Skin

I eat the fruit of my father's tree
and prosper without purpose.

I may name her struggles,
yet never know her pain. 

Division

Each night she dreams of leading
the resistance.
She sleeps in fields of daisies;
they come and go
with fresh growth, later withered brown
and broken.

A single bullet strikes,
the onset of new seasons.
Blood blots in outward patterns,
seeping to stain
fresh linens and virginal skin.
She succumbs each time to
the great machine, marching
on without a beat.

Must we labor for our existence
and accept a punishment
not our own?

Habit

I have always collected friends
like old habits, kept close and cured
with kindness.
Like most ailments in the world.

You hold on to tattered novels, lines
read and reread in hopes of finding new mornings,
a sunrise in which to bask, in body or imagination.
How many were the same I took breath from,
held close, made a part of me.

There is a yet bridled adventure in your eyes, a wild
to be unleashed, perhaps in the Appalachia.
Conquer the hills, and taste
what it is, to be you.

Definitions of Home

We have evolved as time
will naturally have us do;
new paths, yet the same feet and
hearts passing through.
That poignant memory we didn't realize
would ebb on us, persistently
demanding we heed its calls.
You remind me of what I once was, and where
we once thought we would go.

How we have passed through frames
and fumbled with the seams of our lives,
forgetting and remembering - siblings, lovers, friends
as emotions suspended in time.
Remove your hat and lean upon the mantle,
kick your feet up and rest a moment upon the
ever-evolving soul. A package carried
through each circumstance -
at times half unwrapped, or tied tightly with string.

We mostly come undone when we are
at home with our surroundings. We take a
breath and extend our stories for laughing,
evoking, sharing in a gesture and embrace.
I breath in new nostalgia,
a definition of home.