Killing Time

The house is dead quiet,
just me,
my chair, grousing like it’s tired too.
No phone calls, no emails,
no goddamn noise—
finally.

I crack open a Fanta
it spits a little fizz dripping down the side
like it’s laughing at me
or with me. who knows.
I take a swig.
It’s cheap and sharp,
too sweet,
but it tastes like the kind of freedom
you don’t have to explain.

A movie plays.
Some actor saying lines he doesn’t mean,
but it’s fine.
he’s doing his job.
I’m doing mine:
sitting here,
letting the hours bleed out
like there’s no rush to patch them up.

Outside, the world is gray,
but right here,
it’s just me,
an orange soda buzz,
and the feeling
that, for now,
everything’s right where it should be.

Leaving

The fog’s thick this morning,
I drag my tired ass out of bed,
feet cold,
head heavier than the world outside.

Leaves—they don’t care.
they just fall,
dull, tattered, and soaked,
smothering the ground like bad decisions, wasting away like forgotten dreams.

I rake them up,
but it’s pointless,
eventually they just scatter again
like too many people in life,
fading into the fog.

It’s cold,
and I’m tired,
but the leaves?
They keep falling.
They keep going.
So do I.

Principal’d contemplation.

I stepped into the gray evening,
the fog wrapping the jungle gym in a ghostly pause,
no squeals of tag, no bounce of the kickball—
just the echos of the day, fading.

Hallways hum with fluorescent stillness,
no boiler groaning, no papers rustling,
no lost-and-found gloves left behind.
My keys jangle, louder than expected
in this realm without citizens.

For a moment, the to-do list sits obedient,
not spilling over, not chasing me down the corridor—
and I sit in the quiet,
listening to nothing.

I don’t miss the chaos, not yet.
Not the scuffed floors, not the lunch trays clattering,
not the throng of hands reaching out
for pencils, for passes, for reassurance.

Still, the fog hangs heavy.
The building feels like a story waiting to happen,
its walls holding their breath for
the noise to return—
the sound of them,
alive and running, breaking the stillness
I thought I wanted.

For now, I wait,
this place mine alone,
fogged windows, empty desks,
a clock ticking softly toward January.

Trial by Fire

In the ash,
a single coal—
adorned in glowing red
still cooling
beneath my hands.

I stand,
smoke rising
from the folds
of my shadow,
the weight
of wings
I cannot see
bearing down
on my shoulders.

The fire waits—
it always does—
hungry
for the soft edges
of who I am.

A Sick Day

The world moves without me
beyond the window’s quiet frame;
the wind bends branches, stirs the leaves,
and whispers none to blame.

Here, still and tired, I lay,
the body's work under repair; 
no tasks to chase, no field to tend,
but only rest and air.

The earth, I know, will wait—
its soil unchanged, its rivers sure.
This day is given not for loss,
but simply to endure.

Go Outside

It’s been weeks of gray and rain,
weather gnawing the edges of things—
But this morning, the sky
is clean as an empty page…
Ready for my verse.

I lace my shoes and step out
into the humming quiet of the world, light leans in like an old friend.
A crow flaps off the telephone wire,
its wings a slow applause.

I move through it-
the sharp air filling my chest.

Everywhere, wet pavement smells,
and grass stretching toward the sun.
Isn’t it something,
how quickly the heart clears
when the sky does?

The body remembers—
not the heavy weeks of gray,
but this:
the brief, blessed brightness,
the feeling of being made new.

Ode to Obi

Oh, silent shadow, soft-footed sentinel,
you weave through my days, a whisper of fur
and amber eyes that hold the weight
of forgotten jungles.

You are not mine, yet you stay,
a creature of freedom who chooses
to curl in the sun-warmed corners of my life.
Each purr, a hymn, each gaze, 
a question without answer.

What do you see in my rough hands,
or hear in my tired voice,
that you settle here,
like a guardian of calm,
or a thief of my weary thoughts?

You, small god of indifference,
pull me into your silence.
In the night, I hear you prowling
a labyrinth of dreams,
a shadow of your wilder self.

Yet here, in the stillness of morning,
you stretch beside me,
a quiet warmth,
teaching me the sacred art
of being.