Most beautiful of pretty women,

The sun and moon marvel at your bewildering glory, and all of the earths' minions pale in comparison to your splendor.

You are more beautiful than dew drops on flowers, the glimmers of sun on the ocean, the sound of rain on leaves and tin roofs, and the first smile on a newborn's face.

You are more breathtaking than every sunrise and sunset that has inspired a photograph.

You are more precious than a heart-warming memory.

Sands flow,

slowly go.

Pacing wind

for tomorrow.

Camp glow,

glitter show.

Crackling timber

to borrow.

Candle flame steady

in heated monotony.

Glowing and ready,

burn heart strings so taut in me.

A glimmering masterpiece

besought in my eye.

Finders and keepers,

never cease, nigh.

Precious,

unyielding.

Bursting

and wielding,

wonderment, shielding,

vivid butterfly.

White noise.

Blank.

Pin drops and silence.

Cadaver cuts.

Slicing tissue in long precise drags.

Nothingness pools onto the flesh.

When your mind screams, who hears?

Beckoning.

Steam rising.

Scald me with your frivolous bursting anguish and despair.

I survey you from above and long to...

turn

down

the heat.

Melodic gurgling,

relentless roaring,

as you grow, climb atop yourself, and demand attention.

Simmer becomes boil hastily.

Planting kisses on my skin,

She blankets me on the surface and within.

Few days pass where I am devoid of her loving gaze.

I long for her rays,

and hope that she stays,

all the while knowing that she will return to me.

Arms wide open, embracing, free.

Death is a word packed with negative connotation. Death inspires fear and uncertainty in most, longing, anger, and discontentment at the very least when it's regarding someone cared for. What I've learned through my life experience is that death is not the end; It is the beginning. Death brings change in any circumstance, growth under the right conditions, and adaptation.

In my teen years, my Mother would tell me that break-ups were like a death sometimes. Someone that you cared for deeply has been ripped away from you and you're left distraught and hurting. Now, try not to misunderstand my reasoning with her statement and comparison here, but I think she was on to something. After experiencing heart-break and death respectively, they are not the same. Both of these things are disheartening and painful but the realization that death is permanent, and that person or thing is no longer an earthly living being is a concept that is hard for some to accept and let go of. With a break-up or separation we can sometimes gain some solace from the fact that this person will go on to live and potentially thrive with or without you. These thoughts have led me to create a 'eulogy' to those that I have loved and lost in this way. A death of what was which brought on the birth of change, and gratitude.

YOU ARE

You caught my eye immediately, as though drawn to you without a clear understanding as to why. Your presence and energy lingered with me even when you'd left the room. My curiosity peaked with you from the start, and the desire to know you inside and out filled every inch of the space between us physically and emotionally. Every curve of your body was beautiful, but that word doesn't describe the emotions I hid within the way that my eyes drank you in as if they'd never been so thirsty. When I close my eyes I can still see your face. When I think of you I can see the smirk of a smile you'd have when I'd make a really bad joke and it was the fact that it was terrible that made you smile instead of laugh. I can remember the abyss your eyes were and how the absolute power behind you saying I love you flooded me with mutual love and understanding. I remember your hands, and how the first time you hurt me I became a little less of myself and more hardened than before. I remember wanting nothing more than to shelter and protect you from every hardship that the world could throw onto your shoulders, and effectively in wanting that, placed all of you on my shoulders, with those hardships on top of yours. The gravity and weight of each added plunder damaged me in more ways than I think I can fully explain, but in the end, I have learned. I learned that by losing you I gained myself. I learned that although I can no longer protect you, hold you, comfort you, physically love you, or provide you any type of contentment, care or direction... I can still feel good about the strength of my love. I can still look back on protecting you, holding you, comforting you, making you smile, and loving you in all the ways that I did and be proud of what good we shared. I will always love you for your unique qualities and the positive aspects of a relationship that I am now able to use as a standard for the future relating to what I want, need, and deserve. No matter the reasons that ripped us apart, I know that I loved you then, and still love the person I knew you to be before life aggressively held my eyes open to the truth I'd been desperate not to see. You've helped shaped me into the person I have become for my next love and everybody in my life who has the opportunity to experience me as a whole. Thank you for every experience you provided me with. Thank you for every hardship we trampled through together. Thank you for showing me both how I believe I should be loved, and how I shouldn't. I'm grateful for you, thankful for you, appreciative of you, and from the time I met you and for the rest of my life all I want for you is health, happiness, and love. I hope that you find all of that and I hope that you know within yourself and to your core that you have such amazing potential and are strong, capable, worthy and so many other things that you may not always recognize. You've changed my life. Thank you.

As my world burned she fueled the fire. Her eyes sent blazing heat through my chest, and the electricity in every touch of her fingertips prodded a dormant volcano in my groin. All I knew of the life I led before her presence burned to ash in the process, while I made peace with the fact that with death...comes new life.

When the wind blows, do you turn to face it, or do you shy away?

I sat in a darkened room, for in the dark I do not have to see my imperfections, only feel them.

As I sat people entered and exited, but in the process, shone a light on one imperfection on the surface at a time; exposing truths.

If criticism were the wind I was the kind to turn away and squeeze my eyes tightly shut as my hair whipped about and into my face.

Over time I've learned that facing the wind, albeit sometimes cold and stinging, pushes my hair out of my face. It allows me to see more clearly, so that there is no question of where I am headed.

If I sit in an illuminated room I expose my imperfections, but am already aware of them, and am not blighted as once before with a focused light on one area at a time. People who enter SEE me, and I am not ashamed.

Sink into me.

I want to pull you slowly down into my unwavering grasp.

Sigh with me,

between unifying kisses and passionate waves of togetherness.

Keep me.

Remember me when I'm absent by the sound of my voice, smell of my skin, and illuminating presence.

Soft white flight.

I watch you climb the air with grace.

sleek, calculated movements.

The embodiment of beauty encompassed in wonder.

In awe my eyes linger,

contemplating your next move, and every time surprised.

Dove.

'Free to good home', it reads, with all of the appeal of a comforting innocence.