Rivers And Streams

And just like that —

Thoughts of you run through me

Like a river —

So much so,

That my imagination fails me.

Near, but not quite.

Floating, in essence, but not quite flying.

Spinning grey clouds over a sky blue loom,

With ashes burning from fingertips

To lips — exchanged

With every thought of you.

A stray bullet, arriving from the sun

And puncturing my wings —

With half-forced semicolons,

And half-read palms.

But you forgot to tell my future,

You who can see through me —

Through the perforated little holes

On my paper skin.

Punched out and let down

On gilded streets of crushed glass,

As bits of my mylar surface

Glide down and gather around my feet.

Incomplete and indifferent,

I forget where the white deers lay

And graze in your forest,

Waiting for me to come back

And play that little game of hide and seek —

Before I lose myself, like you once did.

But these platitudes don’t comfort me anymore,

They never really did —

They just dig in a little deeper,

And get harder to pull out.

And as I wade through the same stream

That you walked on, it gets harder to tell.

Because your footprints have gone

And been washed away by the tides 

That now want to take me,

But I resist.

Now and tomorrow, until forever —

I'll swim the other way.