i have this feeling in my bones that some call weakness and other call fire.

it's a driving need and a crippling desire, and it wakes me in the middle of the night with cramping calves and feet running among cotton though they reach nothing but the great beyond of the side of the bed. it's a burning that pushes me into the middle of rainstorms to dance among the cracking weather kissing the earth, and it's a spark lit under the gasoline pooled under my heart. some call me crazy and others call me sane, but if you look for me in the heart of winter, you will often find me curled under the dead oak touching the bark because i like the way life looks when it's hidden.

you'll often find me like this, looking for hidden life and concealed light. sometimes, i will search for under the frozen wrinkles and concrete-frowns of the lonely, and other times i will seek it in the ocean before the storm. i will hunt under the foliage like a hungry wolf, and i will howl at the canopy as i track it down when the rest of the world slumbers in quiet. i will look for it in coffee shops with too many faces and not enough heart, i will look for it in cobwebbed corners where girls cry for lost lovers.

i will hunt for the abandoned life, and i will bleed ink and breathe phrases. when i dream, i will dream in freshly printed pages and faded dog-eared novels. i will love with a heart that has spent eons ebbing and flowing and learned the long lost art of regrowth. i will give my love with an earnest belief in forever even though i have lived long years in the valley of broken promises. i will give my heart to ink-eyed boys with poet-hands and i will trust in the strength of slender shoulders. i will live on the edge and will only sleep when i fall. i will not be afraid of the moment of suspension of the air, and will yearn for the moment of bones cracking against the valley floor.

i will regrow; i always do.

you see, i have a belief and a desire and a need. some call me crazy, some call me foolish, and others still call me naïve. i will hold this world in the concaved cavern of my chest and i will believe that though it spits evil with every indrawn breath, that at the end of the day, the core of it is good. i will turn my cheek to the darkness that has drawn jagged scars down my sloping back, and i will turn my eyes to the light of the heavens. i will live my life in the pencil sketching i have drawn of the world, and i will believe in the ink of my beliefs.

some will call me weak for not accepting what they call reality.
some will call me crazy for chasing the fantasy i call life.
but i will cry to the skies, and i will sing, "i am alive."