Falling

The cracks are widening,
furthering themselves
in front of us.
I want to jump,
but I'm holding your hand.

So I straddle the crack.
Holding your small hand.
I plead with you to jump,
But you want to stay
On that side forever.

I am a nomad
I cannot stay in one place.
I am in motion
You are in stasis.
We are not ok.

I fall in between
The cracks of what you
want, and what I need.
I fall
For years.

Lifetimes Ago

When you look up at Cassiopeia
The dew just forming on the grass, I hope you think of our first kiss
Mingling with the sounds of children dressed up as fairies and spider man
Trick or treating.

When you sit in the middle of your cornfield,
A king in your golden sea, I hope you think of how our hands intertwined
Tighter than the ears of silk in front of you.

When you see a young girl with silky black curls,
Framing her innocent face, I hope you think of Elizabeth,
Our daughter whose dreams will never come true.

When you hear Elton John's "Tiny Dancer,"
I hope you think of my melancholy voice
Off-tune, belting the wrong lyrics to you.

When you come across the poems I wrote you,
I hope you realize that my heartbeat forever echoes
The ghosts of who we were, lifetimes ago.

The Ocean (Pantoon)

Whispering pebbles adorn the edge
Of a calm mirror that reflects
the ubiquitous heavens standing all
Alone in the middle of nowhere

A calm mirror that reflects the
Ageless, aging sky where clouds stand still
Alone in the middle of nowhere.
The waves are left unheard, undisturbed.

Ageless, aging skies where clouds stand still,
Keep the history unknown by anyone.
The waves are left unheard, undisturbed...
Whispering pebbles adorn the edge

Keeping the history unknown by anyone.

Part of a crown of sonnets

Now stalled is winter as is season's trend
But winter held so much for us as kids
Our rosy cheeks knew what innocence meant
But that is something our lives now forbid.

We move throughout the world ignoring times
When frosted windows were soon turned into
Handprints and peeping holes which we looked through--
Our hearts always wondering, speaking rhymes.

The apple, when did we eat of it? When
Did we fall under its spell, causing life
To be cold winter days that we might
Never again see the days of Eden?

The knowledge which we are forced to acquire
Burn the innocence only childhood can fire.

The Harvest Moon (Villainelle)

The harvest moon sways dangling from the sky
The trees reflect the hasty moonbeams that
Chase silhouettes down river without reply

Blue morning glories bob in the wind, shy
The orchids watch as raindrops slide--clear black
While the harvest moon sways dangling from the sky

The winking stars look on while heaving sighs
As sounds of hooting and swift shifting cats
Chase silhouettes down river without reply

Bewitching is this time of night when lies
Are muffled and all light and sound refract
As the harvest moon sways dangling from the sky

The winking stars look on while heaving sighs
As the trees reflect the hasty moonbeams that
Chase silhouettes down river without reply
When the harvest moon sways dangling from the sky

A Letter

The words form
Twisting, embroidering
a plethora of colors
and sounds onto a page
of thin white paper
lined frail blue.

Resounding thoughts
Bounce between periods,
And hesitant question marks.
For a few minutes we are in
One series of thoughts--
Series of shared mutual feelings.

You will think you know me in those
Soft minutes. You will hear my
Distinct voice, as I reveal things
I did not intend to.
Then you will realize slowly
That I have changed,

As have you.

Midnight Rain

Water droplets sliding
Down our passionate faces.
Rain so sweet falling around us.
Midnight hair, plastered
Face framing
Stuck soaking to our skin.

Dim eyes so bright
In shawdows of the streetlight.
Water droplets sliding
Down our passionate faces.
Hands held so tight
Thoughts screaming
Wondering
Where the rain would go next.

Lips parted ready to speak
Confessing anything: too weak.
Water droplets sliding
Down our passionate faces.
Searching for something that
Can never be explained in words.
Truly believeing
The rain will never stop.

Hearts so young and old
Will never be this bold.

Sunday Morning in April

Sunday mornings are always so pregnant. Full of meaning and looming fears. An end of one week and the starting of another...Standing on a pinpoint between what is the future and what is the past. Understanding that nothing ever lasts, but we try so hard every week to make sure that we do have a place in this world, and figuring out what the meaning of life is...

