“Branches bow, longing to reach the crisp, punctured leaves, their old shedded skin.”

Your pupils expanded like twin universes, engulfing my emptiness.

If the wind itself turned to silk, singing ballads in my lungs, it couldn’t even hope to match the softness of your touch.

Oh, you fool. You turned cold and stopped loving when the world needed it most.

The warmth is spring is near. It smells of hope and cheer. The budding bulbs of daffodils will end the endless fear.

Sunshine comes after rain. Rain comes after sunshine. Joy and sadness remain in an eternal back and forth. Such balance hold the world in place.

I trust the universe. If we exist for each other, time will bring is both back to our beginning.

I sacrificed you for life, hope, optimism. Do you expect me to regret that?

You are a question that I’ll never know the answer to.

We are gardens. We flourish and grow. Despite the rain, despite the snow.

I’ve learned the difference between being a good person and being a popular.

The hardest goodbyes are the ones you never got to say.

My dearest contradiction. You are soft and obliterating, like the moon’s glare upon a sinner.

I’d prefer to wield a rose than to wield the gun.

We parted sadly, like children in the street on a pleasant june afternoon.

I ache and long and feel in a language older than ours; one without words or phrases, consisting only of melancholy.

Every word I write is crude and weak when it comes to conveying you how much I appreciate you.

Henceforth the leaves of the tree of knowledge were for women, and for the healing of the nations.

To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with universal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them or around them – the whole leaf and root tribe.

When one thing changes, it all changes. And now sitting in a pile of fallen dominoes I feel like me.

When the leaves begin to fall, I find myself returning to old playlists in hopes that I can feel you holding my hand, or kissing me goodnight, or hear you singing my name into songs and blueing when it makes no sense.

Like the leaves and trees beyond repair we let go, But don’t forget love.

And just like the leaves in the fall, she fell, too. And it changed her. And it was wonderful.

The wolf howled under the leaves And spit out the prettiest feathers Of his meal of fowl: Like him I consume myself.

April’s air stirs in Willow-leaves, a butterfly Floats and balances.