I've got love pooling in my finger tips.

It pounds itself out gently through little white keys,

All the while it dreams of leading my hands toward your soft hair, 

Your perfect face that can only try to distract from the brilliance of your whirring mind,

Hoping that it might brim enough to finally force the words

"I love you."

They live just behind my lips,

Belonging to you, but too shy of you to risk an appearance.

They will wait, I suppose,

Until the love in my fingertips brims

And the glow growing behind my ribs shines through my eyes.

The Little Stone Fort

There's a little stone fort in my chest.
I come out once in a while to plant flowers,
And sometimes I draw water from the well.
I try not to stay outside for very long:

It's dangerous out there.

Despite my greatest efforts, I'm often stolen away by beauty.
My own attention deficit breaks me down more than anything.
I'm easily caught up in the stars, or the low burning sun.
I think the sunsets are my favorite:

Colors are so limited within my walls.

I don't worry too much when I get lost.
Rarely does a living soul pass my way,
And when they do, the well isn't far from my door.
It's nice to breathe the air, to observe life once in a while:

I love to watch my flowers grow.

I was almost used to my joyful monotony,
Used to curling up alone and safe in my little fort.
Whenever so much as a shadow crossed my path before the well,
I could retreat knowing my flowers would wait:

They needed me. I mattered to them.

After everything and everyone, all the loss and regret,
My little flowers growing mattered more than anything else.
But things tend to change unbidden.
I was safe, alone at my well and caught up in brilliance:

This sunset clearly a tribute to fire.

I was absorbed by the spectrum, unguarded and uncaring.
I didn't even realize my bucket was missing.
There was no pulling away from the colorful harmonies.
As the sky fire began to fade, I bumped back to reality with a pang:

The music may have complimented the sky, but it wasn't painted with it.
There was a humming behind me, and the sound of water falling happily to the ground.
I turned around and there you were, watering my flowers,
Humming and contented to be a trespasser in my garden.

I was appalled, to say the least.

I felt betrayed by the sunset!
How could it let you slip by me so easily?
How could you have come between my fort and I,
And all the while watering my...

Flowers. You were stoking my little fireworks, helping them grow.

They were happier than I'd ever seen them before that night.
They swayed, calling breezes to make them dance to your little tune,
And suddenly I was enchanted.
I stood there as I watched you, absorbed your little song...

It was as if you'd rewound the sunset.

I don't want to go inside my fort anymore.
It looks dark and lonely now.
I mean, your voice is so warm and my flowers so happy.
I think I'd be blind if I tried.

Especially after the light of you.

Pull Me

Sunlight on the ocean.
It glints and glimmers, almost blinding.
The sun rises in your eyes and the brilliance forces my gaze to

Your smile.

A refuge from the night.
After a long day with the wolves, I need it-
The warmth and comforting sound of

Your laughter.

Music with the power to spread joy.
It echoes into my heart and pulses through me,
Urging me to search out and enter

Your heart.

The central core, that most vital piece.
Everything you are, everything you love, in one place.
The only thing more beautiful than

Your mind.

A dazzling, wondrous circuit board.
It brims with knowledge, with original thoughts,
Inspires me to dream, and I dream about

Your arms.

A better home, a secure place to be.
Finally, a place I might be able to weather the storm,
If only I were brave enough to hold your hand.

You'd never have to be alone.

I care what you have to say.

I always have,

And I always will.

The Edge of the Wind

I find myself floating about in a moment of serenity.
I'm surrounded by naked trees, too sleepy to notice the cold.
My feet find their discarded clothing in a colorful carpet, and my heart finds joy in each crisp step.
My body is the champion of this hide and seek.

The air is still and grey, almost permeable.
I want nothing more than to touch it,
I know that here other fingers wait, just hidden behind these veils of mist that enchant me.
For a moment, silence sings about how small this world is.

I hear a rushing in the distance.
It breaks the silence, and I turn to find the source.
It grows louder, and suddenly my eyes light upon a mass rolling towards me.
A mass of twisting swirling fallen tree clothes.

