I am the road. I am worn cobblestones shaped by the brush and stride of all who have crossed me.

And I am also the silver mist from warm breath in the cold air.

I am the soft clack of tiles placed on a gameboard.

I am a chemical reaction, an output, and so, too, am I the component to someone else’s equation. The sun against their leaves, or the salt against their soil.

I am a contributor. ...

I never realized

The air smelled like home

Till I left it, and it, too, left me alone

I hadn’t considered

The feel of the water

The grain of the wood, or

The voice of my father

Now I rest on cool tiles

That have not known my name

_Lone at home_, they cry!

_What a shame._

What a shame....

I swore I could still hear the faint music of you

Playing from somewhere I had passed by

So I turned and ran back

Past my mistakes

To before

You were not there anymore

And neither was I...

Life is nothing. Less, even. Life is a negative number. Life is the space where nonexistence falters. But all things pass. Life is a grain of sand in the eye of the world. An irritant. A disruption that will not meaningfully last.

And so, at my core, I am a guide. I have been mandated to return you to the beginning, not of life, but of nothing. The universe has chosen lifelessness, yet you seek t...

The light of the moon glints softly

By the time it reaches the seafloor

It is diluted

Broken

Weak

But it fights its way downwards

Ever farther from the source

Barely grazing the sand

Flickering over strange, moving forms

Until the sun rises again

Drowning the sea in gold and green...

When the glitter faded and the lights fled

She was left

Ragged and alone

Tracing the grey tile

Like a picture of a long-forgotten friend

When they left

She remained

Hurt, but whole

And no one but herself...

The stars were what she loved the most

Before they all began to shower

Tearing a path through their ebony host

A weary showcase of their power...

Thousands of us, lost in migration

Form a surreal configuration

An array of fins and shadows greet

The stragglers and strangers who would hope to compete

Be wary of my pearly grin:

I cannot die. You cannot win.

And when, at last, we fall asleep,

We do so armored by velvet deep...

When I first met you

I didn’t know who I was

I was a sketch and

You were a work of art

But you embraced me as me...

There once was a little place called Lelle

Where the buildings were too tall

And doors stretched down to hell

For no matter how far you fall

Beyond cellar floors or the bricked-up well

You could never glimpse the buried edges

Of the things that lay beneath the hedges...