Wrap me in your arms

For I have sinned

Wrap me in your arms

until I forget to think

Keep me close

until I heal

Whisper you love me

When I can’t love myself

Hold me tight

Put my pieces back together

Your love in the night

Is what keeps me

From wandering forever

I don’t want to lose you

Please find me

So I never get lost again

Wrap your arms around me

Promise to never let me go

I may not make it

But I will always try

Without you

There will be no I

The desolate chill numbed my soul

A winter like no other pressed me to the edge

Recoiling in horror at the heart I once knew

A stranger lived in my head

Someone I never knew existed

Pushing me closer and closer to the jagged, icy crevice

Silently stepping off solid ground into the void

Broken wings flailing at the laughing air

As I tumbled through the emptiness

//////////

Swallowing me up

with unthought words

I would have cut my heart out

And traded it for a bit of peace

Barely clinging to myself

Fears, delights, anxious nights

Scratching at the door of my mind

Begging for entrance as I pushed back

Against the frigid winds

That threatened the life I loved

////////

Spring breezes have melted the icicles that gripped me

Softly sweeping away the gray snow that blinded me

Bringing me home to myself

Letting me breathe again

Letting me feel again

Buds on the trees remind me

I survived

I made it though

This Winter of unbearable discontent

Anxious waiting

Comprehending

The full weight

of this

imminent collision

Time will be measured

from that point on

Only as

Before

and

After

June 27, 2101 – Washington, DC –– This morning, a HoverPod traveling on the silver rail and occupied by several dozen younglings catastrophically collapsed into the ground layer. Upon inspection, it appears that the gravity inverter failed due to an algorithmic error. As a result, the program copywriter responsible for writing the faulty prompt has been promptly terminated. His widow has been reassigned to his previous position to keep production on track.

she saw the light at the end of the road.

her heart has carried too big of a load.

her only escape is a narrow path.

she has already calculated the math.

walk a little straighter keep moving forward.

a better life is waiting in the light she heads toward.

the mental and physical abuse has cost her too much.

never thought she would escape, so close but still can't touch.

she can see the light it up ahead.

good thoughts have filled her head.

her new life will soon be shaped.

she just has to squeeze through her narrow escape.

I stepped into the shade

To speak to the sun

He asked, where is my shadow

I said I had none

Reaching forward behind myself

There was a pile of sleeves

Draped over my shoulders

Were buttons sprouting leaves

Things had become not what they seem

Realizations that it’s all

incongruous

This all proved one thing

The fabric of reality was

diaphanous

Stepping back into the sun

I laughed with my shadow

We climbed back inside

And closed my mind’s window

a bracelet of threads circles my wrist

- orange, pink, and green -

that's who you are to me

declares the girl who makes me seen

without missing a beat, i proclaim

- purple, pink, and green -

that's who you are to me

not knowing only a best friend could be so keen

i try this game later, this time with another

- blue, yellow, and green -

thats who you are to me

they ask, what does that mean?

i look at the bracelet given to me

smiling, i realize

this is why she and i will always be

the best friends who see

You’re an exciting site to see….like the vision of walking into a surprise birthday party with everyone’s eyes on you….everyone clapping. Balloons and streamers decorating every wall.

Your love is like the special feeling of knowing that everyone showed up for you but could be anywhere else in the world....doing anything else there is to do in the world.

You sure know how to make a person feel special. You make a person feel worthless when you leave. Like absolutely nothing special to no one when you left me. You were the decoration to my life. The pearls on the icing on my favorite cake. The decoration to my life….the canvas of my existence. Just a painter waiting for your every desire so I can paint into reality any of your needs. All your wants. Ready to command to your life all and any ...with no questions....your insistence. You're exciting like seeing the ocean for the very first time. How vast, deep, ever changing is she. Simply exhilarating. Sharp as a bolt of lightening, soft as a summer breeze. Your voice sends me shivers, your laugh makes me weak, your cries bring me to my knees….if only I could at least hear you scream. If only you were here...I'd take anything...your love, your hate. I'd love for you to run to me...to throw your arms around my neck and solve all our problems....to fix and forget our past with a passionate kiss. Shit, Id take you back in any form....wouldn't turn you away if you ran at me yelling and cursing passionate insults was the way you used those delicious lips. At least Id have you back as mine....break my heart dead... Make it flatline.

