"Fey, it is Christmas today."

I turned on the torn wrapper I had laid on the floor and glanced into the tired eyes of my brother. He sat on the bare floor with his legs crossed. His ten-year-old body looked like a beaten-down forty-year-old's. I am sure I looked worse than he did.

I looked around and noticed that it was still dark. Several other people were clustered around, some asleep, others sitting and staring into space. The putrid scent of alcohol and cigarettes clung to the air like a leech, refusing to come off.

“Why are you awake?” I asked, returning my gaze to my brother.

“Because it is Christmas.”

“Okay?”

He remained silent, obviously lacking an answer to my obvious question. His inability to answer must have upset him, because the next thing I saw was tears in his eyes.

I climbed to a sitting position and looked at him worriedly.

“What is wrong?”

He refused to answer, instead giving the tears permission to fall. I stayed there, glued to the floor, staring at the only family member I have in the entire world.

“Okay, okay,” I said, trying to pacify him. “Merry Christmas.”

He turned to me and smiled. I smiled back in return.

“Today will be different," he said. “It is Christmas.”

We had spent the last ten Christmases together, and it had never been different, so I wondered what he thought was going to be different about the day. It wasn’t until later, when his body was laid down into the cold ground, that I realized just how different that Christmas was.

Finally, he was free. He got a gift.

“Merry Christmas,” I whispered, trying in vain to hold back the tears.

he wakes his love

dark rumble

over lush surface

she feels his insistence

a building deluge

that can no longer be denied

cloudbursts profess

his love unbound

as she achingly pulls

every aqueous droplet offered

into her substratum

for she knows

this is life itself

spent, he deeply inhales

the rising aromatic nectar

of their liaison

upon her landscape

I am left tongue-tied, ridiculous, red.

As though under a microscope and stark lights

I feel you look at me with your stunning, entire self.

Do you know how often your words have occurred to me?

Naked and plain - piercing...?

Fleeting eyes and words and feet that tease me with their clarity,

Summoning up my own shy truths

Begging to be whispered in your ear

Begging to hear more

Because you've got a direct line to my soul

And I am ready for an out-pouring of my own...

Suspicious, darting eyes,

That have seen far too many lies

Falling from lips of lovers and friends

Prevents me from saying "I am in love with you!"

In an Anais Nin/June kind of way...

Prevents me from saying "You are beautiful, and unafraid!"- and I...?

Am as a twelve year old girl discovering her warm, soft breasts for the first time:

Dizzy, and proud, and alive.

Forgive me if I cannot look you in the eye.

-JTW

I’m often reminded of you.

When I feel joy overwhelm me.

Joy I thought you were faking.

When joy reveals itself plainly.

When joy reveals itself through song.

When synths feel cinematic and manic

and make me want to morph my body into a star.

When I hear lamentations about our eventual fate

that still allow space for awe amid lingering angst

When I want to feel everything, everywhere, all at once

When I want to feel everyone I love.

When I am wondering where I learned how to care.

When my funeral comes, I hope no one sheds a tear

After all, the moment I’ve been waiting for my whole life is finally here

Erase my accolades and forget about my career

That’s not what I want to be remembered for

It’s kinda weird

I detest the thought of being revered

I could care less about how many hours I clocked

Or how many certificates adorn my beige walls

Please don’t reminisce about my smile

It’s just a mask

There’s no need to pine over the past

I just want to depart quietly

My time is up

And yours is not

Make the most of what you got

I love you like it is my job to do so, proudly wearing the badge that says Employee Of The Year. At each year's end, I will beg for another contract, refusing to project my energy elsewhere.

Even though I am as unknown to you as last season's dead leaves, my love is stronger than the mighty elm that once held them. I am the little bird at the top of the bare branch you have not seen, cheering for you as you soar to your own heights without me.

Some may call what I am doing wrong. I think not. I truly mean no harm. What is done in the name of love can only be right. Agreed? Perhaps our buildings were built with a future intent. Brick by brick a lovestruck mason could have surmised. "What if a man were to gaze out from this very window and look down. What would he see?" Yes. It all makes sense. He built this window where I sit for me; where I watch you read by the light shining in from the sun through your window illuminating each of your features; your silky brown hair, your golden skin, the slope of your nose casting just the right amount of shadow over your lips, all created by the hand of a generous God.

I can only hope someday you will look up directly at me and know, better yet we will meet down in the courtyard. Our eyes will lock and you will understand that I am the one you have been waiting for. I am the one that has loved you long before you were born and I will love you until my last dying breath and beyond. Even if my love should remain anonymous, if my love for you is not seen, how does that mean it does not exist? True love cannot hide from itself. And if it is blind, then let me be guilty.

Are you reading love poems today? Search for me in the words. Find me there if nowhere else, my love. In this lifetime or the next, I am all yours.

Everyone knows that when someone is hurting, they are heavier.

The light in their eyes turns to sludge, and it sinks down into the soles of their feet, swamping the skipping joy in the tips of their toes.

Their lips are bowed, gently tugged downwards by the weight of their pain, and betraying everything and nothing all at once.

Their back is arched, burdened by the world, hauled down by it. The body curves and stays that way, more like stone every day.

But hardest to see and even harder to bear is in the heart. Every hurt is a pebble, threaded onto heartstrings, sinking below the tip of the breastbone like a necklace.

This heaviness is within, invisible, and its weight is the fiercest, drawing shutters over the eyes, and catching you in time like molasses, creeping and consuming and forever-seeming.

Sometimes the heartstrings snap, and with a gasp, the pebbles clatter down into the soul, the soles of the feet, and then you cannot move, only weep as your broken heartstrings hang limp behind your ribs. The pebbles turn your feet, your legs to stone, and however much you may wish to run, you cannot.

Sometimes people endure so many small heavy hurts that the pebble necklace grows too long. Long enough that it wraps around their neck and their wrists and covers their eyes and gags them, and they are changed, chained.

Sometimes the pebble necklace in someone's heart drags them straight to their grave.

Sometimes the pebbles are so heavy that life and light and laughter are hopeless.

Sometimes the necklace chokes you.

Sometimes it breaks.

But sometimes you can slide you fingers between your ribs, draw those heartstrings out from their cage, and however painful it may be, you can slip the pebbles from the necklace.

one

by

one.

Count them.

Polish them.

Kiss them.

And eventually, cast them away.