“I fill the shadow of the girl you want, a placeholder to the one I know you’d rather – I’ll do for now, but not forever.”

The bond of friendship as tight as any lover – where shoulders carry shared burden, a devotion unmatched by any other.

What use is sleep, when reality is more beautiful than my dreams could ever muster?

You are a mirage – never mine to hold. A glimering promise so tempting to chase, eternally out of reach.

My throat burns with the words left unspoken, air hangs still and silence hides the words you long to hear – stay.

A full glass for an empty heart – the temporary bandage for a fatal would.

The smell of oak reminds me of summers spent sleeping under canvas, crackling fires and roasted coffee, the soft sound of guitar and voices in unison.

A collection of thoughts bundled together and bound in twine – more toxic than any chemical, my very own poison.

I sit by the sea wall, willing the waves to stay. Pulling away with gentle abandon – they avenge me for doing the same.

And in the end-you didn’t deserve my thoughts or my ink.

Her body may lay on your sheets, but my name sits softly on your lips.

The leaves know when to let go – if only I had the same instinct.

Painting over cracks as you watch the ceiling fall – not everything can be healed with love.

Don’t waste your words on me, your face speaks in volumes that your breath could never reach.

A dishonor greater than any affair, is that of a friend who never was.

Hollow intent and echoes affection, a call with no response. Who could trust a dormant heart – where apathy is shaped like love?

Leaves dance on twisted arms, swaying on the breeze as though choreographed by unseen hands. Even the faithless could find themselves converts, by the smell of dampened earth and its blossoming rose.

I think I know how to raise a kid. You just play catch with ’em. You just talk about life, and you distract them by throwing the ball. They don’t even notice that you’re filling up their heads with your theories.

There’s no tiling moral about beauty.

Nearly everyone who goes into a campaign is not only eager for the place he hopes to fill but for what might come after.

Even if it’s something so simple as filling myself up with uplifting meditation so it’s easier to spread kindness and love by the time I walk out my door and enter the world.

The nice thing about being on stage is it’s not that I know what to do, but I have a very clear feeling that anything I do is OK. All I’m up there to do is express how I feel. Any way I choose to do that is fine.

Sometimes we wish the world could cry and tell us about that which made it pregnant with fear-filling grandeur. Sometimes we wish our own heart would speak of that which made it heavy with wonder.

Fling out, fling out, with cheer and shout, To all the winds of Our Country’s Banner!

A Christian home! What a power it is to the child when he is far away in the cold, tempting world, and voices of sin are filling his ears, and his feet stand on slippery places.