the statue was dressed up though it never came to life prepared for sporting events waiting for a moment which could never come to pass

warm days trickle melting ice in waning march my words hide under dingy snow waiting for gentle whispers of a south wind, a sonata

releasing sunbeams of energy feeling daffodils opening cups of gold spilling over the wealth of spring a desire

a metamorphosis with a kiss that awakens petals a sky of sapphire blue

the treasure chest unlocks wafting the essence of you butterfly memories tremble as words flit freely unforgotten

©️-Aubrie-2024

You were made of light, so brilliantly bright that I couldn't help myself. I collected your lumens, the very essence of you, greedy to make it mine. Insatiable - I consumed you through and through. Believing that if I engulfed you whole, you'd live inside of me forever; that we would be one.

I took everything. Selfish in my desire, I screamed from the top of my lungs and you stood before me, bewildered and in disbelief. To absorb you was to consume you. To consume you, was to extinguish you.

Dim | nb

I think my biggest regret

Is this ever aching need

To chase after each step

I lose every moment

Reaching for the next

a new spring flesh flat white morning voice dalliance to be deciphered

decided sunflower squirrel in love 

with charitable bright blue latex glove used faith twice

use faith as social dementia

in the crowd where are we attrition 

leave neptune if you leave singalongs your lorgnette

apoetic if i bring up a need

impersonal night touch me like your obscure page stroke

like your life smoke and mirror mildew

slow sun no one wants want night eyelashes you won't share

anything with my git sleep rouse

clock we gasp in too-muchness

truly who peeps at intestines of your clarinet apostate artform

daylight infernal saving i infer

or human heads pinned in tender sepia

ache to uncloak other navajo 

moving divine dark around garden fantasies at misconstrued silence

bolstering a dream choosing a pop of color underneath Monday desperate leaps through fog hoping to the banish blues we just make purple a far reach across winter into spring’s delight falling into place

you loved me like breathing so I strangled your throat unripe for consuming unworthy of air

Alone for so long, You become nose blind to your own scent, Merging with the silence of solitude. It becomes bland; neutral, Until someone enters your world.

Their scent clings to you for days, and yours, to them. It lingers on the couch, On walls, on the shirt left behind.

But when you dare To touch and be touched again, Pungent is the smell of memories You can't seem to forget.

But at some point, the air will clear long enough to Cleanse your palate So you can breathe again.

nb | phantosmia

All is well Sacrifice the day Let tomorrow's claws Sculpt its fantasy

Where do flowers go When they are still lovely But forgotten? To the heavens inside Where the past and the future Crave each other

I am and I am not You well-meaning evil You are free to go I am free to be

When I Am Among the Trees

by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself, in which I have goodness, and discernment, and never hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, “Stay awhile.” The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say, “and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.”

A Shoe-In

A shoe-in for a ghoul once all the normal mechanisms give and you've gotta find a second being to be. A ghost just can't keep it together, a vampire spends too much on clothes. We could go through the list, but suffice it to say, you'll do well here, sign off and we'll start the preparations.

Margaret Atwood, from The Blind Assassin  

— Schuyler Peck, Worth the Wait

I can only hope that every time the sky is ablaze,

you’ll think of me

And I’ll think of your gaze.

I blast your anthems in both of my ears,

in fact, I’ve never felt closer to you, but

I’m starting to realize that we will never be

Because it turns out,

Despite convincingly innocuous exchanges,

you just loved dancing

not dancing with me.

It was never my hand that turned the pages and so deciphering another's intent would grow tiresome.

All at once, I put it all down and forbade my soul to play soothsayer.

Eventually though, a retort in form of a revelation swooped in like a comet. Its

debris bearing fire is a spinning ring–I am its designated planet trying not to choke on noxious fumes.

I had been preordained, groomed really, to collect and carry the great wooden resentments and shattering iron ore turmoil of countless.

I don’t even know their names. I don’t think I even care.

I accept, I am resentful about all of it—and it is such an ugly thing to be this human.

This all feels like a dirty porcelain cup left out of place–left by all means, on purpose

to accumulate dust bunnies and fallen hair.

I was urged earlier in the week to leave this cup alone. Your house won’t care, I was told,

but my house is my body that hoards sensorial memories

and as the advice hung between the ears, my mind’s eye played Scorsese.

In time lapse, the filthy porcelain cup rotted and I forgot that it had even existed.

In layman terms, this was an afterword to a death that does not ever take your life. It is a death though that relishes in your fearing it, as if it could.

It was foretold to me, long ago that my mind would become slower than time

and that the grimey quicksand that I used to conceal my giving reason to where none exists, would one day,

be all gone.

I cannot pretend that I don’t see all the shipwrecks and carcasses. There are too many.

It is not yet February, but this morning I began a hunt while in the wilderness. All odds are against me, but I have urgency.