For twenty seconds
I parked on the tracks.
Even without a train in sight
I felt my mortality being threatened, vulnerable and exposed between
those oxidized iron rails.
My mind,
pulsating with adrenaline,
screamed at me to move
from the precipice of danger
with each ragged breath.
Yet for twenty selfish seconds
I kept myself there.
Stagnant and stupid.
Wide-eyed and white-knuckled.
Category: My Poetry
Thorns
Thoughts become embedded
into my brain like thorns.
They bury their sharp edges
deep into the vulnerable seams
of my subconscious,
silently smirking at their inability
to be removed.
Over time I forget about them
as they lie there quietly,
dormant in their watchful wait.
Their presence swiftly returning
the second my mind
starts to stir.
Words
Words have a lasting impact,
even the most seemingly insignificant ones.
Simple sentences morph into occult scars
that radiate with permanence and persistence within our heads.
Intrusive echoes left to remind us
of days long past and moments long gone.
Mere words become our
blessings and burdens.
Easily spoken,
yet impossible to forget.
Retellings
Sometimes you begin to tell me a story that you've already told me, but I let you continue.
I just nod, smiling, appearing as though everything you're telling me is brand new. Yet if I'm being honest, I don't truly listen to the words. I listen just enough so that I seem attentive, I keep my responses bland and short.
However, I use those times to study you, encapsulate your voice, absorb all your mannerisms and expressions. I watch the way you create each syllable rather than hear the meaning behind them. I focus on everything about you except the content of your speech.
For those precious moments I will never stop you from retelling me your story.
I'm simply grateful to be able to hear you tell them to me twice.
Grief
The sutures separate as old memories stir, sadness spills out from between the seams. But that's grief… Dehiscing delicate wounds each time they decide to close.
Despondent
While your despondent eyes
were cast downward,
I glanced at you as you held my hand.
Solemnly you watched as your pale finger rhythmically rubbed the soft skin
alongside the base of my thumb.
Your gaunt stare immediately
imprinted itself into my mind,
haunting me as a witness
to pure hopelessness.
We sat there together if only for a moment...
My words stifled.
Your silence deafening.
Ignorance
When you learn a new word,
suddenly it's everywhere.
You see it appearing on signs
around your all too familiar town...
You hear it echoing from a stranger's
mouth in another room...
You suddenly notice it blatantly staring
back at you from the pages in a book
you've read five times before...
But it's not coincidental.
It's simply the ignorance
to what you've always overlooked
beginning to fade away.
Pigeons
Detached
She couldn't understand why
she never felt the pain...
It had to have hurt.
It was the cortisol,
the norepinephrine...
It was the chemicals produced from
sheer panic that had instantaneously
turned her blood into red rivers
of viscous lidocaine.
Her senses so forcibly amplified
that everything else had just
gone numb.
Rabbit Hole
You followed me down
the rabbit hole.
My selfish hand found yours
and I led you into the darkness.
Quietly...
Recklessly...
Blindly.
I should have known that
I wouldn't be able to guide myself...
Let alone the both of us.
Anonymously Hal 
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