You make a heart fly like diving from a mountain top. Free falling and enjoying every second. No thought of the ground until you reached it….i reached it….and fell even further. Like a meteor crashing deep into the earth. Alone without you....stuck in a hole of depression one could climb out of never....that is until you come back again....like you always do to make things better.

A scrape is the description for any and every pain felt throughout an entire lifetime if put together, compared to the excruciation of losing you. A moments boredom is the sum of sorrow compiled throughout a lifetime when placed beside the depression of you having gone. At first... knowing I would be able to see you was like a snow day away from school. But now...If only I could see you again would be to get a second ticket to live. Another chance at life that was so suddenly ended when you left…. The ability to get up…to finally!! Once more run again… far far away from one’s death bed. To have you forever would be heaven….my heaven at least. I had hoped it would be yours as well. I can still taste your milk & honey smell. The feel of your skin gliding past mine. Our love was divine...something will I never again find.

The sheets on the bed lightly clothing, yet sliding away to the floor. Our bodies connected to the core. In the morning ....I loved to stare and take in it ALL. Like the cute...uniquely your own...constellation on your arm. The way the sun shone through the window and played lines across your beautiful face. I declare that this is what the angels must paint. This must be what god dreams of. Everything.... I was always feeling....this is the definition of love.

Ohhhh but how a person can turn to black and fall apart.

If only you would once more walk through that door. The candle lights dance to your name. Without your love...The plants dry out and go insane.

The photos on the wall stare down the empty halls. They watch each other…each reminding the other of happier times. Memories lost in each other. Before you lost me and I left my mind.....no....I didn't say that right.....will anything ever be alright when nothing's going right?

Each noise echoes without your background sounds to fill the empty spaces. I see you in all places....your features on all the faces.

Stars twinkle without meaning. They no longer hold the history of the false stories that you gave them. No more than hollow lighted gems. You left me to solve all your caused problems.

People….o the vast population, the sky of faces, the sea of clouds. Nothing make sense in a world where down is up and the past is now. How to turn back the running feet of time to hold your hands again? One more day I would spend….and when we fall asleep at the nights end…away you would go….and I would continue to sleep…to dream….to create a reason for you to stay with me. I could live an eternity in a false reality….happily. How I wouldn’t mind to be a fly on your wall…in fact I would stay and never fly away. ….you can walk all over me. I would remain….but on your carpet as a stain. Putting back a life with missing pieces will never be the same….will never be a work of art….could never be framed. Its not worth a damn. Neither is freedom to the insane. One gets used to seclusion. Comfortable in being alone….satisfied dwelling within a memory….being outside and calling it home….running back to whenest we come. But I don't think I can be like that....can't get use to anything when all I want is nothing else but the past or a future with you back. Like a parched lizard in the miserable desert I am sucked dry…no longer can my eyes cry. Physical pain has taken over….actual suffering has begun. How much longer must I hear the sound of a clock? Are you getting closer with every tick? Or further with every tock? How you did crave me once….need me, obsess over me, lust for me….truly love me….only to suddenly not. This house of stone is molten rock, melting and shifting, flowing and burning away. Soon I will be completely exposed. Unsheltered, unclothed, unable…incapable…unloved and all alone….consisting of nothing but fear and self loath. Why wasn’t I enough? How much am I worth? Oh the cost of emotion given everything by the beggar only to be cheated and left with less than when come. I stay here only from fear for I know not what is after death. Such hell I should suffer now in agony awaiting the day you will come to me. But should I die and be rebirthed…the harder to find you between the spaces and parallels of universes. Should I die and go to heaven might be pleasant for I can float above, sweeping above the earth. I would guide and guard you, watch and admire you, adore and love you from afar. At least then I could see you. Watch you grow. No longer stuck on repeat would the memories continue to rerun along the ribbons of tape in my mind. If there was only a machine that could turn back time. I stay here to not admit to defeat….not to come to terms with you giving up on us….still hopeful that prayer and time might bring you back to our love….never facing that you have left me.

when did the i love you’s become empty?

when did your arms around me turn from safety to a prison?

when did i stop recognizing you?

or did you have me tricked? caught me blind-sighted from the beginning

so that i couldn’t see the monster you always were.

why were all your sweet words followed by biting insults?

why was everything my fault when you always threw the first punch?

why was your love always tainted with violence?

why couldn’t you ever love me for free?

you’re the worst kind of sadist;

you only gave love after you caused the worst pain.

breaking me into pieces for you to clean up later

just so you could say you were always there.

maybe you never loved me.

maybe you only loved the power you got from forcing your leash on me.

maybe you were so desperate to feel strong, and you only

fell in love with making me feel small.

do all of your lovers come back to empty beds?

harsh words that leave them with scars the only thing they can feel?

do you put your rose-colored glasses on all of us so we can’t see your red flags?

i’ve taken mine off.

all i see in front of me now is a small boy,

hungry for power.

i refuse to be your feast anymore.

