Conversation Hearts

I sit beside a cup of hot tea 

Watching the clouds sift icing sugar

Over the city landscape turned Candyland-scape

With a bag of conversation hearts

The calendar turns a page

And suddenly everyone has a sweet tooth

I breathe in a tendril of spicy vanilla chai steam

And open the bag of conversation hearts

I pinch the corner and tug upwards
And watch the pastel coloured confectioneries
Spill eagerly over my tabletop

Sweet, giggling conversation hearts

I smile back at them, remembering
Sparkling eyes and knowing smiles
Sleepovers and fantasy worlds and us
All thanks to conversation hearts

The sweetest hearts I've ever known
Taught me that love comes in all colours
Equally sweet and sincere
Like conversation hearts

So this is for you, my angels
I wish only the best for you
And I hope together forever is true
Because I miss your conversation hearts

And of course my thoughts
Would not be complete without you
The mere mention of your name brings to life
A thousand conversation hearts

Like the draft outside my window
Sends snowflakes flurrying into the minty winter air
You have the the same effect on the
Heartbeats of conversation hearts

As they flutter back down to reality
I line them up in chronological order
Your words diffuse through my chest
And bond like the text on conversation hearts

My fingertips graze the candied crossroads
And bring your words to life
I realize the journey is worth far more
Than individual conversation hearts

And as the afternoon fades to evening
I find the answers to all my questions
Mapped out on my tabletop
In the simplicity of conversation hearts

I push back my chair just in time to see
A pair of shooting stars streak through the sky
Leaving a trail of pixels behind
A dotted line of conversation hearts

The Photograph

That photograph looks better
Lying alone on the floor,
Trapped inside its chipped wooden frame,
And topped with a sprinkling of glass.
There, it is a better representation of
Who we are.
Everything about that photograph is wrong.
Who are those smiling people?
They are certainly not like that now.
They are strangers to me,
And strangers to each other.
And that unblemished white background?
It shouldn't be white at all.
It should be stained with midnight tears,
And cut up with sharp words,
And then clouded by the silence that hangs in the air,
The aftermath of a huge mistake.

I would much rather have taken a pair of scissors
And cut those people apart from each other
And scattered them in the wind
So that it may take them far away from this place
But I can't.
So I just let the frame fall from my hands
Onto the fake laminate
And hope that, by shattering the glass,
I can give those people a chance
To breathe
As they suffocate beneath
Their smiling masks.

Sarcophagus

Here is a girl.
Or rather, a sculpture of a girl,
Carefully chiseled by experience itself
And sanded down to precision over the course of many years
From a distance she looks human.
Her clothes, her hair, her bag on her shoulder
Blend her into the mass around her known as society.
But she is not a human.
She is nothing but a statue- unmovable, unwavering, stoic.
Her eyes are but mirrors, reflecting.
They reflect the faces and the emotions of those who pass by her.
They agree and they sympathize,
And sometimes they make people forget that by themselves,
They are emotionless.
They are only mirrors, after all.
And like all mirrors, they go blank when the image leaves.
Mirrors are deceiving sometimes, but they never lie.
Only the rest of her does.
Beneath her armoured skin lives chaos.
It spits and burns like bile,
Trapped inside its stone dungeon.
It churns around her insides like a venomous snake
And she fights it.
She lashes back at it, suppresses it.
Sometimes she manages to squeeze it so tightly,
It oozes out a substance that, only in the vaguest of senses,
Resembles happiness.
And only because it has nothing left to give.
This is the viscous substance that slides unwillingly out of her skin,
Into the outside world.
It too, is deceptive.
It is poison, but it makes her seem ever so slightly mirthful.
Thankfully, it is all the world needs to be convinced that she is an ordinary human being.
Ordinary. Human. Two things she will never be.

Reflection

I used to be so sure

Of everything;

Of my world and all its contents.

I used to wake up from refreshing sleep

And smile with self-satisfaction at the mirror.

I used to look deep into the eyes of my reflection,

Through a camera lens crystal clear

And see a world, so beautiful, so perfect.

I used to walk along a path, delicately paved,

Each stepping stone aligned just right,

The way I liked it.

That land was a wonderland,

A dreamscape, if you will.

But dreams don’t last forever,

As I’m sure you are aware.

And now, as I peel my eyelids apart

After restless nights,

The turmoil of my sleep

Having seemed to knock the lenses out of focus.

The angles are all wrong now.

The smooth roads crack relentlessly,

And I trip at every turn.

The soft lullabies of weeping willow branches

Turn into screams.

The light spring rains

Evolve into thunderstorms of tears.

The gently rolling clouds

Suddenly turn into clusters of smoke,

Black and gray and sickly yellow.

My world is filled with smoke and mirrors,

Screams and tears.

Where did this haze come from?

I have no idea.

But it chokes me.

And it chokes my reflection,

Suffocating its clarity and perfection.

I lost the one thing I thought I would never lose.

I lost sight of myself.

Now, I stare desperately at my reflection,

But my eyes are only as deep as the glass.

Torn

I'm spending
my entire life suspending
in a violent tornado, blending
my love and hate, pretending
to get along. I'm torn, the tension is ascending;
I'm on my own, defending
both warring sides unbending,
still I'm apprehending
I try so hard, intending
to fix the trauma, lending
myself to the offending
sides, but my this is never ending
and my hope is fast descending
why can't these wounds be mending
instead of ever extending?
where is all this sending
me?