All's Well that Ends.

The bell chimes, the proctor cringes.

already noon, but no one's rising for lunch.

there are but two tenants of this galaxy of a room

she's too consumed with her work to care about him

and he's too consumed with her tests to think freely

She hardly notices the floating paper and passing shadow.

More of an interruption.

The bubbles made a line. Sometimes a zigzag when he was bored.

"Miserable student"

She glanced at the backs of pages, but never paid notice

to the words that happened there.

It was not part of the test, not gradable.

The words were stories of his life, his sorrows,

his crush who was too hooked on looking for love

to find it.

After a while, it got lonely.

to write for someone who didn't listen

while taking notes on everything they say.

And to love people who are too busy

to avoid leading you on.

This is how he learned about the ease of talk.

For in its realm, Three is company, Two's a crowd,

and One is for the painful truths.

when are you free?

Chaos.

Doesn't exist to the unlistening.

Though every speck of dust is truth,

every breath, a choice.

You were a mango. Unripened as I was.

We spoiled so fast in our brown paper bag.

Those sheets that tied our ethylene breath into knots.

And I still remember how black your tears tasted

when i burned it all down before you could escape.

the hill bore the red beacons, synchronizing with the grooves in the highway. But through the frosted windows of her core, they were nothing but a drawing she'd seen often . She had abused herself, turned herself inside-out for them. And they abandoned her for their own fantasies. Perhaps she was too possessive. Perhaps they were her fantasy and she was a hypocrite who was too bitter to move on.

To move on. Did she have the strength to do such a thing? They were her pillars, and she wanted to be theirs. But they sought no solace in her words or arms. They hardened themselves and toughed it out, so why couldn't she so simply replace them with her self-reliance she kept for the rainier days? What was it that made them so necessary to her? And then she realized that her necessity was a type of fear. That their absence would inevitably mean some absence of her own self. The same absence she was feeling now. Empty, numb, and driving the part.

writing is my fever pitch
throws out my faux discretions
and somehow finds such lines and stanzas
a list of bold transgressions.

in words without a fever at all
but full of reason and rhythm and rhyme
of course i'm speaking of yours
not mine.

at times they miss the time they spent
in the queue that never moved.
For action would mean desperation.
or worse, a love disproved.

because, you see,
i am prose, and you are poetry
i fall between your meters and metes
unable to fit your soliloquy

and at the bottom, there is beauty that these syllables do make
when they are free to flow as they will.

without rule.

He had to convince himself that this same feeling hangs in the air even when the leaves have gone. That autumn is not the source of charm. Rather, a reminder of it.

The city howled at the moon as she sat there feeling lifeless, the harsh brightness of the screen drawing her into a whirlwind of thoughts. The kind of thoughts that were never true, but she still perpetuated as a cruel way to lie to herself. She imagined that she had been forgotten by the ones who still understood her. It's not so hard to do when you're depressed, wondering why your friends aren't trying to find you in the same maze they've become lost and alone in. The thoughts become poisons so thick you can feel them crawling into your brain and staining it all a blurred sort of darkness until you've become blind with it. She welcomed them in, knowing they would hurt her. She wanted them to.