Petrichor is a complete vernal scent,
an ache so feral it’s filled with lightning.
Waiting for new plans to make a descent
the past seems to leave the future biting.
Plans slowly unfurl and then start to run,
a hit to the soul spiking bone marrow.
With no need to outsource to anyone,
you’re in control of your own tomorrow.
That urge to defenestrate the outgrown,
when you impel it’s a breath of fresh air.
Nervously investing in the unknown
feels a bit like that initial jump scare.
Choking on such cloying efflorescence
vestige broke in exposing my pretense.
The tallow guttering upon the stone,
Casts out a dark that swallows up the room,
We learn to walk the heavy void alone.
The shadow thickens to a gilded bone,
A crushing weight that stifles in the gloom,
The tallow guttering upon the stone.
We stumble through the night we call our own,
Where blackness weaves a tight and choking loom,
We learn to walk the heavy void alone.
Yet deep within the dark where grief is sown,
The sight adjusts inside the silent tomb,
The tallow guttering upon the stone.
The blackness yields to light that has outgrown
The blinding sun that withered flower and bloom,
We learn to walk the heavy void alone.
The shadow reveals what day has failed to own,
And burning pain dispels the final doom,
The tallow guttering upon the stone,
We learn to walk the heavy void alone.
You've outgrown this dim room of mould
ceiling's peeling, walls are cracked and cold
get a room with view and broom
table for chats via zoom
live without control, equally bold —
Full circle may not signify completion.
You know why I don’t like your game?
It doesn’t allow for evolution.
I’ve outgrown you, learned on my own.
I feel like I’ve aced the uneven bars.
ln the beginning we were like magnets,
it was an endless loop trying to get to you.
Words on repeat, songs on repeat,
our late nights left me exhausted at work.
Now I am forced to walk on egg shells,
the behavior appears to be never-ending.
It’s a constant state of changing places,
we are always moving but never in sync.
When are we going to both hit clockwise,
unify and again accelerate forward?
Vesica piscis would be better than this,
at least then there is a common thread.
Completion may be accepting uneven,
walking away could bring you full circle.
The catch is what is left incomplete,
maybe the endgame is initial connection.
Hot air shimmies
down the dirt road
and asphalt sidewalk alike
Your skin is breathing
its little flame tassels
in unison
Chaos is here and there, everywhere
You are steeped in its ancient solvent
melting the rigid fabric of
long outgrown frames of mind
Offer your edge to the wild
unruly breath
to the dance of
constriction and release
Let the string of sweat beads
scatter on the floor of this friction
Flow down to the land of this skin
that knows no bounds
Holy water rising from the bone-deep well
to rinse you clean, wash you down
crack you open to surrender
dip you and your inmates
into the luminous presence
of an ordinary breakout
Hallelujah
I wondered where the teardrops go,
Once they have been softly wept.
Do they wander with the winds,
Or rest where Heaven's secrets slept?
I followed one through autumn fields;
It kissed the earth without a sound.
By spring, a bloom of bluebonnets
Had crowned the very place it found.
Another sought an ancient oak
And disappeared beneath its grain.
The tree stood taller year by year,
Made stronger by another rain.
Another reached a stranger's heart
Who smiled though burdened by despair.
It bloomed into a gentle grace
That neither soul knew lingered there.
For every teardrop remembered hope
When I remembered only pain.
It gathered all my broken prayers
And whispered them like summer rain.
For every teardrop remembered love
When I believed that love had flown.
It stitched together thread by thread
The tattered places I'd outgrown.
For every teardrop remembered light
Though all I saw was endless night.
It kept a flame I could not tend
Until the dawn returned my sight.
So, if you wonder where they go,
Do not search the earth or sea.
The tears I thought the world had lost...
Were busy becoming me.
I don’t care that she’s beside you now,
that she hears your softened voice,
that she gets the careful version
you’ve rebuilt into a choice.
I don’t ask about her laughter,
or the way you say her name—
I’ve already seen the shadows
you keep hidden from the frame.
You can play the part of better,
you can swear that you’ve outgrown—
but there are things you bury deep
that I still carry, all alone.
So let her live inside your light,
untouched by what you’ve been—
I won’t say a word to break it…
but I know the truth within.
It starts with a map spread across
the kitchen table,
fingertips tracing the jagged contour lines
like a language only the heart can translate.
Some call it a hobby,
but you know the truth by the weight on your back-
and the contents in your pack.
It is a holy burden,
a physical manifestation of a need
to be smaller than the world but larger then
your imagination.
There is a fever
Qin the rhythm of the ascent,
the way the lungs burn in synchronicity with the calves.
You aren't just walking;
you are consuming the distance,
swallowing the switchbacks
until the trailhead is a memory
and the valley floor is a map you’ve outgrown.