Crushed

Crushed
A million sharp pieces
Lay before me
This is the tribute
To all those minutes
Weekends, kisses
Spent surmounting
To the end that
Was easily predicted
Long before
We could achieve
In anything

Vaguely I remember
The first time you
Smiled at me
Reaching deep
Into the depths
Of the past I tried
In vain to forget
But you thrusted
It in front of me
Determined to
Make me pay
Then leaving me
Crushed

I understand that pounding of
Fists upon flesh is harmful
That bruises are the results of
Veins bursting--blood leaking
To the surface where the skin
Indents and where cold
Eyes can see it and not care.

I understand that the reverberating
Echoes of hatred is not acceptable
That low self esteem is brewed
Inside the confines of the mind
Contemplating--hate manifesting
Itself from the inside, where the heart
Breaks, and where laughter
Will not let caring eyes see.

I understand that twisted truths
Dashed upon the vulnerable is unsatisfactory
That sins are formed by the
Transgressive liar--spewing out
Stories that protect her from
Telling harsh truths and where vengeful
Moralists forcefully tell her she's wrong

How can God blame the one who is too young to know
And reward the abuse because they do know...

untitled

I harbor secrets
So dank and dark
The flailing of deathly
legs cannot keep them
from speaking--so
Persistent their
Ravished corpses
Crawl legless
Toward everything
That is me--to consume me.

Sticky white your
Hands defile me
As I am molded
Into a being I
No longer recognize
As my usual parched
Yellow self
Instead I am
Left legless
Becoming you.

Unending Break Up

2 years--almost
And the memories persist
Everyday new
Chambers open
New figments
Preside over reality
I am lost
Within them all
This is my fatal fall...
My leap into
Something so unknown
To forget you.
To forget us.

The depths of our denial
Will never know truth.
Nor will the anguish
Of lost words,
Broken vows,
Unending rhythms
Created by us
We lost trust...
We lost ourselves
In this hell.
I sprawl
Across the room
In insanity.

How much I'll miss you

So it's one o'clock in the morning or so, and I'm about a mile away from you at the university using the internet since we don't have any yet at the house, as you lie in bed, sleeping. I am too hyped up on spicy salsa to even think about sleeping, but my eyelids are feeling quite heavy right now...probably because my brain knows I should be writing my paper on Wuthering Heights. But I digress.

You are my world. And when you leave for Iraq in less than two weeks I shall be crushed, broken, devastated. I know this now, and I know that you will find it too hard to bear my tears, so I must be strong, even though ever ounce of me wants to beg you to stay here, in Morris, where we met over a year ago and in less than seven months fell in love. It is true that I am clingy, annoying, absolutely dependent on you for almost everything, and that there is no possible way for me to change, but I think you like that about me. No matter how unhealthy and intricately wrong it may be. But the point still remains, you're leaving me. FOR. A. YEAR. and I am sad, and nothing but your return will make me happy again. In some ways I wish you would just leave already so you can be back faster, and in some ways I just wish Obama would just tell the nation that we say "fuck you" to the middle east, and let Bin Laden die in some catacomb in the desert where oil will sprout unexpectedly out of the ground and he will choke on it. But I know that you want this, you've always wanted this chance, to prove your patriotism and your honor. I just wish that you could have gotten this done with before me...

Mostly I have been running away from the idea of you leaving. I cannot and will not let my mind think about you not being here to pick me up from school, or buying me food because I always forget to pack any for myself, or you agreeing with me on everything I say because you think that it makes me happy. I will miss having someone to yell at when I'm pmsing even though I know you are not to blame at all. I will miss being able to hold your hand or kiss your face whenever I want, and mostly I will miss being able to feel your warm body pressed against mine when we sleep at night. The bed will be so cold and I will be so lonely. These thoughts could, if I'd let them, consume me. They could cause me to become a zombie and forget the fact that I had a life outside of you once. But I feel guilty wanting to have some sort of distraction so I will not think of you when you are gone, yet I am not sure I can bear you absence. I am not sure if I am as strong as I promise to you that I am, and I can go to as many FRG meetings as possible and that will never help. I'm so fucked up that I'll never know what is real and what is paranoia until I will be able to touch you again. So you'll have that to look forward to. I have been told that there will be times when I will question if you are even real, and that scares me since you are the only thing in my life that I live for, and if you're not even real, then what the hell will I do?

