I am stronger than anyone’s opinion of me could ever be

I am strong because I believe in me.

I am stronger than anything that can clearly be seen

My strong is quiet. My strong lives within me

I am strong because of the obstacles that I have faced

I am stronger than I was yesterday

I have faith in my dreams, and I am strong enough to face them

I may stumble. I may fall. But always shall I persevere and attain them

Through strength, love and guidance from the Heaven above

Always, shall I always, be stronger than I was

I am strong! I am proud! And I love the skin I’m in

I speak my strength into existence, and that is where it begins.

Jnaha (c) 2016

Death came

As it does

Wrapping fingers around

Him

I hardly feel sad

I hardly feel anything

Rain was my call to the window

At night

My gray inside

Had a place to play

In another

Dark

Where there was no need for hiding

And smile for the smile I was given

Perhaps

Trace a name in thick breath

Fingertips

Across the pane

For the candle I burned that day

Rebellious head

But content in the music

I slept against the wall

Back then

Against the sandpaper texture

Of nicotine amber

On an old black lounge

Was warm

Knees to the paint

And thunder rolling

A rumble through the thighs

My belly

A palm exit in waves

Back into the air

No one asked me to pull the window shut

To keep the cushions dry

I smoked half burned Marlboro Reds

My mother left

Forgotten

Lipstick kisses

Love from an ashtray

Scribbles of black across bleeding blue lines

Against a frame beaded in condensation

Release

Of the inside

Buzzing

But

Manageable

Enough for words

I listened to those Crows

More than I should have

But I learned

Sweet revelations in muted pounding

Pellets on tin roof

That lyrics were my muse

So I sang mine to the fly screen

And waited for the night

To spit back into my face

Lick me

Drown me

Or shut me up

Gravel rising to the pouring

Stirring

The filth we've beaten in with our soles

An escape for the dirt

We've compacted

But the human cannot stop this sky from weeping it free

As it deserves

Webs of blue and gold

Crack

Through the black

To catch the shadows

Who meant to stay the night

I was safe

The voices fade in the storms

Into their own spaces

Where they too

Could rest

Without a pinching masquerade

Of faces

Outside

Lost and sinking

In the silence

Of the falling

Rain

When I was a boy

living in the outback

The sound of rain

on a tin roof at night

would nudge me into sleep

As I grew older

and living in the city

I would leave my window

open and wake at morning

to wet sheets and warm toes

As a man

I'd nestle with my daughters

at night during rain

and imagine that we were

in a cave by the sea near a fire

I miss those nights

they were clean and pure

and warm amongst

the sheets snuggled

rain has changed

and so have I