The irony

Of the iron bars

No longer being the thing that cages me

The wishing

For the ability to fly

No longer the empty dream

The fall

From apex predator to prey

Was long, though I soared to a landing

The grass

A luscious emerald green

Faded to brown on this side of the fence

The memory

Of touching, holding

Plagues me like an unending nightmare

The adage

Of being careful what you wish for

Was ne...

The darkness

The dreams

The sharpness

The screams

The love

The hate

The blood

The weight

The bruises

The tears

The truth is

The fears

The lies

The trauma

The cries

The drama

The slashes

The streaks

The crashes

The leaks

The secrets

The cuts

The regrets

The 'but's

The problems

The issue

Has always

Been you...

The man in the van

Drives as quietly as he can

Watching children play

On a warm summer day

The children play happily

Bouncing along

With their red rubber balls

And singing a song

Oh this, this is bliss!

The children smile

But someone is watching

All the while

The man in the van

With his mustache and glasses

Watches the children

All bunched in their masses

Looking for one, alone in the crowd

On...

Playing with fire

You're going to get burned

But amidst all the ashes

Are lessons learned

About Fate and Love, both lost and won

And what happens when one flies

Too close to the sun

A moth to a flame describes fatal attraction

Does the moth weep? What is her reaction

To learning her flame, that magnetic glow

Will be her demise? Will she even know?

Or will the heat of passion be so warm

That it wil...

The air was so thick with humidity that I could almost drink it. I wasn't sure what jostled me from the sleep that remained elusive due to the sweltering heat most of the night, but whatever it was, I was pissed at it. As my senses transitioned from my prior dream state to my begrudgingly awake state, I became aware that I was hearing something. It was the unmistakable staccato sound of knocking o...

A nude female body found. That was the essence of the call that came into the Homicide division of the Milwaukee Police Department on a frigid January afternoon in 2018. It was so much more than that. It was the call that began one of the most twisted true crime mysteries that this Midwestern town had seen since Jeffrey Dahmer. A puzzle of a case that would grip Detective Bryant so tightly that ev...

Those classic, familiar big golden arches. That was our destination as we got off the bus. None of us had a car yet, so public transportation was our main mode of getting around. We had come from the stereotypical teenage summer destination — The mall. But a series of events had spooked us into departing early. We hurried out before we had time to stop at the food court, and we knew McDonald's was...

Here's to us!

Here's to this photograph

A snapshot of a moment in time

Where we are all smiling

A rosy-cheeked bride

Surrounded by family

By blood, thicker than water they say!

Cousins, aunts and uncles

All together to celebrate love

But if you peer beneath the surface of this

Perfect portrait

Something seems to be missing

Hard to see without properly jaded eyes

But it's there

A gap

Several, th...

Who is he now?

Well-read

Well-traveled

Well-off

Well above and beyond

The humble roots he came from

Ambition hidden behind nonchalance

Jealousy masked by criticism

Too young to realize that

His rejection of society

Was him protesting

Too much

Who was I?

Melancholy and cynical

Crestfallen

And broken

Because I was

As always,

My own saboteur

Sitting on the sidelines

Waiting to be seen

Too little

...