No matter how long we have been together, I feel like there is always something new I am going to learn about you.

No matter how long we have been together, I will accept that I will always need to put effort in for us, and I won't stop doing so.

No matter how long we have been together, I will always treasure the family and life we built.

No matter how long we have been together, I will always admire your hard work, your passion, your beauty, your heart.

No matter how long we have been together, I will always enjoy your laughter, even if it is directed at me. :-)

No matter how long we have been together, I will always look forward to snuggling up close to you in the beginning and ending of each day.

No matter how long we have been together, I will always praise God for blessing me with this life with you and ours.

No matter how long we have been together, I will always be grateful that you see the best in me, even if I can't see it yet.

No matter how long we have been together, I will always look forward to this time of year, one of my favorite days to celebrate with you.

Happy Anniversary my love. I love you, always and forever.

We listened raptly as the Captain spoke, madly waving his arms, speaking of the riches awaiting us on the shores beyond the horizon.

New to the ways of the sea, none worried that the ship had no one at the wheel as all were making sure the Captain saw them listening and nodding, all hoping to curry favor and reap the greatest rewards.

We didn't know the Captain had won the boat in a backroom poker game and knew less than any of us about how to sail the ship, having given the boot and the finger to the former captain's crew.

"Bunch of morons," he was heard to say about them.

Miles from land, the boat began to spin. The Captain stopped waving his arms and speaking long enough to wonder aloud, "Who's driving this thing?"

Looking up to the helm, we saw only dancing shadows, and some of us were gripped by fear, its tiny talons having silently yet swiftly snaked within us, relentlessly squeezing, stabbing our hearts and minds as we realized the future he had promised was as solid as the smoke receding before our eyes.

Oh, to fall in love with you.

You don't know, not really, that I have.

Of course I revere you. I touch you like you are cut marble, and stare at you like, should it make you happy, I'd happily steal the stars even if it would steal my life.

But I trace the words into your skin, and wait like you might catch on in your hesitance.

I've been in so many relationships, but my breath doesn't come, and my heart stops and redoubles its effort in wait. I've never felt this. You've never loved before. You are as clueless as I.

I listen to your heart, and it speeds up with each scrambling word looped against your warm skin. I listen for something— perhaps the crash of the economy, or the world shifting on its axis.

You just continue to play with my hair, like you were trying to decipher it but couldn't quite. Maybe thought it was moronic scribblings. The world is entirely indifferent to my silent confession.

I have felt love, but haven't been in it, because that would mean whole kindness. Whole knowing. Whole loving. You have only treated me like I am good in spite of myself, while everyone has inflated my flaws so I would suffocate to spite me.

And I hope you catch me, with a scarred heart and scared mind, when you know I've fallen.

I haven't a thing to write about.

This happens often, where I am at a loss, but feeling so much it becomes moot.

My doctor chastises me for going off my meds, though my therapist notes I felt the same drugged out of my mind as I did without.

And I am loved. I am busy. But I feel nothing, like a thick balm of ointment on an old wound.

I know it is there. It just doesn't hurt unless I look at it.

I see my trauma beyond this veneered wall of pleasant experience.

I feel it, and it aches. It eats at me until I am no longer hungry, and haunts me to exhaustion yet I rest pitifully.

I stare off more times then not, chunks of time gone from my mind where it sits like an inky ball, and I ask it what it wants from me. It never answers. It grins, and feeds, until I am further than numb but unable to process.

I kiss my lover. I laugh with my friends. I work twelve hour days. I ask it what it wants. It bites.

I cry. I isolate in the dark. I call in sick. I ask what it wants. Still, it feeds.

Some nights, in the quiet moments before sleep, he could feel it pressing down on him—an invisible weight, vast and nameless, a thing without form. It wasn’t the weight of worry, nor the heaviness of a burden carried from the day; it was something far more insidious. It was the weight of existence itself, a suffocating truth that had no clear edges, no escape, and no release. The world around him would grow thick, the air itself seeming to thicken, pushing against him from every angle, as if the very space he occupied had become too narrow to breathe in. Even the act of inhaling felt slower, more laborious, as though the gap between breaths was lengthening, dragging him into an inescapable eternity.