The edge of the wind has found me, and it's racing ever closer.
I steady myself, willing my feet to throw roots deep into the ground and hold me in stillness.
The stillness that I know will soon be a moment passed.
The mass, the wall of brilliantly colored leaves, rushes and cascades as the ocean courting the moon.
For a moment there is nothing but the wall and I, just two beings in the entire universe.

The stillness shatters and the rush of power and sound nearly fragment me along with it.
My roots do just enough to keep me upright, and I'm not afraid.
I feel jagged leaf edges kiss my cheeks and caress my hair, leaving tiny red memories behind.
The stinging love doesn't faze me.
The wind simply wants to remind me how green the leaves were,
And how sad they are to have died.

Saving the world.

"I'd like to think I'd do this anyway, but I know that right now I'm saving this stupid world because you're in it. That's all that really matters."

As I grow into my big girl shoes, I'm beginning to fear that this man and his wonderful words only exist in my dreams.

Once in a while, though, just when all seems lost, another hero comes along to give me some hope and remind me that not everyone is looking to take.

The man who wields those dream words, the hero I'm out hunting for, will never leave me with nothing. No matter how much everything I give him, he'll give me everything right back.

I think that's worth saving the world for.

Stairs

Here I climb my solitary stairs,
Tired and sweaty as I grow.
I’m not sure where the climb began.
I can’t remember what the first stair looked like
Or what it felt like when my feet weren’t sore.

For all the time trapped in my mind I have marched:
Up and up, around and around these spiraling stairs,
Unsure where they lead.
I know it’s there though, the end... Of climbing anyway.

There’s something better up there, beyond the stairs.
A place of rest, I think,
Rest from the climbing.

The journey is not monotonous.
Some stairs have been broken before me… Abused.
Sometimes I crumble them beneath my own feet.
It makes it harder not to fall.

I’m tired and sweaty as I grow
Taller, maybe a bit wiser. Definitely more wary.
I watch more and more carefully for jutting crags,
For boulders and gaps in the stairs.
You’d be surprised how invisible they become on these foggy flights.

Sometimes I want to stop, just rest a while,
But when I look back I see that the stairs are gone,
Vanished behind me and fading beneath me.
There is nothing, or the climb.

The end is something I can’t see
I don’t know where it is,
I don’t know what it will look like,
And yet I feel no fear.

I hear whispers about the end.
They say many different things.
Here it is bliss, here it is torment,
Here it is even nonexistent: the stairs just stop then nothing.

It might be true, that last one.

Though I like to muse it's everything,

Nothing wouldn't be so bad.

I could return to the nothing and dream forever.

But for now, at least,
I am tired and sweaty as I grow.

I will climb.

Excerpts from the world between yesterday and tomorrow.

The sun is brighter than usual when you're around.
It's like your laugh makes it smile.
The sound always makes me glow a little,
Wakes me up in the middle of the night with a joy that breaks my heart.
My dreams aren't the best artists, they never quite capture the magic of it.
Someday you'll laugh for me again, but until then I'll wake up sad.
It's so much better than forgetting your laugh altogether.

---

Once in a while I battle dragons.
Sometimes they take me down, but that's only when I don't have you to fight for.
I conquer mountains of enemies in the night for all of you.
Suspenseful dreams are only nightmares when I can't rescue my little world.

---

Songs try to write themselves at night.
I don't know why, but I love the sad ones best.
Maybe it's because they're familiar?
More likely it's that they've survived not being okay.
The loop of familiarity and denial is a deadly constant, but a constant it is.

---

Thoughts like to think that they're slimmer than they really are.
The maximum occupancy of my mind is always pushed to the brink when I lay my head down.
For me, rest has always been a shy little creature.
I think it's afraid to join in, to create a place within my mind to make an impression.
I look forward to the day it calls ahead for reservations.
Until then I hope my thoughts try a diet.