rhetoricrae

pick up a book or maybe a pen writing a story just to read it again every chapter leaves you in suspense whether waiting for the wind or lost in present tense and you thought you knew the characters and you thought you knew the twists but the plot just keeps on turning the book heavy to your wrists as you hold it up above you reading deep into the night hoping if you just write long enough the end will turn out right And in the beginning it was you You were the hero This was your story But the further you get the further down you're let You start to wonder if you're wrong and this was someone else's story all along Family and friends broth

Sometimes we don't realize we feel better so gradually it comes on until finally, blinking around oh, I can breathe, sleep, laugh, smile and sometimes it takes longer and only when the shade moves do we remember how we withered before slipping into that cool companionship only when the voice ends do we realize we'd completely stopped hurting at the silence

one day a black hole opened in my chest and every morning now i feel it pulling it sucks in fragments of who i once was it sucks the air from my lungs and makes it hard to keep food down and i wonder how long until it fills, goes away or have i already been pulled through piece by piece into an alternate universe one i never was meant to live

i take a bus to work one of many people doomed to be forgotten inconsequential except in the tiniest of moments i walk through the doors of my workplace and input my initials and a 3-digit password so that i can record my time spent here yes, i existed, i worked, i earned meaningless numbers used to buy meaningless things in a meaningless life i am surrounded by boxes of things waiting to be sold most of them not even necessary. who put so much effort who built a life, an empire around plastic mustaches and bacon flavored toothpicks and rubber finger puppets shaped like pickles and metal flamingos? i log in to begin recording the existence

Is it like nuclear reactors generating so much wonderful useful energy but in the end, one slip one mistake and suddenly nothing can ever be the same decades, centuries, maybe more until the deep stops dying on the shore until the depths stop dredging up the waste until the ocean air's no longer dangerous to taste We are recklessly optimistic with no point to our existence so we fashion one and throw this spear at others to drive it home "this is my purpose!" we shout at our fears then fall down scrabbling desperately at distractions waiting for everything to stop but tirelessly life goes on long beyond the realization of futility Oh God b

wake up empty again too many half-laid plans God rattles softly in my soul like nail clippings on a page of my journal the plants are thirsty but they might be uprooted soon so it's alright this is the scent of a life that grew gull cries for rain in the afternoon and in the mist the shooting stars were gentle, half-imagined streaks as we stood in the clear spot between the grasses and the beach woke me up so you could have someone to share a moment with and we didn't see that many but still enough to make a wish every morning lying there i feel the tide rush out in that clear spot between my dreams of how it used to be and now i know th

adrift we are a clear pool i can see to the bottom but the backlight washes out my face fall and winter were supposed to be the time of ending and the spring and summer a new beginning the sun heats the water and the molecules sing vibrating and breaking apart someone lit a fire under us and now like sparks we fly through the dark no longer bound to a single thing let freedom ring are we all like fireworks explosives packed tight into a tiny can our purpose being to separate exploding into individual lights is it silly to wish that fire would never light and we can all remain quiet and tight

How fragile is the human heart? Incredibly so, I'd say judging by how a single image nearly brought me to tears today I work in a place where sentiment shouts out from every shelf And I'm so waterlogged by that sentiment I can't swallow a drop myself But there was a card in a pile of cards and the artwork, it caught my eye Two people dancing under lantern light: one in a dress and one in a tie But my first thought wasn't woman and man but a certain friend and I for the way their willowy arms wrapped round and their foreheads touched over closed eyes Is it anyone living I'm thinking of or a longing for something unknown? That atmosphere of

There is a door in my head to plain grass meadows with a windmill and the smell of fall and summer nights with sand and March grasses under almond blossoms while a meadowlark sings to my cold bare feet in the dew That door shuts There is a door in my head to a warm spiderweb of light to a temple glowing at night with prayer like a fire's coals softly crackling from humble lips and being passed with embraces and by the smiles in children's faces That door shuts There is a door in my head to letters free-wheeling through the sky to airplanes and empty goodbyes with thrills tempered by the promise of home there is a door to many doors but