It starts with counting in threes. Three ice cubes for my coffee. Three steps behind other people. Three soft kisses.

Why do horses need horseshoes?

Open the fridge and close it again. I forgot what I was even looking for. Open it back again. Did it change at all? Close. Open again and pick something. Close.

What if I started making my own butter and bread?

Choose the same everyday shorts. Same everyday shoes. Everyday necklace. Until they get replaced by the new ones when they start falling apart. You have several pairs, but they are for special ocassions. Things need to be used for a specific purpose.

Are sharks smooth or rough skinned? Do they like to be pet?

Avoid eating with others, people who aren't safe. The sounds they make. The way they criticize what you eat. The loud clattering sounds of china and shriek.

What song would play at my funeral? I hope it's a fun one.

Touch every piece of clothing before you even consider putting it against your skin. Is it soft? Artificially so? Does it feel hot?

Put it back on the shelf, go see the pretty one you saw from the other one. No, not that one. It has the weird crease on the shoulder. Same as the sweater on the other shop. Next.

What do other people see as red?

T-rex arms are comfy. So is tapping my fingers together. Drumming on invisible heads, picturing the comfortable tap tap tap they make.

Is there a sound no one has ever made?

Look at the mirror but not at your eyes.

Is my face actually my face?

Stay up all night going through 21 different scenarios. Different songs. Different ways you could change your own life.

... Can I?

I see the tiny marker on your chat window, dancing its soft bleeping motion. Are you asleep on the other side of that blink? Are you dreaming of starlight and cotton candy? Are you waiting for something?

Or maybe you're looking at the night outside on the roof. The soft sounds of the sleeping city echoing. You see the leaves rustling in the dark.

It's lonely, isn't it?

We're all leaving.

There's the constant fear of never actually being okay. That you'll keep hurting others, and everything about you is wrong, from head to toe.

And I can't hold you. Not tonight. I'm just these letters on a page.

Take a deep breath, and I'll grab your hands. I'll be the spot to place your wary mind.

Try to find beauty in the shadows around you. In the sleeping birds and the sky stars and the ground stars. Write poems about dust dancing in front of the stage lights.

Of fairy homes and warm blankets. Christmases in the middle of April, and New Year's Eve in July. Paint strokes and soft melodies played on an old piano.

Feel the ridges on my fingernails, and the scars on my skin. Tousled hair on playful eyes.

We aren't our pain, but the steps we take away from it. Trying to find meaning in how we interact with others, how we connect.

Go to sleep, I'll carry you inside.

You're safe at home, at least for now.

It’s the forgotten things, really.

The quiet reminders of someone who isn’t there at the present, but longs to be.

A lonely sock. A tiny bottle of shampoo. A shirt or a sweatshirt.

Dreams hidden beneath a pillow. Promises inside the icebox.

It’s the memories that impregnate the walls and the canvases and the picture frames.

Makes the space come alive with memories and nostalgia.

There’s a chapstick on the table that wasn’t there before. Fairy lights that were hung with 4 hands present. Skies observed from the balcony chairs.

How much of oneself is left behind with each of these memories. They exist only in the space they were created, then remembered like old sepia pictures inside a cigar box.

We come together in those forbidden places, waiting to feel a bit complete once again.

I've always wanted to grow a garden, to have lovely plants to look at. All sorts of colors and shapes and ways to kiss the sunlight.

I started with a seed, and the rain washed it away. So I tried again, dehydration its end.

I tried growing another in water and it rotted. Tried again next week, and it wilted away.

So I bought a small plant next. It was good for a bit, and it outgrew its pot. I put it in a bigger one and it went sad and gray. Switched places, moved the soil with no avail. I saw it die with every passing day.

Got a full grown plant, and things would seem to be okay. But its leaves started falling, and stems went curved. And I was left with a huge pot full of nothing like I knew I would.

It's supposed to be easy. Friends have them all around their place. Salesmen tell me it's for dummies. My family's keep blooming every season.

So why can't I grow plants like everyone else?

I feel stupid and sad and so damn frustrated because I can't seem to do it right, no matter what I do. I forget and I try and I keep killing plants. I'm the only one that seems to be bound to ruin everything I touch.

I follow the guidelines, I do my research. I ask every person that seems to know their way around them.

But my plants keep dying and wiltering and rotting. And my loneliness grows every passing moment.

I long for my garden, my herbs, and their leaves. I long for the seedlings that grow in the spring.

I picture the flowers, bees in their leaves. I see all the lillies, sunflowers, tulips.

So I sit in the rain, with my rusty water can. Watering a garden that simply just can't.

Of course this is not about plants at all, though the struggle is real.

We each have our garden, we each have our dreams.

If you've ever been haunted, you know what I'm talking about.

Of the shadows dancing in the corner of your eye. The voices that are never there, but keep whispering. Objects keep being lost, things out of order, out of their assigned space.

Ghosts look like the memories you've forgotten, but that your mind keeps reminding you of. A slight shiver on the back of your neck, and a silent prayer that it'll go away soon. You focus on work, focus on music, focus on that puzzle that's missing a couple of pieces. The shiver remains.

Go to bed, try to get some rest. Try to close your eyes with the whispers echoing on the empty walls. Blankets feel safe, lights are warm. And yet, there's that corner that is always cold, always in shadows. No matter how much you rearrange the room or paint the walls, it's always there. Echoing. Waiting. Feeding on a single drop of decanted fear going down your spine.

You feel them when memories repeat, when you're home alone. When you feel like a little kid going down to the kitchen in the middle of the night. How vulnerable and tiny it can feel. Your flashlight starts flickering and the shadows get bigger. And you got nowhere to run. The hallway extends infinitely, and you shrink. You whimper and you cry and there's no way out. The ghosts are near, and you wish it was just dead people under old raggedy blankets, or souls trying to find their way. But these ghosts are much more real. They're made of flesh and bone and everything that's wrong.

You curl up and wait for them to pass. And eventually they do.

Ghosts like that are burglars, taking your hope and your light and your shine.

They're hungry and mean. Bad bad bad.

Daylight comes in and things are back into place. Except your own mind.

Everything is a little out of place. A little bit blurry. You're not even sure you're even real.

Maybe what they do is make you a bit of a ghost yourself. Until you wander and cover your face with a sheet, and hope it'll be better tomorrow. You isolate and haunt your own home, your own life. You see others through a veil, you can't be part of the living.

'Till you vanish, alone, all dust.