“I lace barbed wire around my heart, constrict it – pull tight, maybe the pain will make it feel alive, and I can pretend it didn’t already die.”

Misty morning welcomes me as I wander through the trees – calm amidst the chaos of distant memories.

Lost journals are steps back home, like the mending of broken bones, like scars that act as patches to my soul, like the measurement marks on my mother’s wall that show just how much I’ve grown.

Fireside and free, tangled up in curiosity, dripping in holy honesty, drawing in pure ecstasy, exploring possibilities – a cabin in the woods.

I simply cannot hold onto hope, it aches like possibilities never reached, I’m bubbling over with grief – this chaos has caused so much loss and fatigue.

And the world seems just a little bit warmer, and the sun shines slightly brighter than it used to, and the days pass differently than before, and time is no longer stuck in a loop.

I learned all about love from people that didn’t know how to love me.

What do you do, when all the loves you’ve ever known have only been paper moons?

I’m half agony, half hope – like I’m a freshly cut bone, like the last stone that was held – then not thrown, like a garden where inspiration roots but never grows.

Today, cold seeps from my insides out, the frigid rain warm on my skin.

You hold a piece of me I will never get back. Be even tender.

You were refreshing. Your idea of love infused me with hope and joy.

Here I am again, chasing shadows, as if I’m peter pan convincing Wendy not to grow up – I’m waiting for you in the between place. Dreaming and never quite awake.

A wooded winter trail awaits, no footprints pressed upon the snow – a path I dared not once to take but now – I must go.

I chip and carve until I’m a corpse – a bone with no marrow, or a sparrow without wings, a vein without wings, a vein without blood, a puppet with no strings.

Underneath the stars, the weight of living dissolves – releases, breathes, be.

I love you – like a lighthouse and the sea, like mountaintops and valleys, like how the sun breathes life into leaves without even touching.