“Time aches- my words break as if they’re the wings of a captured butterfly as if they’re the seconds that keep ticking by as if they’re embers that refuse to ignite.”

When winter withers – my bones begin to thaw, my lungs crackle as they expand, and the blood in my veins start to flow and I awaken from hibernation – hungry for happiness and eager to let go.

My mind is not my own. I don’t recognize her when I am alone.

I know I haven’t told you, but I also know, that you’ve felt my love.

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.

Expanding like the universe, I discovered galaxies within. To break glass ceilings: Breath in trust, exhale doubt-beckon bravery.

Those closest to me. Didn’t know the true state of my mentality.

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.

I believe that effective teaching is often the spark that ignites the imagination, possibility, and promise for learners, including the teacher.

But the universe, as a collection of finite things, presents itself as a kind of island situated in a pure vacuity to which time, regarded as a series of mutually exclusive moments, is nothing and does nothing.

A book is a device to ignite the imagination.

Don’t talk to us like we ignint!

Unless these unfortunates can be touched with the spark which ignites the spirit of individual enterprise and determination, they will only sink back into renewed apathy, degradation and despair. It is for us, who are more fortunate, to provide that spark.

There is so much history in New York State, from the Erie Canal to the Catskills, the birth of American stand-up comedy.

The idea of a portable kit that has everything you might need ignites something inside me. It’s like Batman’s utility belt.

I will keep the ground that God has given me and perhaps in his grace, he will ignite me again. But ignite me or not, in his grace, in his power, I will hold the ground.