For a long time, it didn't make a difference to me

Whether the sun set

I accepted it as a natural phenomenon

Fair, inevitable

like the leaves withering off the trees when autumn comes

I can no longer accept the sun setting

Because it signifies that my active experience with you is becoming a memory

Each dusk is a moment in time with you

that I'll never return to

I want to remain with you until we pass away

the roots enveloping our bones and the very dust of our bones

A trellis of life and death

I look at you

and for a brief moment, I forget about myself

The burden of the world is lifted off my shoulders

I flow freely like the wind

the constant storm inside my head ceases

I live only externally and want you to hold me like a flower

Is it okay for me

to love and be loved so deeply?

Does trying to rationalize my emotions make sense?

if love could be measured,

Would I need a new unit

for the pretty girl who counts in fours?

I pass my fingers through your hair

like shooting stars tearing through the fabric of the night sky

each beautiful black strand

Elegant, dancing under my hands

black curtains framing your pale blue eyes

They shimmer like diamonds drenched in teardrops

I look at them and my entire sense of being dissipates

gone, vanishing

like the blue that drains from the sky at sunset

A school bus passed me by today

The rain left ripples in puddles through the street

The past feels unreal

As I grieve over the child I used to be

When I think of her now

She appears to me in an innocuous haze

Her features worn down by the downpour of future memories

A poor girl caught in the rain

We rode the same bus together

And we've been separated by the tide

Does she still recall that boy?

In the vast, bottomless blue of her mind?

We'd race down the aisle

The bus driver yelled but we paid no mind

We'd laugh and play

As the outside world rolled by

Like the rain trickling down the window

Washed away to time

She was a chance encounter in my life

And disembarked from the ride

The rainy clouds parted

The sun shone brightly in the sky

That bus is going, going

and it hurts to say goodbye

A transient figure wanders through the mist

Wading through the torrential downpour,

Directionless, adrift like a renegade ship

Searching for an unknown harbor.

His bare feet indent the wet, blind earth,

Ordaining the world with tracks

No different from the ones that had preceded his,

All to be smoothed out by the rain,

For every step a hearse,

The vestige of what he was forever lost.

He sees nothing through the fog,

No bend or branching path,

But he, like a fallen leaf,

With no choice but to obey the laws of its fall,

Carries on.

He ceased to understand the direction of the path

Or its destination long ago,

Resolved that it's enough to simply exist,

And feel the bare wind blow against his cheek,

He carries on.

He walks in the search of a soul like his own,

The kindle to ignite the dying flame within himself,

And the occasional glimmers of light through the fog and sky

Alight the potential paths in his mind,

The balm soothing present burnings,

Fueling the flickering longing for what could be.

I'm a well of words never spoken

An abyss of emotions never expressed,

Occasionally the water will sway

Followed by long droughts of stillness.

I'm a river flowing nowhere

Every sensation floats along its stream,

Every unseen, gliding thing,

Dancing, dissipating

And dispersed through the breeze.

I'm the keeper of lost thoughts

Ephemeral and formless,

Like a puddle when the clouds part

Evaporating through the onset of the morning.

Occasionally the pool will stir

And reflect movement from the outside world,

Brief glimpses of light come across the sky

And are spangled along its surface.

The silence and stillness are disrupted

By tremors in my earthquake life,

You'll see the water swell up

Veiling the obscurity of my eyes.

A lone man wanders through a desolate forest. Trudging through thick snow he meanders like the last fugitive snowflake from a storm long since past. Nighttime surrounds him, he follows the direction of the wind. Looking up to the sky he hopes to find the weakest sign or call but is only met with the darkness, the silence.

Plants wither and decay like specters forecasting his own fate. Through the woodlands he sees nothing but trees who've lived to see more seasons than he has footprints in the snow. In the distance he hears the occasional plaintive cry of a crow or wolf before once again being engulfed by the silence. He can feel it now, the cold, icy grip, his mind is failing him, there's nowhere to go. He lays down as the complacent spectator to the erasure of himself, his mind grows as blank as the terrain surrounding him; he's now one with his environment, soon he'll be as pure and indifferent in conception as the shriveled plants and rigid trees.

The man had always followed the wind. Its direction wasn't always certain, its call not always strong, but tonight it whispers to him.

"Keep looking for glimmers of light in places where there is nothing."

He opens his eyes and for a moment the infinite black sky is no different than the oblivion from which he had woken up from. Then, in the distance, a soft, white star begins to glimmer plainly, and soon came another, then another. He looks for any discernible pattern or meaning in their configuration and realizes that they form Orion. Despite the veil of tears now clouding his vision, everything preceding that moment felt blurry and obscure. Now he could finally see; he staggers back up to his feet.

