Kind words, patient pauses,
encouragement to shine
Handmade cards, cats on T-shirts,
specially chosen stones
Notes inked on pages in books of wisdom,
celebrating decades lived
Soft roomy sleepwear, fruit in baskets,
flowers to communicate care
Mirrors sharp yet somehow gentle,
encouragement to live
Immense communication wordless and not
echoes through the chambers of my heart,
reminding me what I am to others
.
June 26, 2025
I’m searching for your innermost colours.
With each one found, I want to splash and lather them all like watercolour onto coarse, textured paper.
The day is almost over. The moon is almost full. My mind is getting closer to quiet, and brings me no poems.
Everyone breathing along with me are one day closer to the end today.
As I close my eyes, all I can think about is how much I love them.
11:30 p.m. thoughts as I begin to drift off to sleep.
Sometimes I find some hope for myself to become deserving of my life when I find myself changing auto-correct’s assumed “love” back into “live” for what feels like the hundredth time in recent months, and I realize that I communicate far more about loving than I do about living.
There’s a kind of love for our first kin
Universally defensible, globally understood
Truly unconditional
There’s another for those we find briefly
For months or years
Sharing our space and time
Where captivations intersect
Yet another is reserved for so few
Bearing rings and keys
Sharing bathrooms and kitchens and beds
…
For you who holds my hands in one of your own
While holding a gentle mirror before me with the other
…
I’ve been curling slowly into withdrawal of late
Slowly, discreetly; time marching on
With no complaints, with no fanfare
Just reduction
…
There’s rarely fights
(We’re too solid for that, after all)
There’s just insidious malcontent
Morphing into anger first
And then, sometimes, madness
Turned inwards, burning from the inside out
…
How sad is it, that
love can grow without limits
while time only shrinks
How your voice somehow seems richer to me when you say their name
How your eyes look different in ways my mind cannot quite fully grasp
When you speak of them
When you share with me the plans your heart carries
Of your greatest possible future
…