It was not a monster, lurking in the shadows of his mind, nor a ghost whispering his name from across the threshold of his thoughts. It was something subtler, something that did not require the presence of a form, but one that filled the silence between moments, creeping into the cracks of his awareness. This presence was not malevolent in a traditional sense. It had no fangs, no claws, no twisted face to strike fear into him. No, it was a quiet thing, a still thing. Yet it was the most terrifying thing he could imagine, because it wasn’t a thing at all. It was an absence, a lack of meaning, a truth that pressed down from all sides, reminding him that there was no exit from his own existence. Not tonight. Not ever.

Death, he realized, would never come. Not now. Not in the future. Not ever. It wasn’t that he feared death—it was that he realized it was no longer a possibility. He was caught in something worse: an endless existence, unmarked by beginnings or endings, untroubled by the merciful release of finality. Death had been promised to the living, to those who fought, who loved, who burned with desire. But what of those who refused to participate? What of the ones who drifted through life like a whisper, unnoticed, unimportant? For them, there was no peace. There was only an ever-tightening grip of time, an eternal stretch of moments that bound him tighter with each passing second.

The ache wasn’t in the promise of death; it was in the absence of it. It was a deeper kind of suffering—a slow, creeping suffocation of the soul. The world had no place for those who did not live fully, those who did not carve out a name for themselves in the chaos of existence. The truth began to settle over him like dust, invisible but everywhere, as pervasive and unyielding as the passage of time. He wasn’t alive. He wasn’t dead. He was something worse, something that didn’t even have the dignity of ending.

A loophole in the cosmic order. A thing too insignificant for erasure. Too unimportant to even be remembered. He had become a man left behind—not forgotten, exactly, but abandoned by the very force that should have taken him, leaving him to rot in the in-between, a lingering shadow of something once human.

But if he wasn’t dead, what was he? The question lingered, unanswered, as he tried to grasp at the thought. The gods couldn’t have simply left him, could they?

He thought of the old alchemists, hunched over their dusty tomes, their hands stained with ink and mercury, searching for the secret to eternal life. They spoke of potions, of blood sacrifices, of dark rituals performed under the pale light of a crescent moon. Perhaps they were wrong, he mused. What if the answer was simpler than they had ever imagined? What if the key to immortality wasn’t the drinking of poison or the sacrificing of lambs? What if the secret lay not in action, but in the passive refusal to live? The rejection of the world’s demands. The denial of participation. No blood, no bargains—just a quiet rot, a failure to live. That, he realized, might be the true curse. A life without death, but not because of some divine mercy. No, because the gods themselves had simply overlooked him.

The elders whispered about him in the dark corners of ancient temples, their voices low, thick with caution. They called him the Forgotten One, a name spoken with the same reverence one would reserve for a curse. He was not a ghost—not in the way the tragic and the lost were. He didn’t belong to the realm of the sorrowful, nor the doomed. No, he was something else, something far worse. He was a shadow in the shape of a man, lingering at the edges of existence, a footnote in the great narrative of life and death, a thing that was neither. They said he had once been a man, flesh and blood like any other. But he had moved through the world like a whisper, unseen, unheard. His footsteps left no mark, his words passed unnoticed. He did not fight, nor love, nor hate. He had neither ambition nor despair. He simply existed, a passive participant in a world that demanded more than mere existence.

And when the Reaper came to collect the souls of the dead, it had missed him. He had been overlooked. Forgotten. Left behind in the cosmic shuffle of things.

So now he lingered.

The world had its laws, its silent, cruel laws. Live fully, love deeply, hurt deeply, rage against the tides, and you will earn your exit. But what of those who did none of those things? What of those who slipped through life unnoticed, who never burned with desire, who never sought to leave a mark on the world? Those who never lived, never fought, never loved, never hated—what of them?

They were not granted the mercy of endings.

The truth continued to weigh on him, pressing down like the slow accumulation of dust. He wasn’t alive, he wasn’t dead. He was simply forgotten—too unimportant to be remembered, too insignificant to be erased. A man caught in the space between, a soul left to rot without ever having had the chance to live. It was a terrible kind of purgatory—one without even the faintest hope of redemption.

