(AKA The Last Piece of Chalk)

Here I write, at the end of things

Of pain unparalleled

My brethren: used up, dwindling

Stubs scarcely to be held

Mere dots where once proud columns lay

Tales ended with a period

Muddled dust in shades of grey

Once shone in colors myriad

Remembrance falls to me alone

No other bell will toll

No flags half mast, no widows moan

For rubble in a bowl

My only solace to ...

Am I feeling what you’re feeling

Do I have a view inside

Is it empathy or arrogance

To think I know your mind

I’m upset when you’re upset

That I’m upset tha— stop.

Is it insight or insanity

To guess what’s in your thoughts

Sometimes when I’m in tune

with all your nuances and moods

With things I couldn’t, shouldn’t know

But feel as though I do

I wonder if I’m penning my own

Stories onto you

Tal...

If I were taller, I’d wade

Water lapping at my knees, I’d be

At peace, unafraid

That I might wander in too deep

But here I am, so close to land

And I’m drowning in the shallow water

If I were curious, I’d roam

Stirring ripples with my strides, I’d go

Searching for a home

Looking out across the tides

But I’m looking down at my reflection

And it’s drowning in the shallow water

If I were stronger...

I knew this city yesterday

I woke to change

Like looking at a stranger

The walk sign is on

Caught in my periphery

A turn I didn’t know to take

Flowers in the stores,

Signs hung on the doors with hours:

“Any time but now”

But how? I can see them

Inside, shopping, smiling

Their city still in sync

Has the city changed?

It’s strange to think

That I could be forgotten

This city knew me yesterd...

𝄆 A simple question, on its face

An idle path to tread

But every dead end sends me reeling

Fearing what’s ahead

Lost within this feedback loop

My doubts compound and clatter

Amplified and dissonant

Till something in me shatters

Among these shards my shifting thoughts

Reflect, refract and scatter

And now I’m grasping at the fragments,

Wondering why it matters

When all that’s left with heft enou...

I don’t want to grow up

But I still want to grow

I want to be that kid

With such potential years ago

I don’t want to grow old

And lose my best excuse

For not yet having realized

The promise of my youth

I don’t want to find out

That this is all of me

That if I clear away the silt

There’s nothing left to see

I don’t want to stand out

But I don’t want to fade

Away from possibility

Irrelevant, afr...

“She’s acting,” Ell mouths, turning toward me to shield the words from the woman rushing past us.

I look up from my halfhearted examination of the welcome pamphlet, the words having lost all meaning somewhere between the fifteenth and twentieth readthrough. After over two hours of waiting, these are my options: stare at the pamphlet, stare into space, or stare at the attendees on their way out o...

Fractured long before the loss

No harbor now for floating thoughts

My pieces wont to wander off

Without your home to stead

Fraying edges gone unchecked

Threadbare, base, bereft

Pattern warped without your weft

My plot has lost the thread...