love song of adeline turner

The curly hair standing before a bouquet of orange leaves that tremble beneath the cold autumn morning/
A scene of crackling empathy staring at the mirth, fear, and ecstasy between the pages of a paperback/
Meandering about the naked streets at night, speeding up as wind presses up against our faces/
Always forget how close we are to one another - connections and missed connections/
I am touched by the tangible energy as we shape our society; we refuse to sit still/
Quiet gratitude stirs any time the wind pushes your hair out of your face/
The illumination, knowing that we have changed a real human/
And it does not stop at one; it goes over, again and again/
Looking at every inch of the lines we've drawn
and seeing the corners of every tragedy
astonished, we see that we learn
my god, how we've learned/
I stare forward and see
with shock and awe
a luminous future/
I love this earth
too much to
give it all
away to
a man.

THIS IS IMPORTANT.

because you'll curve your lips into a smile
and blindly accept the crooked tasks
of the woman whose back curls over
as she takes the graveyard shift
that cannot be heard beyond the walls
of her home.
but cursed be the man who walks as the mother
and scorned be the woman who isn't a father.

scratches

The same rain pats my head and I slip my feet into the same rubber boots and the rooms smell the same - the exact same, almost eerily so - and the trees are all the same different fall-appropriate pigment. I'm chasing for hours in the future. This place is the lover I never could quite love. This place is the exact same place it was ten months ago. This static backdrop allows us to see how we (as the dynamic characters) have changed. I'm not in love. I'm not ready to leave my body. I'm not thinking about you and only you constantly. My thoughts have become scattered images I cannot trace with exact clarity. I'm alright; I'm quite alright.

I love this place, just not enough. I love these people, but I cannot stay. I'd like those thirteen hours back although they've rotted more terribly than the seconds that expire with each word I type. Gone, gone...gone.

I never could quite love this place.
This was the second chance.
I know this because I could not love this place even without the burden of begging for your affection.

How could I lose you? How did it happen faster than the time we lost so quickly? You were a silent goodbye I was not ready for. But I'm quite alright. I'm not ashamed for a lack of sadness.

It's difficult to trace the contours of each dead hour, trying to grasp them by the tail before they flee for good. Could we chase those hours forward? Of chips and salsa, of Pad Thai, of planning, of not planning, of haze, of talking (about anything), of curly hair, of little touches and bigger giggles, of no goodbye. Of rotting these hours to the core, leaving nothing for now and room for the future.

I fall in love for a day and he'll turn to you. I exit the scene with my back to the light because no love song is sweeter than the way the darkness embraces me, a faithful caress.

The immediate world that surrounds me will turn to a bleaker angle, and I'll be trapped inside a dark dimension for a thirty hours. After crawling out of a bad day, I'll scratch words into an acid-free notebook - I'll assemble all the thoughts and ideas and emotions relevant to the situation just to establish significance and validity from the darkness. But the ink is perishable, and the meaning I have just constructed will be useless and outdated within four seconds. And once it's over, I'll have to reboot the system and fall into a similar darkness and fabricate similar meanings and experience similar expirations. The rounds repeat until the forecast integrates itself into the realm of nothingness and I become nothing more than weak and tired and unable.

no alarms/surprises please

good evening sir
my old companion
how are you and
it seems like years since we saw each other last
since you last embraced me
and since you last shook my knees
to the floor.

we jump right into things
no flirting, no beating around the bush
no bullshit
we make love under the concealed moonlight

i remember
the very first time.
unaccustomed to the strange
rough movement
i could feel
my imminent fall.

now it is sweet,
i know you are at my door
i had been expecting you
and your timely arrival.

we dance together

-ashley