The cup sat empty

and beautiful

on the counter,

bits of steam

rising nearby.

A persistent light

snuck through

the curtains.

Another morning,

another chance

for something sweet

or glorious or painful.

What he saw was a weathered ruin,

-and he saw beauty. The lines, the stories,

the cracks letting in light.

She was well-worn, had been used

and was tired of thinking

about which foot to put forward,

sort of missing the point (if there is one).

She felt like a whale gliding through

a thick fog over a fallow field, mixing

metaphors like nobody’s business,

just to remind herself she was alive.

He saw and dismissed her fears

as inconsequential as rain,

knowing rain in torrents can bring

ruin but also life to a desert.

The article I bookmarked

about pressure points

seems a little silly now

since I don’t feel I’m dying

as swiftly as I was before.

Something about the way

I’ve been stripped down

to a place of no judgement

and no real time, just an

extended living daydream.

There’s freedom anywhere

if you realize chains

can only hold what is

here and now as long as

you let go where it counts.

I’ve become a leaf poet,
reading the veins
like a story out of order,
knowing substance
is often found
in the margins.

He sat and watched the storm

across the water,

not detached exactly

but distracted by the thought

of how she looked like the wind felt

as it gathered pieces of nests and paper

pressing them into obscene shapes

and tossing them back to the world

like a cosmic inside joke.

He saw a bird trying to fly

in the face of the turbulent wind

and his heart sped up slightly,

reliving the moments when they had been

one in the quiet calm amid the storm.