Dying, for me, was a beautiful experience.

I know that sounds crazy, blasphemous even, to describe such a tragic thing, a viscerally sad thing, in such a dissonant way. You might wonder if I was depressed. And truly, I wasn’t. In the end, despite everything, I was stupidly happy. Still, if I was being completely and truly honest, dying, the actual act of it, not the pain or the ragged breathing, no, the actual process of letting go… that part. That part was bliss.

Let me tell you about my life, before I ask you to celebrate in its ending.

It wasn’t a particularly spectacular existence, some might even call it boring, run of the mill. A life that could be mistaken for a thousand others. Of course, to me, at the time, it was everything, the only thing.

I was born in a small Midwestern town, raised in typical Midwestern niceness, by a father who was strict and distant but did his best, and a mother who was a tad too religious but who did all the mothering things with unmatched fervor. I was clothed in clean clothes, my feet adorned with shoes that were sensible and fit well. I was loved and scolded and hugged in all the typical ways. I had two sisters I constantly squabbled with, banging on the shared bathroom door, hastily getting ready for the day in a panic, somebody always holding up the one hairdryer, using up all the hot water.

I loved, oh yes, I loved. Roman, that was his name. I remember thinking his name had that unique way of rolling easily in the curl of my tongue, passing effortlessly through my lips, like I’ve said his name all my life, or that I’m meant to, for the rest of it.

He was brilliant, my Roman. I met him at university, studying astrophysics. He had grand ideas and even grander dreams. He loved life but at the same time was disillusioned by it. He said to me once, using his hands to gesture into space: “It’s not possible, you know, that this is it. There’s more to this, more to everything, we just can’t see it.”

You would think it would hurt, the way he said it, the way he longed for something more than us, more than what I could give him, but it didn’t. Because I knew what he meant, I felt it too.

There was something in between the empty spaces, he told me, between the tiniest of particles. An answer to everything.

I never found out what he meant, neither did he. He died shortly after his twenty-fifth birthday, before he was able to finish his research, before he got to meet his daughter, at that point still the tiniest clump of molecules gestating inside me.

I remember the pain of that moment. How the world became dull and gray. How I went to sleep too many nights hoping to never wake up again. But day after day I woke up, and I would go through the motions, and I would go to work and my prenatal appointments, smiling at my doctor, telling him yes, yes, I’m doing okay. It’s hard, but I’ve got my sisters, you know, and my mom…

Then I had my daughter, and at once the world had color again. She had Roman’s eyes, almond shaped and deeply brown, thick dark lashes swooping downwards at the sides. I swear she looked at me in the exact way Roman did, with that exact slight raise of the brows, the slight curl in the lips, and I remember weeping.

I named her: Aster. Star. The only one that mattered in my universe, my sun.

We had a simple life, our little family of two. We fought a lot, in the way all mothers and daughters do, Aster having the quick wit of her father, the stubbornness of her mother. She broke my heart a million times when she was a teenager, which we mended as we both grew older. Then as quickly as she came into my life, she left. I understood. She had to build a life of her own, having met her own star, her own universe.

And it was good.

“Mom?”

She’s finally here. My star. “Aster.”

Large dark eyes stared down at me. She was older now, my star, smile lines having formed at the corners of her eyes. Have those always been there? They must have. Aster always smiled with her eyes.

“Hey mom, it’s okay. We’re here.”

We. I couldn’t see well these days. She must have brought her little boy, my grandson. I squinted at the small blonde head on her lap. She named him… Roman.

I wanted so much to smile, but it hurt to even breathe. My chest muscles struggled to expand. I saw the nurse put a hand on my daughter’s shoulder, shaking her head.

Yes, there was pain, every single muscle hurt, the air caught uncomfortably in my chest, but there was also something else… something light. Suddenly I felt weightless. I knew then it was time to go.

Time at once contracted then expanded, and I could see everything, the future, the past, all possible choices and universes all at once. I finally saw it, what my Roman was talking about, the space in between the tiniest particles, the invisible energy that connects all of us together, in every universe, in every possible dimension. My universe, my stars.

I died then.

And it was beautiful.