Then again it might be good for me to find myself again. To remind myself that I am a person too, and that we are not the same person. But I have always thought of the best relationships are made up when two people become one and that means one in every aspect of life. Of course this might be bullshit, but it's what I believe, and maybe then it might be a good thing for us to never fall apart. I'm not sure. I'm just so lost. I don't know what I should be feeling or thinking or doing. I feel like this is a monumental thing and all I'm doing is ignoring it because I can't handle what it does to me emotionally even when I think I'm fine. I feel like we should be spending these next two weeks making tons of memories before you leave because you could die. And I know that seems like a super lame reason to make memories with someone, but what happens if you do die? I mean even if it's just because of something that had nothing to do with the army? I just feel like I should be doing more relationship'y' things. Like we should be doing so many other things but all we really do is sit together and watch television...I like tv, but there are pictures to be taken, snowmen to be made, places to see, people to talk to, goals to fulfill...etc.

I love you and you're right. A part of me blames you for something you have no control over, but my brain will not be logical or rational. I understand that this is also a hard time for you, but as I mentioned before my brain is incapable of rationality at this moment, and all I can do is believe what I want. I am a selfish, selfish being and nothing in the world could change that right now. I am very egotistical and I try not to be but I have this viewpoint and I cannot get out of it. I want to, but I think I need to mature up more or something. Anyway, I understand that this is probably harder for you because you feel the need to take care of me while attempting to realign yourself to what you are told to do from what you want to do. But forget about me. I am a silly little school girl who has dreams that will be squashed because all dreams of mine seem to be. You are going to be a part of something big, and I am happy for you.

And I just want you to know, that you are amazing. I am the luckiest person in the world. I know that I have psychological problems I need to deal with, and I have numerous other types of problems, but I'm going to be ok. I always am. I'm not going to ever leave you because I cannot even imagine my life without you, and I plan on being your wife and lover for the rest of my life. You are my only one, and I will work hard to make this relationship successful. I cannot change my past and neither can you, but when you come back I'll be waiting for you.

Everday Nature, my picture collection

Momentum, taken while riding on a bike in Park Rapids...

The Gooseberry Falls

Before Twilight at Gooseberry Falls. This picture was taken right next to Lake Superior.

On the way up to the Fire Tower...so HIGH

A plant in Gooseberry Falls, which is up by Duluth Minnesota. This was the only purple plant that I saw at the entire State Park. It was so beautiful.

This is the starting of the Mississippi River Itasca lake. Schoolcraft was the person who realized that the river goes north first before eventually heading south. At this point of this Mississippi one can actually step over the stream. It's pretty incredible.

this is the view from the fire tower in Itasca State Park. We're about 80 some feet above the ground.

how intricate of a liar you are...

His eyes are so telling...revealing the truth in his lies that present themselves so wonderfully phrased. Little cotton candy clouds dancing on the page that is assumed to be your life in all its shimmering ugliness...it's the one thing you can't take your eyes off of--you want to believe him, to pretend that yes it is all ok, but there is that whispering voice that slowly gets louder with every breath. He embraces your small vulnerable body and you swear once again you've never felt this before, you swear to yourself that you will never feel this again, so this must be it. This must be the very thing that holds the foundation of the social world together. The very reason that people procreate and keep the species alive...You forget the lies that pierced through your heart with a mindblowing thrust that made you cry for hours on end, that made you mistrust everyone in the entire universe. You forget how much your friends stood by you and promised to you that you could and deserved better. For the moment disbelief is so much more comforting than the truth, so you take a page out of his book and lie to yourself. This betrayal is paramount because you are not only believing a liar, you are becoming one also.

Every step is a journey into the path that you might believe is really there, if only you knew why you kept walking...so dreary and unhappy it seems, but for the moment you are loved, are something more than yourself, so you give in. Hoping with every ounce of thought that this just might work out, even though your head, your heart, your mind, your soul knows that this is wrong you keep walking, believing the lies. Following him wherever he will take you because he would never hurt you. How could he? He loves you and wants to be there for you, for the rest of your life. He is the one...the only one who could make your heart flutter and head spin with the craziness that we call love. You just keep walking sometimes running, flinging yourself to him because what else can you do? What more could there be for you, than the love you have always looked for? What else...nothing.

