Some nights I lie awake

and dream about what it would

be like to never wake up again.

It sounds like a morbid daydream,

this I know to be true, but it’s not

the idea of romanticizing death,

no, but the mystery and bewilderment

that the concept of death brings me.

And perhaps it is just me, but I think

about death in the strangest way, as it

is all around us, and unfortuntely

it’s an inevitable conclusion we can’t escape.

The thought of life ending, the absence

of rhythmic heart beats, of fluttering eyes,

is almost too much to bear at times,

and at other times, it could sound

like the sweetest solution.

But I think about what awaits me,

the darkness that will consume my mind,

because I believe that this world is so

brilliantly beautiful, there just has to be

more waiting for me on the other side.

I wonder who will remember me, and how

they will retell stories of my existence,

have I made an impact on someone’s life

without ever knowing the pain or love I created?

Will my words surpass my breathing, will these

tattered pages survive my demise to change lives?

And you, I wonder mostly how you will remember

me and the nights we shared together, whispering

our secrets to the humid summer nights

wishing on airplanes we mistaken for stars,

and tangling ourselves in our spider web of sheets.

I sometimes dream of death in the most beautiful ways,

wondering, hoping there will be more beauty on the other side.

It hurts when you realize
the people that you love
have changed, or perhaps
it’s you that has become
someone different, almost
a complete stranger to yourself.

But that is what happens in life,
things change, and you can either
dwell on the past, like staring at a
tattered photograph, tears welling up
in your distant eyes, wondering if you
could pin-point the exact moment things
began to change, when the person you
knew so well became a fading memory.
Or you can accept that your lives have
slowly drifted apart, and hold those moments
you shared close to your heart,
but the latter somehow seems so much
more difficult to fathom,
now doesn’t it?

I believe it is because as people we
struggle to accept change, only when
it is unwanted, of course.
It’s strange to image how one would
simply fall out of love, but we have all
felt that hurt, that twisting pain, the
growing blackness within our chest,
the one that cuts your breathing short,
and eliminates hunger, confides you to
those linen cotton monsters, wrapping
their selfish claws around your flesh.
We can’t image the thought of the one
we love the most, waking up and realizing
they have changed, and somehow they get up,
and walk away.

But I imagine people are like stars,
burning, shining together, perhaps
only for a short moment in time, but
that moment stays with us, longer than
we would like to admit.
And to be honest, if I were a star,
I shined my brightest with you.

I find it strange how life changes people,
how an chosen path, an event, and even
a lover, or lost lover for that matter,
can truly change the person you thought
you knew better than yourself.
But you changed, slowly becoming a
stranger to me, growing so far away.

At first it was the silence, that was the
initial sign that something was wrong,
I could see there was some clouded thought
on your mind, the way you would stare
off into the dark corners of the room,
and there was nothing I could say that
brought your sight back to me.
We would still hold each other close,
yet neither of us spoke a word, I just
listened to the rapid, muffled beatings
of your heart, and wondered how I could
produce such a sweet rhythm for me.

Then we spiraled out of control, it happened
so quickly, honestly, I never saw it coming.
You spent longer nights out, stumbling
into our home reeking of stale beer and
cigarettes, and would collapse onto the
couch, and all that meant was I spent
another sleepless night alone in the sheets,
touching the cold cotton next to me,
remembering how you would warm
my dry bones while I slept so soundly.

I stopped begging you to sleep next to me,
and I even quit asking what was wrong,
how could I help, what could I do?
I remember the moment, the exact time
where I looked over at you on the couch,
and couldn’t even recognize the person
I had fallen in love with.

The distance that grew between us,
the way you changed, the silence,
it made you a stranger to me, and I
wondered if you recognized me,
or if you’ll admit your heart changed,
doubt it.

There was something different about this one,
it was the look he gave me, oh that look
it changed my world, made it colorful
and turned it upside down.

I gave him all of me,
yeah, I said it, I gave it all away
I offered myself to him, my heart,
I torn open my ribs and exposed
my beating vulnerability as if he
could keep it, make it his own.

And instead of cherishing, worshiping
me as some sort of prize, he tore me apart,
he cashed his old cigarette into my tired
chest and burned out the only sense of
love that I carried within me.

It took me years to realize that he had
made me something into what he wanted
and changed the girl I had always dreamed
of becoming, so that’s when I said the words
that drove him away, and made me struggle
to find myself again.

For what it’s worth, I loved you with every
ouch of my heart and soul, but you changed
something inside of me, made me into
a stranger to myself, and for that, I can
never forgive you, or open my miserably
naive heart again.

The words he screamed burned my skin
as if my blood was made of gasoline,
and someone threw a match into the
open hole in my chest, the one
where my heart once rested.

Each letter was made of sharpened
knives, meticulously practiced and
rehearsed, I knew you couldn’t have
thought of such hurtful things right
there on the spot, there’s no way.
You spent time pondering which words
would hurt me the most, and
strung them together, so perfectly.
Oh, how cold and bitter your heart
has become since we drifted apart.

And you won, those words
tore me apart, just as you planned.
I cried, drank whiskey until I couldn’t
remember what your face looked like,
and inhaled those lovely sticks of cancer
until all the words in my chest were
burnt away, transformed into smoke.

It was the pain that made me change,
and I held onto you, we held onto each other
for so long, as backup plans, but when I
finally moved on, you couldn’t handle it,
so you took your time, I bet you even
recited this to the mirror, the malice and
hate hanging so thick on your tongue.

So what do you want me to say?
You won, your words ruined so much
love and warmth in my heart, and for that,
I thank you, for making me see
that I am much better off without you.

