Boomerang Dreams

We picked dandelions like bouquets, wrapped them into bundles and placed them shyly at your feet, waiting to see if the world had yet tricked you into thinking they were merely weeds. To you they were unsightly, but we were handing over a pocketful of wishes, waiting to be freed. We hoped you'd wait just long enough to see them return as your boomerang dreams. 

Remnants

Your favorite songs 

Are just dreams you've thought 

And distant drums 

From songs you've never sung. 

The blinds cast shadows from the streetlight 

And leave remnants on your bedroom floor 

Like crumpled clothes and used hair ties

All worn out and happier 

From the flicker of last night 

 

And there's not much left of you 

But crumbs of the broken 

Things you once loved. 

And there's not a whole lot left of us 

But the makeup stains on your 

Favorite shirt 

The one you wore 

Half of every night 

We spent together in the spotlight 

Casting jail cell lines 

From your bedroom blinds 

And never was I happier 

When I laid beside 

The man whose only love was blind. 

12:09

He had to trust himself when he didn't even know himself. 

You took steps guided by the fingertips of a blind stranger who disguised himself as the wind and whispered quivering truths in your ear. The stranger became a storm, running rampant through your thoughts; entering your ear and freeing himself through your lips. 

He fluttered through your gut, entangling organs and pulling them toward your lower back, impressing upon you a sense of impending something. A sense of quivering truths. Your mind fanes clarity while whirlwinds of his whispers wrapped you in equivocated ideas, understanding the world through the fog that he placed between your eyes and your mind. You believed that you were slave only to your passions, but a wind became the deviant intruder, immune to your defenses and unseen by your own conscience. You believed it was just a part of yourself that had been hidden and awoken after so many dormant years, but this was an infection that spread to every limb and sank your organs deep into your bowel, neglecting the well-being. He saw a girl through the lens of your eyes, but he fogged the green and brown marble windows to your mind, and from then on you saw a girl through the lens of whispered rhyme. The wind echoed through barren caves within your veins; he said as he adjusted your focus to the date, curling himself off your tender lips: "it's just not the right time."

She looked at the clock reflecting in those eyes; blurry and backwards, it said 12:09.  

Blurred Lines

He was the one

Who washed away tan lines. 

He made them fade

When I was absent from my mind. 

He took the lines and blurred them from view,

He peeled them from my brown body

And changed my inner hue. 

He scraped the lines that dotted my thighs 

And replaced them with bitter white lies. 

He grazed the outline with his fingers 

And in the morning his words didn't linger. 

He took the shade of me 

That he felt he owned 

And he set it free, 

With nowhere left to roam.

He broke the lines that traced 

Gently protruding collarbones

And replaced it with a pale face 

And a body too hazy to moan. 

When the heat of morning 

Brought no sun, 

Looking to my skin 

It seemed the damage was done. 

And sleeping beside me, 

Shades darker than before, 

Was a man who felt he 

Deserved so much more. 

A Spectacle at Sunset

The blues infuse with the waves 

That kiss the shoreline's rocky maze

And the pink that floats above the horizon

Casts visions of a milky haze.

The waves crash in hues of pink

As blue is defeating sun's last wink. 

And as night begins to set 

The gentle shore lets us forget 

The nights spent solid, frozen shut

In winter's dismal, frigid rut. 

Every night, between eight and seven,

We've glimpsed gentle views of heaven

Guarded by eroding rocks, 

And impeded by two jutting docks,

We dip our feet into cold sand

And feel the heal of water's hand. 

We all rejoice in splendid view

To see heaven's grace 

In every hue. 

Sydney

When my problems feel like oceans

The lake makes me feel small

And her melodic serenades 

Send chills throughout the fall.

She kisses the shoreline 

And dances in wind's waves. 

Her howling echoes 

Say it's cooler by the lake. 

Despite her many warnings 

Of lungs filled to their brim,

We choose to dance within her;

We choose to sink or swim. 

Though I have not once 

Been ripped from beside her shore,

I wonder if her horizon

Holds secrets of much more. 

Safely perched upon the windowsill

Her songs perturb my sleep. 

I wonder if her gentle waves 

Will, through my window, creep. 

For her to wake me in the night

From another's dream,

Would be the best and worst of times

For her love awakens me. 

Frankly,

I've been the number one

I've been the only one

I've been the last one

I've been the extenuating circumstance

I've been dead to you

I've been gullible 

But I won't be the "other one."

She's been the other one, 

The number one,

The one you claim was "useful."

She's been walking with a blanket

Placed carefully over her eyes. 

A blue blanket

That called her "butterfly."

She's been to the same places

And seen the same sights.

She spent months in your bedroom

Fighting cold Chicago nights. 

She's been the dozen roses

That you carried by your side;

Does she know about the four dozen

That you chose to hide?

Darling, please know, 

That I still think of you

But being the other girl

Is something I can't do.