I live my life through the words I write
Can I offer enough forgiveness
to my past self, to you,
to erase the pain, the confusion, the betrayal,
burning from your eyes
into mine, that night?
Your eyes burn into mine, still,
whenever I think of you.
That fire is the first thing I see,
still feel.
If I’m meant to feel that fire forever,
a hard punishment it would be.
Hard, and justified.
People come,
enter our lives,
often we don’t see them coming
until there they are, standing in front of us,
asking us to join in their lives, too.
People go,
often too soon,
before we have a chance to say goodbye.
In their shadows we remain
drowning in words unsaid,
yearning for a reunion of any kind
to lighten the load on our shoulders.
People come, and they go,
sometimes to make room for more new arrivals
for we can only have so many, right?
When they go, I wonder where they go.
Do they, too, carry words left unsaid
like me?
He’s gone. He’s in the past.
Not in the present
and likely absent from the future.
In the past is where he can,
should, stay.
Part of me
but apart from me.
Look for me
on the edge of the sun
in the blend of yellow and blue
and white,
on the edge.
I’ll be on the edge
waiting for you.
Nestled between the needles,
white amongst the green,
tucked into crevasses to hide
from the warm, yellow sun
rising.
We, the snowflakes,
will soon die here.
Our lives are short, but sweet
in April.
Stop putting so much damn pressure
on yourself.
You are not in a life-or-death situation.
If you make a mistake
(what classifies a mistake anyway?)
there will be opportunities to do better next time.
If you keep holding out
scared of imagined consequences
preparing for remediation of the fallout
without taking action at all,
you will kill yourself
before getting a chance to see the success
beyond the worrying,
unwarranted.
Please, oh please,
stop being so hard on yourself
day after day.
Who sets the bars, the standards
you race to meet?
The person who sets them
maintains the power to change them.
Is it you?
When you start shifting your attention
to water the flowers you want to bloom,
things change
within you, and around you.
Shifts bring change.
They allow us to see, envision,
a world different from what we lived before.
Change can feel uncomfortable
and in discomfort
we seek to find comfort,
maybe back in the place we came from.
Running backwards is not the answer
we need,
or actually want.
What if
the new world you see before you
is where you’re meant to be?
Listen,
as it releases a deep exhale,
rustling a gentle breeze across your skin,
extending its arms to welcome you
here.
This world, this new world,
has been waiting for you.
There’s no point in trying to gain control
over anything.
Once you have it, it disappears,
or morphs,
or ropes you into submission
with the tables turned.
Start each day clean, fresh.
What you knew yesterday,
what you thought you had all figured out,
no longer exists.
Breathing
has brought you here,
where you are now.
Breathing
will keep you here,
in the present moment.
Breathing
will push you forward,
to where you want to go.
Dawning Words 