You gave me hope,
more than anyone had before.
It was different, a sensation,
almost as if it was a new power
I had acquired, nothing tangible,
no, I couldn’t hold hope in my hands.
But it was something I felt deep
within my chest, almost in my soul,
lifting my heart, breathing expectations
into my tar stained lungs.

I woke up smiling,
still waiting on moment,
the one I had been hoping for.
It was that anxious and innocent
feeling that you distantly remember
embodying when you were a kid,
like waking up on Christmas morning.
It was comforting, the way you told me
that something wonderful was coming
and it was on it’s way to me.

I went on for years hoping,
just like you said I should,
I wish on the mirrored clock numbers,
every star in the sky, but I felt that hope
slowly fading away, like the chilly winter
mornings in this sunshine state.
I tried holding on to this concept
you told me about, but I grew tired
so exhausted, waiting there for a change.

I sat there every night,
waiting, hoping.
When I realized something,
I don’t want to wait any longer
for something I cannot see,
I wanted to make a change.
I had to stop dreaming and
start living, making changes
not for anyone else,
but only for myself.

I refuse to be hopeless any longer.

He caught me drifting again,
staring off to the mysterious
black sky, watching the stars.
I envied them so much, those
burning giants, so far away from
the strange, the horrible, the ugly
that I’m left to suffer through
on this selfish island.

“I want to change the world,”
and you should have seen the
bewilderment that spread across
his face when those words escaped
my coy smile, and when he caught
my adoring stare, I focused my
sight on the cracks in the broken sidewalk.

I’m tired of waiting on the world
to change someone,
sick of sitting here wondering when
things will just get better.
Why can’t I do something about it?

I may not be the biggest person,
no, I envy the skyscrapers, and
I know I’m not the genius of our time,
no, I admire the wisdom of Hawkins.
But I have something that I feel is
something worth sharing, and perhaps
I can make some sort of movement.

I have my voice, my words,
my passion and my sense of
urgency for a change.
I want a movement of words,
a sense of love and adoration
for language and how it connects
us all in so many wonderful ways.
Like that moment where you read
your favorite poem or artist, and think,
They stole the words straight from my heart.

I’ve grown bored with waiting on
this world to change, fed up wishing
to be among the stars, and I think
it’s time for someone to step in.
This is my call for a movement, and
I will change the world with this pen
in my hand and the words in my heart.

Just watch me.

I guess you can say my emotions change like the seasons, because this autumn I realized I don’t love you like I used to in the spring.

Isn’t it strange how a
title changes everything?
How it’s almost as if the
chase, the challenge,
and sometimes even the
excitement becomes somewhat
of a distant memory, the
moment a title is placed.

The power of a name,
the finality, the gravity of
a manner of identification,
it’s almost incomprehensible
when you really think about it.

Love, now that’s an even
stronger, more powerful
word than any I’ve ever
heard before, but can
love be yours?
It’s not a tangible matter,
nothing of breathing
existence, yet we all want
a love to call our own.

Love is a free spirit,
a chaotic mess, a wild
breeze that rattles your
dry, summer bones.
Love is not something
to be tamed, and we all
know better than to
chase after love, we know
we should let love run
it’s course, similar to
a natural disaster.

I can’t call you my love,
because I refuse to ruin
what we have with a
simple title, that in all
actuality, is not
simple at all.

Sometimes, placing a
name on an emotion,
takes all meaning away.

Nights like these
I think of you,
I think of them,
I think of her,
I think of him,
but mostly I just sit
and think of you.

I hate these empty sheets,
and I thought about opening
a window tonight, I thought
I felt a breeze earlier.
I think about going home,
and how I still don’t know
where home truly is for me.
I picture my family, but
I don’t even know who
those strangers are.

I wonder sometimes how
everything would change
if I exchanged my name,
adopted a new life,
skipped town and
became someone else.

Sometimes I think too much,
other nights my mind is so
blank, I beg for distant dreams
to visit me when I wrap myself
in these frigid sheets.

But tonight,
I’m sick of thinking.

In my dream last night
I jumped up and hugged you,
wrapped my legs around
your waist and kissed you.
But you said,
No, not here.
Your hair felt longer,
and your face had changed.
Maybe it wasn’t you.

I heard a leaf blowing
down the street the night
I had stormed out of
your house, I turned to see
if it was you instead, chasing
after me, begging me
not to leave.
I thought maybe you had
changed your mind, but
it was just a dry leave
caught in the breeze.

I was lying in bed and
thought I heard voices, a
conversation I had maybe
dozed into.
Figured perhaps you had
turned the television on again
to dream along with your
favorite characters.
But I looked to my left,
felt the cold sheets, and realized
you were still gone.

It’s strange how my
heart and mind decide
to play tricks on me
when I feel this lonely.

The cafe is quiet this morning,
suits and skirts drag their heavy
heels slowly across the tile floors,
picking up their morning routine
liquid kicker, yawning into fists,
bloodshot eyes sinking into the
darkened bags begging for sleep.

One by one they file out, a
conveyor belt of mechanical
men and women, spending their
days trapped in cubicles, fantasies
of suicide, any type of escape, a
release from the socioeconomic hole
they have dug so deep.
A grave big enough to have your
briefcase and tie collection buried with you.

I know these people, the ones
who were once young and passionate,
creative, would die to change the world.
But the black hole of corporate America,
money, greed, and power sucked that
passionate blood from their hearts.

Nights of drinking, laughing, lusting
have been replaced with a silent spouse
that drinks their feelings, finding love
at the bottom of empty bottles, and kids
who are neglected, brainwashed by
pop stars, supermodels, and the latest trend.

I wonder how it feels to be so
completely empty, I fear that I
will become another one of them,
the walking dead.
Is this the American Dream?