Haven.

Come and join me on the balcony

The wood is soft from evening rain

A back door clicks shut in place of the crippled clock

And a fire kindles before us

Oh two-step, take us

To our haven beyond the horizon of time

Headlines.

Hello again, headlines
How goes the world?

"The Sun Has Made an Attempt to Set" -
We laugh and flip the page.

Our secret is a stretch of the neck
And always, always it shines.

I'm carving a map to the future
On days like these

The voice comes from my palm
There's only one I want to hear

Tonight I'm swimming through tides of time.

Soundwaves.

They've been so beautiful these past few nights
She pulls a stool up to the perfect window to watch from
It takes a few moments for her eyes

A cold front's coming in tomorrow
She shuts her eyes wide
For with the cold comes the clouds

Flashings on the glass
A fragmented face and a strung-out voice
I wish I could understand you.

Far.

Elastic tendons of my heart
Stretching to pull away
Fire lines the border of brokenness
And I tremble on weak knees

Victory is a white rose
The color of the fiercest flame
But my blood is red
Deafening the horizon

The stars are over me as I fall asleep
Wrestling and reaching
Even just to turn away still burns
And this healing rain leaves scars

Time separates limb from limb
I am faltering
Our tangled souls groan
Please breathe your hope into my lungs.

Fused.

You could call it a daydream

For the sake of a word

Maybe I never woke up this morning

Maybe it's for the best

Shifting between nightmare and utopia

Headlights trailing ahead through the fog

Well, in my daydream it was you

But I smiled and looked away

Tell me the story

Of the kids who ran away

We could pack up and sneak out

As we fall awake tonight

False sun, why the rush?

If you slow down, I can tell you a secret

It's the one I whisper to him from morning til night

The one he never gets to hear

In my daydream, we left it behind

But maybe I'm just a dreamer.

Finally Begin.

I get claustrophobic, all these open doors around.

Drown.

I try to speak

And the words drift out

They freeze in space before my cold lips

Empty air

I am staring into an interstellar expanse

This ice is thin

My white figure holds the thoughts in

This journey is beautiful

Only I forgot the map

Returning to this familiar place

Simply again?

Or nevermore?

Take my hand

Because together

We can hold onto

So much more -

We can shatter glass instead of ice.

Transmission.

Send my soul up to the northern lights

They'll carry it across the atmosphere to you

We lie silently awake as the world sleeps

And this transmission seeps into your very bones

My arms aren't strong enough to reach so far

One day weakness will disintegrate in a white blaze

Until then, half my heart will learn to pulse

Please run through my veins tonight.

MSK.

Coming to grips

On a cold cavern floor

The song becomes a cry

I need you

Outside it's beautiful

But inside it's safe

Streaming, splintering

I need you

Up.

She looks into the mirror and tells me,

"When I bought this shirt,
"It was two sizes too small,
"It was from the boys' section,
"And it was seven dollars."

She smiles at her bare wrists, which poke out from beneath the shrunken sleeves.

Some things never change.

And they never should.

Chasing.

No time, no time to be a hypocrite now
Don't tell me you're about to back down
Even if the songs mean more than your own
Does it mean you're too far grown?

Answers, answers, such is not life.
You've already heard it from the edge of the sky.
The clouds touched down on your front porch
And now you're chasing whispers of more.

Climb, climb to the highest mountaintop
Transpose into a lightning rod
"Do not go gentle into that good night;
"Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Ignite.

I know your dreams scare you.

Hold on.

Swallow the fire.

Spread your wings

And ignite.

Spinning.

The thing about that room is
You can't see the walls
It's really more like spinning
Into a meteor shower
Only you can hear the sound of love
And feel the tides of collapsing stars

We can cut up our calendars
And bring the pieces
We can reach out
And finger the horizon
There's a supernova in my heart
May I have this dance?

Grasp.

Don't speak
Let's just listen
To the music of us
Swimming through stars
It'll bend time
And stretch space
Must be why
It hurts so much

Drifter.

She is a flame. A beacon. Her blazing light draws everyone in, but her heat never lets them get too close.

Most people spend all their time trying to figure her out. Who is this girl with the many masks? She stands like a flag flickering in the wind; you can't miss her, if only for that bright orange hair of hers. Yet at the same time she's hidden, and no one can seem to find her.

Around people, she walks like a one-man army.  Head up, shoulders set.  She doesn't realize she's doing it, because the instant a friend comes into view, she relaxes and a smile bursts onto her face. A smile that will light up the room.

Strike up a conversation with her, and you'll find that she has a vast store of knowledge.  It spreads over nearly every topic, and dives even deeper into some.  She can speak of the newest video games or the state of politics in Serbia; she knows the ins and outs of verve jazz and can recite Shakespeare.

She always carries around a ukulele, a guitar, or a skateboard.  The instruments are both carved up with constellations and lyrics, and there's an airbrushed arrow on the board.

She learned to skate in a day. You'll often find her with a group of punks, laughing and showing off like the rest of them. But every now and then, if you're looking for it, you'll catch a glimpse of her riding alone in the distance. 

Her jeans are always tattered. A lot of her is, really.

You'll rarely catch her alone, but when you do, you can tell what song is in her head by the way she walks.  No more marching.  Sometimes she traces things on the pavement with her toe.  Sometimes her hands float up and drift in the air.  Other times she walks really, really slowly, and it's those times that her eyes are closed.

And she can play.  Heavens, she can play.  Her taste in music is an ocean, but she has a few albums that she listens to over and over again.  It's these songs which are burned onto her heart, and she'll sit on the sidewalk with her guitar and let the music soar.  A small crowd will gather to watch those fingers fly up and down the strings.  She sings of dreams and religion, and the people listen.

I don't know how she does it, but she drinks her coffee black as night.  Iced in the summer, steamy in the winter.

Of course, the boys are all over her.  It's almost a competition with them, and all the while they know that no one will win her.  For she guards her heart with that fierce fire.  They can try, but she has a witty retort to every pickup line.  It's like she can snap her fingers and make you look stupid.

She used to believe in love, she says.  Now she just believes in God.

I've never seen someone so cynical and compassionate at the same time.  She welcomes all, but trusts none.  It's why she streaks her eyes black, but still lets people see her smile.  It's why she holds her head high, but still greets everyone with a hug.  She'll walk away from a crowded table to join the person sitting alone.

Maybe this is why people come to her to talk about life.  I mean, the deep stuff.  She mostly listens, but you can see her mind unfolding what she hears.  Sometimes she'll pull out the small, leather-bound book she always keeps in her backpack, and she'll start flipping the pages.

There are so many details.  The list is just too long.  There's the way her eyes spark when she's excited, or the small tattoo of the moon on her wrist.  There's the way she can tell the day's weather with a glance at the morning sky.  She looks at the stars the way one looks at a lover.  She picks up lucky dimes instead of lucky pennies.  Thai food is her favorite, and she can eat with chopsticks. When it rains, she'll walk straight outside without an umbrella.  She always smells like summer.

But it all comes back to that arrow on her skateboard.  I think she knows which direction she's going. She just doesn't know where the path will take her.

To me, she's existed for a very long time.  But she's never told me her name.

Because to her, I am invisible.

Paralyzed.

Trying to keep this glass from spilling

It doesn't fill the slate