my life needs editing

talk less, say more

[cherokeeghostwriter]

i miss you most on mornings- a random thought straying some familiar, something recalls you from a place that no longer exists i blunder through memory some days- some mornings  before the blurring day begins i sit here, alone with you

[cherokeeghostwriter]

waiting in line

this is where a poem would be. if I had one.

this empty space looks back at me- an eternity observing at a distance, waiting.

i've settled into this three-dimensional space, living out my linear existence- my sentience cast as sculpture, waiting in line.

the silence has acquired a shape. dust rehearses the outline of things i almost meant.

somewhere, language is still becoming itself. birdsong discovers the morning without first consulting a dictionary. the tide arrives having forgotten every name ever given it.

perhaps poems are not written.

perhaps they are excavated- a careful brushing-away of everything that believed it was stone.

if so, i've mistaken the waiting for the work.

i've been polishing the pedestal instead of listening for the first fracture.

this is where a poem would be.

hidden beneath the outline of a man still standing aside, making room for its arrival.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

Elizabeth Jackson Howe, my 8th great grandmother, was hung during the Salem witch trials. After her execution she was discarded into a rocky crevice; exactly where is unknown. -This is her remembrance stone.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

Has anyone heard from @quaintobsessions? Haven't been able to contact in well over a month.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

love is a window in time- the briefest of forevers

like the kitchen window of my childhood home, when the evening sun fell sideways landing through the glass turning dust to fire.

i remember standing there- barefoot on cool linoleum, the backyard stretching out past the fig trees, and the cinder-block fence that held in nothing but our small idea of the world.

we were laughing at something- i don’t remember what -and that’s how it is. the words go first -while the light stays.

for a moment everything was suspended- the hum of cicadas, the slow drift of smoke from a neighbor’s burn pile, my father’s voice somewhere behind me singing to no one in particular.

and within that square of gold i believed- without effort, without question that this was it. this warmth that could not possibly end. this sky beyond the fence had chosen us for its forever.

but the light shifted, as it always does. the sun slipped lower. the room cooled- and the laughter quietly moved into memory.

love is not the years that follow. It is the way the air felt in that narrow band of evening- how your face held the sun, how my chest ached with something too large to name.

love is a window in time. -we do not live there.

we pass it, touch the glass, and carry the warmth long after the light has gone.

[purplemonkeysexgod69]

[cherokeeghostwriter]

each sunrise a prize I put in my pocket- too soon it's noon gently pressed against my back urging me along- dusk comes at last -in shadows cast a song to call the night that settles in the soul-

[cherokeeghostwriter]

backlit

there is a strange backlit quality to the world outside- like a vintage postcard left too long in a drawer, its winter scene -softened in time.

evening light clings to the edge of things. this old house waits, windows glowing amber, holding out the promise that warmth still exists somewhere.

_

i overdescribe what i see, as if detail were devotion, as if naming each shadow might bridge the distance between us-

whoever you are.

i keep adding words, hoping one will lean far enough to touch.

but language falters.

there are no names left for what moves me. no metaphor wide enough to carry me out.

only supplication- quiet, unbeautiful, kneeling in the margins- and the unintended aftermath of wanting too much to be understood.

[purplemonkeysexgod69]

[cherokeeghostwriter]

it's only January

time flickers past, half-dream outlines -measured in glimpses. observations of light, as it gathers a pale hour upon the wall, faintly radiant -warmly casting its last.

winter seems a long time going, even though it's only January- it creeps in each night -like a tide softly slipping beneath my dwindling attention.

time has left me in this town nestled into the black and white backdrop of some -obsolete aspiration, and the improbable notion of spring -fluttering in my chest.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

yesterday

I walked the woods out back gathering fallen limbs- windfall remains, scattered beneath the trees, as if something had died and left its bones behind.

I stacked them into order, a quiet penance, wood laid like confession, waiting for flame -an offer of absolution.

by nightfall, the pyre had become its own cathedral- fire rising, sparks threading upward through surrendering smoke, winking out between the stars.

I sat awhile, watching as if learning some forgotten language- the crackle, the hush, the dance of light devouring its own creation.

why is flame so captivating? its beauty is peril dressed in golden expiration, fragile, flickering, yet able to undo a world without hesitation

a fire asks for nothing but all of itself.

I see it in me sometimes- unresolved embers consuming my days, old griefs that flare again when the wind shifts.

still, I watch the burn. because something in the ash reminds me that all endings glow, at least once, before they darken- and maybe the warmth was worth it.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

november

my heart races at the thought of it.

i can’t see my own face without a mirror- why should a poem of mine look back at me with any hint of grace?

the words once came like whispers- a ghost leaning close as i walked through my day. now the voice is faint, an echo from a hallway i can no longer quite discern.

age has thinned the distance between silence and despair. i fumble for meaning, for the leap my younger self once made without thinking.

now i write to make space- to push these borrowed thoughts an arm’s length away, watching them settle into shapes i might recognize, even if only in this muted light- hoping some part of me still remembers how to speak.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

where the days have gone

I’m not sure where my days have gone, they casually slip past unnoticed. I feel them tugging at me, as they vanish in the distance -an afterthought.

so I do -what I always do, I drift back to my childhood. the slow unwavering hum of summer afternoons, where all time stood still, and every day was undiscovered.

now, it’s all rush and blur. these days move past me like strangers. I can't help myself from searching their faces, hoping one of them might bring me something I've not seen before.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

Good Morning.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

yearning for sunlight

it’s that time again. each year you arrive with the seasons turning, history clinging to a specific set of days, prompting me to face -thoughts of you, -painful, and uninvited.

your memory comes like a traveler seeking mercy, pockets weighted down, earnest -and late. these Septembers peel themselves away, layer by layer, each, an unacknowledged bruise, -yearning for sunlight.

remembrance -lies folded in the gutters of October, slipped beneath piles of amber and bone- Autumn leaves, keeping secrets from the cold. i rake them into small cairns, to mark each passing.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

RIP Brother.

[purplemonkeysexgod69]