And so, he waited. He waited in that vast, empty place where all the forgotten things rotted away. He waited in the space where the gods themselves did not dare to look, where even the force of existence itself dared not venture.

He waited in silence, with nothing but time stretching endlessly before him.

Dear wherever you are,

My love, writing this letter makes me no happier, yet there is an awful satisfaction in facing my biggest fear. I have conquered my demons through writing to you, and my worries, for one minute, fade away.

“Why,” you may ask, “do you write to me now, after all this time?” I have no answer, aside from my crippling fear. The truth is, darling, I’m the definition of a wreck. The clock ticks seconds away as if counting the days of sanity which remain ahead of me. I am, to my core, sorry that it took such a long time to do this. Again, I am scared, my muse.

“What scares you?” you may ask. You see darling, I told myself I would not write this letter until all hope was gone. I told myself this letter would signify the end of you, and that fills me with terror.

My love, I must say that it hurts me beyond belief to write this. I wish to stop hoping. I wish I would never allow hope to sprout in my soul, or wrap its fateful branches around my heart. Again you will ask “why?”

Hoping hurts. Ever since you went missing, it hurts. I only wish to let go.

If I drop this pen which dances so sorrowfully across my paper now, it will be the end. I am sorry. I am so, so sorry. I should have tried harder. I should have searched further. I should have done everything to find you. I said I would go to the ends of the earth for you, to the moon for you. I am sorry I let you down.

If you are out there, you are invisible. Otherwise, I surely would have found you by now. We would be together by now. Our eyes would meet once again. But you are gone. Dead, even. You would not want me to fall apart, but to pieces I descend. To the depths of my pit I return. This time forever, not hindered by hope.

When you love someone, you fight for them. When you lose someone, you die for them. Half of me is dying, the other half is numb.

At this time, with tears clouding my vision, and sorrow clouding my judgment, I bid farewell. Goodbye my love. Goodbye my muse. May I join you soon.

Wherever you are.

I think the way the branches loom,

Gnarled, stretched out vines...

Dance and loom right in the shadow of a vine.

Their shadow scrapes across my window like a haggard man with some insane devout word on his lips.

Wild eyes, and crazy. Making me look away from him.

Reaching in, I can see him just about to snatch me and instead he whispers in.

Hand tapping thorny fingers against my window until he's in.

From his thorny hand, to his black iris, I cannot make a peep, I hear him start to say.

"Dream dream. Like thistle and leaves, I'll take away your decay.

Little blossom, Cherry blossom. You'll grow into an adult one day.

And if you give, me a soul to keep, I'll trade away the pain.

Dream. Dream. Thistle and leaves. I'll make it go away."

I close my eyes, squeeze them tight.

I'm not seeing him, but I hear, the devil in form. A penance on the desert beyond my bed.

Frozen in place, I might almost say, please give me what you can.

Instead I can't believe, my open mouth, and answer him this way.

"You cannot have what's not mine to give. I won't trade another soul for your aid.

But if you can, make me stand where I'd rather hang dead, I think we've got a deal.

Chase away, the evil- pray but I'm not looking to make a deal.

No more devils. I see enough."

I know he can't be real.

But if he is, and devil's live, I won't be selling him my soul.

Instead his offer takes a turn, one that I didn't expect.

"I'm not a devil."

I don't believe him, but I can only hold my breath.

"People call me all sorts of things. A devil. Faerie. Shadow Man and all things deft. Call me what you like, but I am offering you a heft. Hefty offers, a promise in gold. I'll carry you on my girl. To sweet adulthood and then you can smile, and the evil woman won't have hold. She can claw and grasp, take our body and muddle my mind, but I will fend her off.

I'll protect you from the evil witch so be that as it may. I'm here to carry you on away, rather than watch you go decay. I only ask you keep me here, a secret kept untold. For I am you and you are I. And I will never cease until you grow on old."

I went quiet, my mind thoughtful. And to be honest, I'll be bold.

I shook his hand and closed my eyes as he snickered from our lips.

The crazy lady. That beast. That hag.

She tried to shake me so, but the demon in me smiled prettily because that's not what she held though.

And here I am, letting my paper man go. He died on my eighteenth birthday so.

I woke up then. A screaming fit, because of all the horror that went untold.

