Matter Cannot Be Created Or Destroyed.

When you grow up a certain way, you may know what the cat feels when it shies from your hand

I am not a beggar

I do not cry from my hunger

I bare down on an empty mouth with gritted teeth

I let holes burn in my stomach before I allow myself to eat

Consumption is a sin

To want is to waste

Like the monks before me, I know I can wait

I eat my sins

I gag from the taste

The more there is

The less I take

Because I know how much it costs

And I cannot pay

I was wrong. The clouds are moving. Only slower than me.

They've cleared the other side of the trees now.

And when I can breathe again, so will I.

It's sun down now. The early stages of it, where the sky is still full of light and color. The clouds are thick an mountinous. And completely still in the sky.

The big lumbering breaths are blushed pink around the edges. Deep scores of grey over every curve and crevice. Dense and almost palpable.

It looks like a painted back drop.

And I have no where else to look.

If you hurt over every little thing, all you'll ever do is hurt

I'm good for love

A fertile plot for it to claim. It springs to life under my feet. It drips and curls down from my fingertips. Its roots in my every thought.

I love colors and sunsets. White fluffy clouds. Boys and girls. Friends and strangers. The texture of cotton. Hot steam and cool stream water. Eyes and arms and noses. Hands and hearts and shoulders. Fresh baby kittens and sun-soaked kitchens. Me and you and them.

Love grows up my arms like new grass sprouts. Tangles around my ankles like thorny vines. Grows thick in my chest like moss. It's suffacating

I'm good for love but love isn't good for me.

Sometimes I catch myself not breathing.

No air filtering in through my lungs.

My brain fuzzy and slow without it.

My chest still and my shoulders hunched.

Like some subtle subconscious part of me just decided this was it.

Time to give up.

She tastes like the metallic burn of blood.

She smells like the pop of wood as the fire consumes it.

She feels like the static that clings to your clothes.

She looks like lightning as it cracks the sky.

And he fancies himself Zeus.

She cries tears of stars and seas,

desperate to fill infinity.

Greedy are the trees

"Haven't you ever seen it?" She asked me.

"Gnarled roots pale as bone crawling their way through the underbrush. Pushing aside new green ferns and beds of decaying leaves. Each root peaking for long lengths from the damp dirt. Anchored maybe by the earth or maybe by thorny vines, sharp and thick with red-tipped spines. This is the work of the trees." She whispers this all to me in a conspiring way.

"You'll see them reaching with knothole fists towards the waters edge. Thirsty for what the spring has to offer; as if the ground isn't soft with it already." She pauses smile turned sharp and condescending in the way a mother's does when sharing stories of her child's mischief.

"Greedy things"

Coming down

funny how distance looks different sometimes. When I'm sitting back to the dresser, watching my desk come into focus, much closer than anything's been in weeks.

There's carpet under my feet and the hum of a box fan off to the side. Light looks different, brighter where it plays on the reflective surfaces. Throwing overlapping shadows across the room.

And I'm suddenly aware of my own skin where it stretches over my knuckles. Tingly and colder than the night air.

Someones shifted the focus, dialed it up a little. And suddenly I'm here again.