.
i hoped you would hear me and emerge from the deep,
shedding your cold scales for a pair of warm arms.

i spent the night alone on the bank
watching in the dark for ripples along the water
and listening for the sound of your fins,
and though my mind and face were blank,
i wondered not why i came.

now my footprints keep yours company
on the roads that have taken me here;
your path appeared well-lit and i felt sure i had found my way.
but now as the sun pours over me
and i lean into the water, i can see to the bottom,
and i can clearly make out your form
as i watch you swim away

Untitled

listen.

i raise my voice so you can better understand
why the fingers, once in yours, have loosened.
hear me now,
calling to parts of you you've yet to know,
bidding them show themselves
or be presumed dead.
in breaking through your walls
ive found the hallways empty.
my sentiments only echo..
they’ll resonate throughout chasms
and ripple across the pool in which you hide,
and when you think its all but sincere,
look again
and see the water reflects only you.

The Rescue

stones that line your driveway
remind me of a time when the waves pulled me under
to throw me against cliffs of doubt and reserve
and i recall waking on the shore
with your breath in my lungs
there was kelp in my hair and two hands on my heart.

Actual Content

I've decided to start posting some things that are older, maybe things that I'm not super happy with. I kind of just want to get them off of my harddrive and to a more final resting place so I stop nitpicking and editing them, because really, it's just exhausting to try to improve on something I wrote when I was 19. I feel like sharing them will make them somehow complete in my mind and I can move on to writing new things.

Whether or not they are worth sharing is, I suppose, up to the reader.

Ghost Ship

It appeared in the night through cold water and green mist.
Although the deck was empty I knew it was manned by a roguish crew unseen, 
and with sails full of air it wrecked upon unsuspecting shores.
I was not prepared for such topography-changing violence.
Wooden planks driven through soft sand;
the coastline is a pincushion and I can relate.
If only I had seen it coming.
I could have called out a warning,
braced for the impact,
or at least closed my eyes.
There was no chance for forethought
and the ghost ship crashed into my life,
you at the captain's wheel.

The Hourglass

  He came back to a house of ghosts. They peered from windows, rattling against the glass, and he thought maybe he'd come to the wrong door. Once his key fit the lock it became clear that this was it. This was the home he had left weeks before, just shadowed and different. The furnishings were draped in countless shades of gray and the air was still and musty.
  A specter was watching him with large, dark eyes and he could not look away. Before he could ask "What are you?", it spoke."I'm not. I could have been, but you weren't here." It continued to stare.
  He moved down the hallway, running a hand through the dust on the walls. What had happened in this place? It seemed as if it had been untouched for years, but surely she was here?
  It was dark and silent except for the soft sound of ghostly feet padding across the hardwood. As they passed he was compelled to look into their faces, seeking answers, but their expressions told him nothing. It occurred to him how odd it was that he wasn't frightened. No, not frightened at all, just cold to the core as if submerged in frigid water for too long. He had the distinct impression that he would never be warm again.
  This was the doorway to the room they shared. He turned the knob knowing she would be there, and she was. Her form was mist-like. She seemed to float as she paced back and forth in the dress he had always loved.
  She looked up and met his eyes with her own, now dark and round. Her cheeks were hollow, her skin translucent and pulling against sharp bones that did not seem her own. Her hair hung against her face like a frame on a black and white photo. As she reached out to touch his cheek, he saw that  the hourglass on the chain around her neck was empty.
  He was sick with grief and realization. She was gone, their world was fragmented and broken. This place was haunted and he would be too.
  "Time did not stop," she spoke sadly, "I could not wait."
  She gestured to the clock on the wall. The hand was between the five and six and he'd returned just minutes too late.

Never sleep

So, I'm not entirely sure this is finished, but here it is anyway.


I won't discuss
even for a second
the fashion in which sleep pulls a cord to draw curtains over your eyes
willing rest and replenishment.
Mine is a doorstep she graces just long enough for me to notice.
She bats her eyelashes
but does not linger
that fickle bitch

In the beginning
it was a grandiose adventure.
I swam in information
climbed words stacked as high as I could possibly fathom
things sounded like they never had.
I swooned and sang and cried for beauty.
Sometimes I talked in circles
or maybe not

Day-long nights made me alive
but melted down
into hour-long minutes and aching temples, aching temples.

"I think this makes no sense", I thought
This was not a world I was supposed to have seen, I was here by grave, divine error
my name mispoken in an augery
but how to escape?
Doors and windows of the usual kind are of no use in a place like this
and this map is of someone else's brain

Instincts are unlearned when you trod here
Touch this soil and you shift, not to a god but more than whatever you were before
and you forget what was ever so great about that in the first place
being slave to a body
I could not remember how to close my eyes
I watched shapes writhe and contort and reality was lost
Birds in the morning are bats at night, you know

Now time is infinite.
It loops and is reworked and loops
until its purpose is eradicated
and I am left with a guilty omniscience and circles for eyes.
Eternity is chaos,
I want to go back.

Toothbrush

You left this behind,
an overlooked nonessential
an artifact for me to unearth
a bookmark to save your place here for another time.

Cocky Motherfucker

You are derisive without cause
With your shiny shoes and cases of papers that mean nothing to anyone but you.
You've paid to learn
just as we all can
and you wear it like a gaudy plume,
preening and strutting as if it were impressive.

Sand

I am supposed to want money, security, and the American Dream but I find thoughts of strict grocery budgets, cuddling up in lieu of turning on the heat, and not caring that you can't afford to exchange Christmas gifts far more appealing.

Sometimes I feel like the only real person left.