Silent torture works the best,

As if one’s memories were weights,

Weighing down the trudging steps

Echoing as darkness waits.

It’s hard to understand and agree with this quote, unless you’ve experienced a great loss. My friend, Paige Winters, died in a plane crash and it’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with in my entire life.

Her death truly has changed everything.

I wish…

I could run like an Olympian

I could draw without restrictions

I could dance like nobody is watching

I could sing as pretty as a mockingbird

I wish…

I could be a world traveler

It looked a bit like Lila, but it wasn’t Lila. I don’t know why people say that when someone dies they look like they’re sleeping. Her skin was dull grey and colder than ice. Her long body lay limp and heavy on the stainless steel table. Her clothes were dirty and rumpled.

Whenever I' m alone I miss you

Wish I took that chance to kiss you

I feel shattered and alone

like a dog thats lost his bone 

Remembering your laughing eyes

my life is filled with quiet sighs

Seasons may come and seasons may go

Rain danced gleefully across the tombstones as if mocking the dead. The now wet moss on older parts of the graveyard made the ground slick. It grew where other forms of life refused for reasons of their own, yet sparingly did the moss do so as if even it respected burial grounds.

Somehow you have found, where I was in the ground. I am there, I am also here. You have something new to fear. I’m not alive, but not quite dead . Though this is not what you have read. While light can be quite fun, I must avoid the world with sun. To walk the night is not quite what you think.

The Ponderosa Pines hunched ponderously,

Their convoluted gestures frozen

With dry, rasping limbs in stages of vexation

And narrow forearms lifted high

In savored moments of exalted epiphany.

My brother and I climbed the questions

she walks

head bent against the cold

and the weight of grief

shoving her down

A thousand stark crosses

Plotted on a green hill

Once moving a thousand miles an hour

Now stand still.

At life’s bloody terminus

We are told they are the purest of all of us

The rolling front blending together

Music Will Play

People Will Cry

But Big Joe

Didn’t Die

The coffin wood grabs at my clothes

The wood chokes me

The darkness attacks me

The weariness crawls around me

When it opens the sun grabs me

I am back

One vision, that is all it took to know how it all ends. That was the idea behind the product 32F, nicknamed the Death Box. There were 380 of us, we were the test subjects who willingly volunteered for the test. Truthfully, I was just in it for the money.

Sitting on my grandpa Larry’s lap,

laughing and smiling.

Going everywhere on the cart smiling.

Smiling the way he laughs.

Going to the hospital trying to smile,

but I can’t.

Rushing to his room I run.

I loved you

And you loved me

Many nights we stayed awake together

Holding you close

Every time singing

Rhymes of geese and shoes

Every night

I hear the gunshot, I do not see 

The bullet but I know it’s coming 

Aimed to perforate my skull 

They say your life flashes, once death’s 

Shadow is on your tail and grips you in 

The tabletop

Dirty

With years of paint.

A paint knife

A sponge

A cup of water

The only things that remove years of memories

A fresh palate

Orange watercolor

Pink tempura

Black acrylic