So you step away from your morals, your beliefs, your reasons for living, to accommodate those of his. You look away from your future and move into the mindset of our future which inherently means his future, and you paste on that everything is OK smile and present yourself as Mrs. such and such and how happy you are to be the wife of such a great man, who makes you feel like...shit. Like you are not even worthy of the truth because you are too much of an idiot to know the difference, and you know what...you are. You allow this man to say whatever he wants, and he will because he knows he can. You allow him to be the master over what your feelings are because he knows that you will never leave him, and how can you? You're in love...so in love you cannot believe that lies exist in very much the same way as your heartbeat does.

My life

He stands there. So lost in the only place he knows. Staring so deeply into the air that he's never even thought about before. Breaths so effortless are filling the space that hangs so silently between his mind and my body. I stand in the doorway. 3 breadths away. Arms too short to reach, pride to large to move any closer. Heart too full to speak. Minutes pass. The dust starts to settle back where it came from.

We have so much in common. It's hard to pinpoint why we have so many disagreements. Maybe it's because we're scared. We fight because we want to feel something more, something that assures that it's all the same as before. I back away, leaving you to your own contemplations. Attempting to retract everything that I have ever said, but they have been spewed and I'll never be ok.

Soon we'll say goodbye. Say we'll be fine with tears in our eyes. Our hands will be intertwined, and you'll act like nothing even happened and I'll feel hollow inside. Disbelief will overcome me, and I'll keep thinking you'll be home soon. Even though I know you'll be 3000+ miles away blowing shit up. Blowing your sanity to pieces because you have to, and I'll forever, never forget.

Losing is the shittiest part of living...

It's hard to see him like this. All unhappy smiley emoticons that portray to me a sense of "surrealness" about the situation that seems far more real than anything has before. Yet this is his way of coping, of believing that as a man he has to be strong and believe that everything will be ok because he CAN and WILL make it. I suppose that it is less bad than it seems but I wish he'd realize that it is ok. That he can cry and scream and threaten the very foundations of his beliefs because it isn't fair. This should not happen but it is happening and fuck anything that even insinuates that this is just life and it's all part of a bigger more meaningful plan.

Ruth, Robby's mother was a wonderful being. It is true that she carried a stick that even Roosevelt would have admired but she still had a huge heart. I remember being yelled at for talking during choir, and remember some of the less respectful students in class getting their fair share of scoldings for being the most immature and disgusting people I have ever met, but that is another topic. She was a gentle kindred spirit and I think everyone loved her for that. It'll be hard to let her go, and to remember that she is no longer here anymore. It'll be even harder to look him in the eye and pretend that everything is just fine, when we both know that it isn't.

Losing is so tough, but there really isn't anything we can do about it. It's that monotonous cycle that pisses the shit out of you because it's inevitable but so undesirable: life, yet living wouldn't not be so wonderful if it wasn't topped off with dying.

Where you will go

It's been almost a decade since I first met him. He and I were almost an entire year apart but still in the same fifth grade class, and I would have sworn that I was beating him at maturity by at least five years, then again they say girls mature faster than boys... At first we did not like each other. In fact our relationship consisted purely in hating each other and trying our best to humiliate the other as much as possible...this could have been attributed to the fact that we both liked the others best friend: Alicia and Tom. Obviously things changed.

In high school we took turns crushing on each other, and eventually ended up going to two dances together and sharing a kiss...but that is where it stayed, even though both of us, I think thought we'd be together someday. But as life would have it, we moved on. We went to schools some hundred miles apart, talked to each other yearly, and drifted apart until some would consider us strangers.

His mother is dying. His mother who taught us choir, taught my brother piano, is fading into something unrecognizable. She is becoming something far too great for me to reconcile with my atheism. When she's gone, she's gone. There is no more of her, and sadly generations from now will maybe know who she was, but they won't ever know what she did. How she cared and loved and taught. How much she meant to Robby, and how much that means to me.