Holding On

Your father's here
He isn't perfect
But he wants to know you
I know he does

He won't let you leave without a fight
and that's something

Photo by Malay Prakash.  Words by Dustin Whitehead.

My Skyline

The city

deluminate

at half past sixteen

Cubicle dwellers

put on their

fluorescent-goggles

Industry folk

scavenge

for breakfast

Rush hour trains

lullaby

the exhausted

Loved ones

meet

to dine

And we

ask  did the city speed up

or did we slow down?

Photo by Malay Prakash. Words by Ciara Brewer.

...For You

So, I'll be forthright, this poem is for you.

You are the sun. And I think I'm the horizon.
Hoping to nightly, absorb you, lay with the stars
and hold you till morning.
Then to let you go and watch you grow distant during the day.
And when our lips hit at dusk and dawn we whisper secrets
we've never told and melt, for a moment, into comfort.
I swear I've never kissed anyone like that.
Like that one time.
Like the sun.

And I'm the blood.
Pushing around, being cleaned.
Keeping alive.
I want to be the thing that moves you.

And we are the hearts,
unable to escape from our skin,
can't let each other in
because we don't share the same rhythm right now.
But I wish we did.

This is a poem for you.
It's not the best. And it may not be your style.
But know, these words live in me like blood,
and I'll write them down like the constant setting sun,
hoping not to be undone
'cause I have this thing in my chest.

Photo by Malay Prakash.  Words by Jordan Lane Shappell.