Gentle hand, slapped back

Faces turned from kindest gaze

To a colder path...

Struggling to open my eyes

Trying to put on a disguise

To make me seem like a morning person

As the heat of the day recedes

Work ends, and I tend to my needs

For comfort, relaxation, and laughter

After dark, my brain comes alive

Words leap from my fingers and thrive

Seeming like the best I've ever written...

She wrapped her hand around the icicle, and it bit her bare skin, like sharp needles sticking into her palm....

They say she comes in response to the cries of an unwilling bride the night before her wedding. For she was once such a maiden, wearing a dress she didn't want, forced into the arms of a man she did not choose. They say that rather than face her fate, she set off onto the moors with a single lantern for company, never to be seen alive again. And yet sometimes, she is still seen, out in the darknes...

Among the thundering peaks

I lift my head

And bid good morning

To the dawn-streaked towers carved upon the rock...

Everything in life can be recycled

Everything exists to be used

and reused

and reused

by each other

transformed

and informed

and absorbed

by one another

From the earliest stars

to the bones beneath the earth,

eroded and scarred,

It's all the same.

It's all

a puzzle

dumped out of a box by an unruly child

and strewn about in pieces on the floor

You are simply the current way these pieces come to...

Beware the red claws

Lurking in the details

Poised to drag you down...

Bells and bright colors

Have you no hidden depths, or

Is it just an act?...

At the end of things,

I asked God, "Show me your face!"

He opened the door....

One: the number of Google searches it took for me to go, "Oh my god. This is me. There's a word for it."

Two: the number of times I had to come out to my mom.

The first time, I thought I might be bi, or maybe gay. All I knew is that I maybe had a crush on a girl, now, and when I told my mom, she stood up and hugged me.

The second time, she said, "That's just how all girls are. You don't want sex ...