Your boots have memorized
the texture of granite and root,
the specific crunch of shale under a desperate heel.
They say "obsessed" like it’s a cage,
but here, in the thin air where the trees give up,
it feels more like an opening.
You hunt the summit not for the view,
but for the moment the internal noise finally stops-
when the only sound left is the wind
stripping away everything you thought you were
until you are nothing but breath,
moving upward unable to-
turn back.
You may see me as so much smut,
in my mouth lies the hardest stone.
A single bite straight to the bone,
rotting diamond teeth will still cut.
I’ve got this age-resistant strut,
ninety proof that I walk alone.
You may see me as so much smut,
in my mouth lies the hardest stone.
Filled with such polished etiquette
the sick properties held are known.
There are things I haven’t outgrown.
With all four ‘C’s keep the door shut,
you may see me as so much smut.
Manchu poetry
In the silence of the firs, I gather what remains,
The fragments of a memory, the loosening of chains.
I look at the reflection, but the eyes are not my own,
A shadow in the mirror of a self I've outgrown.
The autumn air is cooling, the summer's green has fled,
A transition in the seasons for the words I haven't said.
The "female asterisk" is a weight I cannot bear,
A heavy skirt I carry, but no longer want to wear.
I am an unstoppable storm, a force of grace and fury,
Escaping from the prying eyes and the world's quiet jury.
I am not a project to fix, nor a role to be played,
But a traveler in the mist, where the old versions fade.
In the vast open sky, I find a different light,
Walking through the shadows to the dawn after night.
I am "both me and mystery," a truth I finally see,
Lost to the world I knew, but found in being me.
You've outgrown your PJs,
the ones I bought a year ago
that seemed so big at the time,
and now here they are -
inches above your wrists and ankles,
worn through at your elbows and knees.
I feel that familiar pang,
the one that plunders my chest
each time I pack up your clothes,
each time I pack up our memories
and say a hasty goodbye
to another version of you -
the one who wore these faded PJs
for family movie nights and bedtime stories,
through good dreams and bad,
on lazy weekend mornings full of cuddles and cartoons,
and on the days you were too sick to change,
sleeping beside me all day.
Now here they are, outgrown,
full of memories... yet empty.
I think about the things I hope you never outgrow.
The innocence that gives you faith.
The imagination that gives you possibility.
The empathy that makes you kind.
The curiosity that makes you wonder.
And though I'll desperately miss this version of you,
the little person you've outgrown,
I can't wait to meet the next one.
Outgrowing without a goodbye
Is this what growing is?leaving everything behind over and over again,
I still wonder how many versions of myself I've outgrown without Noticing ,while sitting in the rain..
Old photos hung up in the wall ,
Staring at them quietly ,afraid if I felt too much I would fall..
The thoughts I used to carry ,the smiles I used to feel ,the dreams I used to chase,
Now ,are blatant memories I'm too afriad to erase..
I carried yesterday into today,
hoping the weight would fade away.
Strange ,how we live within ourselves,Yet never see,
The transformation-so subtle ,day by day free..
Do we ever long for the tunes of who we used to be?
No- we let them fade and decay silently..
It's only when we look back we realize,
How much of us have we shedded,
How much of us have we lived ,
We are nothing but many lives that lived under the same skin..
I tried the darkness,
over and over again.
I tried being stone
until I felt like I’d crack.
Elation was elusive.
Nothing was enough
so I took myself apart
to restructure me.
Isolation in traction
is therapy I’ve outgrown.
All bottled inside
an antique candelabra.
Too human to hide,
it’s as ancient as DNA.
Soul always bubbles over.
Dear Florence,
How the evening sun sets upon us,
To garnish the sky in marigold wreaths;
For it sprouts the mist of heavenly light,
The myth I wish to garner from thee.
O’ deathly lady, speak unto me truth,
Does beauty cower ‘neath thy sanctum of stone?
Or perhaps it hides within moss ridden yards,
And loves anew each death it’s outgrown.
O’ deathly lady, veiled under the breeze,
How I envy thine eyes lain barest at dawn;
Awaiting the sun through tender spring leaves,
And blinding thyself – awake to true beauty.
Florence Margaret Mainland
(Nov. 25, 1903-June 8, 1925)
Mound Cemetery, Racine, Wisconsin
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
midnight blues bled into dawn pinks
beneath her needle's patient rhythm.
scraps of my outgrown dresses,
Grandad's flannel shirt, threadbare at the elbows –
resurrected geometry.
her hands traced constellations
of mismatched calico and gingham.
thimble’s silver moon rose and fell
binding frayed edges
into something whole,
something warm against the dark.
Now, her hands rest
but what remains is a
cedar chest in which
her life’s work
is contained.
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