He doesn't know where to go. He stands alone in a vast forest and struggles to find one clear path to take. The last few drifting snowflakes fall to the ground and sunlight begins to break through the clouds. All he can do is walk in the direction of the wind, slowly, steadily, until he arrives at some distant light and finds refuge in a place he may call home.

A shooting star comes across the sky. A streak of white cutting through an infinite black canvas. My feelings flare up, burn, and dissipate along with it. Nothing in this world is stagnant, nothing... everything is ephemeral and ever changing. I am merely the culmination of what I think and feel, and every day I am thinking new things, feeling new things. My inner world flows like a ravine leading to nowhere, its tide disrupted by the merest shaking of branches, its surface taking the form of whatever it sees. The river reflects this fallen star.

Everything vanishes like the sinking sun, and I'm surrounded by the onset of night. I feel at ease. During these moments of beauty it's as though you're struck, and, for that brief second, you disembark from yourself. The acute awareness of yourself, of your thoughts and feelings, all of it vanishes... and for a second you are one with the world. You are no longer the spectator of your own self, you simply are. You are like a child and born anew. You are as pure and as blissfully unaware as the sun, the moon and the stars that decorate the vault of the sky.

It was the way the life faded from your eyes. They were reddened and inflamed, glistening like rubies that had fallen into the sea -- they were fixed on me until they drifted off into space, aimless and tired, and then there was the stillness, the silence. The tree outside your window cast a shadow over your body as though it were an omen for what was to come; you were a farm girl raised from the earthly soil and would return there without a fight. How peaceful you looked, how serene, content as though life were a mere process of sowing your impression upon our psyches and that, with your absence, we could all finally reap the benefits. On the day of your burial it began to rain. The dry, blind earth could not differentiate the rainwater from our tears.

The memories came flooding back and everything around me dissipated -- if these images were merely the residue of your physical existence then so be it, they were pure and they were beautiful. You spread yourself out like a fog and I felt you permeate through everything, absolutely everything, the changing leaves and birds soaring through the sky and, most of all, our daughter. Her eyes are crystalline and piercing just like yours.

We never fully understood each other, but I loved you all the same. Your impression left an impact on me and, in that sense, these mere after images aren't so different from when you were still here, breathing and sitting right next to me.

I look back and know there are things I should've done differently. I should've told you that I loved you more. I should've told you that I appreciated it when you tended the garden. I should've told you that your favorite sun tanned dress was gorgeous instead of tacky. I should've thanked you for looking after our daughter when I was tired from work. I should've done a lot of things. But all that is over now, and they are not the worries of those who are eternally slumbering -- please close your eyes and rest.

I had never desired to die save for one autumn night where I was caught in death’s headlights, one in which I miraculously survived. The sensations I felt from that crash occasionally leak from the recesses of my mind even now, every so often embracing me, swelling up my thirst for non-existence like an occasional spark in the blackest depths.

I still remember that pinewood forest and the narrow dirt road that ran through it, and me, its sole navigator, gliding through its darkness. I had just come back from a college party - I’ll be the first to admit that I may have had a few drinks, but certainly not enough to incapacitate me entirely - and I figured my best bet would be to drive myself home, even taking the precaution of letting in the cold autumn air by opening the sunroof; a poor attempt at sobering up.

The road was desolate barring the occasional car that drove past; on the whole the drive was sterile and calm, eerily so, akin to how the wind quiets before some great, imminent disaster. Its sharp turns and winding paths were like that of a snake trudging along tall grass, nauseating in my tipsy state.

To this day I haven’t been able to shake the memory of his shadowy figure emerging from the woods, stumbling in a drunken stupor, and me turning the corner, not yet aware of what was about to happen. It’s funny how the brain torments us; my recollection of that night is so vague, a substanceless mass of idle chatter and binge drinking - but that face, that twisted expression of abject horror somehow lives on as the picture ingrained within my psyche. To this day I believe that the most painful thing wasn’t the physical scars created by the fire, but those select memories which continue to make my life a burning hell.

I awoke in a daze, almost as though I were in another world, my car slammed against the side of a tree and that fire growing at a rapid rate. It began to rain, slowly, plaintively, desperately trying to cool this new world in which I found myself, but to no avail.

Looking out the passenger window I saw his arm sticking out from under the car and the crimson mist running from under the tires. Within that hellfire it was as though a part of me died; staring into his eyes gazing somewhere far away, the life in them snuffed out like thin candlelight - as though the remaining embers of his soul metamorphosed and fueled the blazing inferno in which I now sat.

The stars above burned bright and I felt my body temperature rising, the flame devouring my clothes like termites on dry oak. As my flesh peeled away and my body writhed I thought that maybe this was the final stage in every creature's evolution; much like how the car transformed into something malformed and unrecognisable I too would transcend flesh and become something different, like a star born from a cloud of dust. As the smoke from the car rose and enveloped me like a thick fog, I looked forward to this next stage - to become a star in the sky, sparks in the wind, ashes in the inferno.