And now I lay, lay myself down to sleep.

The shadow that once unfold.

Who wrapped a girl.

A girl like me, inside his dark embrace and stood bold.

She is a piano solo. Quiet, but moving meaningfully.

She doesn't say much, but accommodates my constant moving soundlessly.

I roll over her like an idiot. I lay awkwardly, in a way painful to her.

She just wraps an arm around me and kisses me where she can reach.

She never complains. Never huffs for breath like I weigh a ton.

I nestle closer, and feel her heart beat against my ear- a symphony I wish to record.

She moves purposefully to touch me in any capacity if we're apart for longer than a minute. Her silent verse, to a chorus of loving.

I joke she only looks at me from a side glance, and oh.

She gives me the fraction of the sweetest smile, and flips fully to her side to gaze at me.

Her pupils are blown- iris' glaringly black from her affection.

She offers me the other fraction to that smile- what is this?

I studied music. She did too.

Is she a riff? A melody? What is this moment? A bridge?

I cannot place it.

Her usual laugh is sweet- her guttural laugh is that of the first woman I had imagined a future with.

She had been wrong, and mean.

But she cackles like her.

Grins like my favourite actress, speaks like her own favourite.

She is the soliloquy of those I've loved, and known.

It hurts, soothes, builds all at once.

and ratchet up global warming

like bubbling vegetable stew

with tsk... tsk... heard

courtesy Greta Thunberg,

who would utter "how dare you..."

I bundle with layers to stave off cold

energy efficiency drilled courtesy

me late mother conserving

nonrenewable resources she extolled

now ewe best heed following suggestion

wool worth 3d printing than wearing

a sheep doubled over

along dotted line to fold

cuz expending (fossil fuel)

leaving carbon footprint

would immediately being lectured

by ecology conscious eldest daughter,

(a University of Pennsylvania

biomedical engineering alumna)

who would mildly scold.

Myself and thee missus holed up

here within Highland Manor Apartments

(unit B44 in case

you wanna drop me a line)

we're here moost

every cold January day

sipping warm cup

of our favorite beverage

exotic coffee latte brew

suits this muttering pup

actually yours truly

a doggone ole

shorter haired (compared

when poem initially got crafted)

pencil necked geezer.

He can be found moost

any given warm Green Day

like an American idiot

shuffling along boulevard of broken dreams

overhead skies colored rosy gunmetal gray

occasional huff fro

zen cloud slashing solar ray

heating inside cozy nook,

though outside temperature brisk,

nevertheless for winter pleasantly refreshing,

while I sit here heavily clad,

hence yours truly quite toasty within

perfect weather for wedding,

especially one hashtagged December/May.

After dusk i.e.

established misnomer known as sunset

a legacy from heliocentric theory

(the astronomical model

that places the sun at the center

of the solar system,

with the Earth and other planets

orbiting around Gaia)

occurs 5:35 PM Post Meridiem

heavens quickly turn jet

black today - Sunday,

January 19, 2025 (EST)

whereby hello darkness

my old friend

(analogous to the edge of night)

lulls one into sleepiness, I bet

dollars to donuts impossible mission

to keep eyelids opened,

particularly if sleep debt

necessary to pay the sandman,

who knows maybe you gotta get get

comfortably numb vis a vis

stinging ice crystals

creating winter wonderland

temporarily rendering me unconscious

state, whereby yours truly

dreaming of a white Lost Horizon

in the mythical valley of Shangri-La

analogous to eventual Elysian Fields,

where divine creator

conjuring Nirvana and/or

a place called Willoughby

if a believer,

said Almighty eventually met.

The moon is split in half tonight.

Straight across her belly, not lengthwise.

She is carved into, as I gaze up through speckled dying leaves and fading clouds. Like empty beer bottles shattering and clouds of smoke disintegrating.

My throat hurts. My head. My heart.

My seatbelt is partially in. It did not buckle.

I think of tea. Cold medicine. Brushed teeth and water.

I wince at the feeling of any of it hitting my smoked bovine flesh.

Raw and supple.

My left hand nestles between fat folds, the right above my hip bone. I gaze at the jagged edge in the moon. Bleary and pale in the way nothing so beautiful should be.

I feel pale.