draecana

years I spent years thinking I was being hurt by someone else someone I wanted to hold close I spent years holding that person at arms length I spent years listening to you believing you And you spent those years hiding the truth lying to me damaging me years

wafting in languorous whorls inky tresses mirror white smoke drifting in lazy arabesques

You cry out about helping "our" homeless, as if you are doing anything to help, as if you, yourself, are homeless and forsaken. It makes me wonder if you inhabit the same world I do; For, what are refugees, if not homeless? And if we all share this planet, are all a part of a global community, how are they not "ours"?

Full moon, that jaundiced eye staring down at us, unblinking. Your breath freezing in my hair and half-cocked promises dancing in sepia-toned whispers. This glimmer of something fey; of a fleeting, flitting thing that might be some kind of love; glimpsed only out of the corners of eyes, in flickering shadows on starlit nights. Perplexing peripheries, fantastic phosphenes dancing just beyond reach intangible as your words, your whispered pledge; your pretty mouth spouts inanities, but I'm not listening to the sounds. too distracted by your sleight of hand; when did you pluck my heart from my chest to slip into your pocket? And

Joy! My family unit expands tomorrow, one more life will be given to my care. Jubilation! One more cold nose to welcome me home, one more wagging tail and grinning face. One more reason to smile, to laugh. My heart has already grown to encompass another, to hold that much more love. (I hope it outgrows my body some day).

you put out all the lights and left me, alone and in the dark and you hid in the shadows, silent; watching, waiting; until i couldn't remember if you had ever really been there at all if i had ever really been--- who i was. who was i? ---until i lit the lamps you left me with and illuminated an illusion that i thought was real. until i forgot that you had been the one to snuff out my lights in the first place and leave me with the lighter.

I am not falling in love anymore. I am not falling. I am diving. Perfect form. Conscious decision. A choice, not an accident.

When even your heroes need heroes, and you're standing in the dark, just reach out your hand and realize that you are not alone. We all stand in the dark some times.