to hear click of a door instead of a slam, to not have to race to the deadlock keeping you from me.

i slowly stop jumping when someone knocks a little loud. and i shower as long as i want, because now i’m allowed.

i sit on your bed with my outside clothes, and spray every scented bottle. and it smells like a bath and body works, and you’ll probably hate it.

but i love it, because it means you’re gone.

i’m a blue robin egg in an used, empty nest still waiting hatch.

those grown up birds already fell, they flew far, and left me in an used, empty nest.

and i try to think if i had three eggs, would i keep the one that never changed. see my babies grow, and keep the last in an used, empty nest.

would i still love an egg that never hatches. that never flies, but never crashes. would i love an egg enough to leave it in an used, empty nest.

how can you be surrounded, though it feels like your feet don’t touch the ground?

as if suspended in the abyss, simultaneously groped by the sensations of existing.

why must the peace be stifled by the pressure of being alive?

i only wish to tread, unfaltering, as the sound fades away.

i cannot stay engulfed, cannot leave his dragging touches on the surface.

i am constrained to be the victim, and only dream of liberation.

so i sit in my blue light and know i’m drowning, never to feel the relief of dying.

you feel so far, far off the ground. with skin so gray, gray with piercing mist.

you feel so heavy, heavy rain runs down your feet. with a voice of malice, malice to warn the peaks.

then there is light, light with fire and ash. with a spark of death, death to the life you drown.

you watch the flood, flood of fleeing children. with winds to tear, tear into homes.

at last there is silence, silence to mourn. when light returns, there is no fear.

it’s the nights, when you are waiting for the sun to rise again.

where you lose all the sanity you gained in the day before night fell.

how the stars in the sky become dancers in your eyes as you move in the light of the moon.

yet when you rest again and darkness still dominates the light, it’s all so exhausting.

time had never passed so slowly.

in a shivering wood, frozen in time. you stand at a door, covered in glistening shine.

with a raise of your fist, and a rap of thrice, you suddenly find yourself, covered in ice!

all the snow on the roof, from just last night, fell at your knock, and gave you a fright!

just as you go to swipe off your beard, you find in your face, a tiny girl has appeared.

she looks at you, with your now white face, and starts to cheer, “Santa’s here!”

i stand from my bed, to stretch for the day ahead.

i fly away from home. it’s the roads that make it lonely, almost stretching endlessly before me.

yet i always find my way, where the hungry flies dance ballet. i stretch my hand out to the white swan, as glistening death crowds her pond.

it’s the music that kept her here, following everywhere far and near. but her soul is gone, the music still stretches on. now the dying hear a symphony.

you stare at my eulogies, looking for sympathetic tragedies. trying to read between my lines, as if i’m trying to hide.

and when the ending doesn’t rhyme, you judge me. because my life must be a song, forced to fit silly corsets to belong.

you say words are freedom, to slice through barriers.

but i see you tying the knots, locking muses behind golden glass. we can only twist the words, but it’s you that can change the world.

i find myself held in the jaws of depravity. the teeth so sharp, dipped in vicious brutality.

my arms are pinned down by claws made to scar. they leave a poison, decay to spread too far.

the attacker drops its hold, it’s musky breath smells greedy. when i look into it’s eyes, i see the true creature before me.

a predator with rotten desire, seeking to consume beauty. with no safety to run free, i let his venom encompass me.

if wishes fell like rain, then certainly i am a storm. for all i ever wanted to be, i simply never was.

i could drown myself, choking on pathetic potential. even if i swam in “what could have been”, i’d beach myself on safer sands.

my head could become stormy clouds, and dreams turn into a downpour, but my eyes will always open and see empty deserts waiting for me.