Author: Molly Brubaker

Explain, they demand. Tell us what you want to say.

I’m trying.

But what do you mean?

I don’t know, I just—I feel like—

Spit it out!

I’m sorry, I just don’t know how to—

Don’t apologize, just say what you’re feeling.

Hold on.

Excuse me.

Say what I’m feeling? If I strung into words the emotion doing the tango in my heart, your nose would crinkle up in confusion.

Because you may be sad. You may be happy.

But the moon watches as I weep bittersweet, and the sun looks on in awe as I laugh sugar cinnamon.

Don’t demand I explain what you cannot fathom.

If I change my mind

If I beg, plead, scream that maybe you can take no for an answer

Will you still love me like you so loved the person who said yes?

I know that if I cry, if I let the tears fall

I will feel better.

I will not long for the stars’ embrace, nor the moon’s cool breath on my wet cheeks, nor the song of owls celebrating the dark.

I will be happier.

And yet, I do not cry.

I write.

Because now, now the bittersweet is there for me to devour whenever I desire.

“Help me,” she cries to the cold black sky.

“I’ve a horrible disease and my heart cannot take it any longer.”

The moon lowers its head to listen. The sun burns with lack of privacy but the moon listens without announcing, without laughter.

Her breath is short and the clouds begin to weep with her, a forever torrent of distress that washes the mask from her face.

She lifts her head to her hushed companions and sobs, “I feel, and I fear that is what will be the death of me, in the end.”

“And if I fall,” she screams to the empty blue

“If I fall, will they help me up or just laugh from their parachute?”

It eats us up, earning money and being efficient and going so fast you can’t see the world blurring past.

Good. You’re sitting here reading this. Wasting time. Or are you? Imagining, breathing, feeling isn’t a waste of time.

You can practically taste caramel peanut butter chocolate as I scribble words. Sweet sugar icing over cinnamon buns!

Was that a waste? Don’t try to tell me it was. You won’t convince anyone but yourself.

The faster we sprint, the faster life breezes past, the sooner we’ll run out of time.

And really, can you, can anyone honestly tell me we’re better off with End chasing?

Running, feet pounding on dead dark ground, life blurring as if we lack glasses?

Breathe the sky, cut-glass-sharp cold in your sinuses as you drink pale blue.

It tastes delicious. Like breezy pumpkin autumn celebrations. And maybe leaf crunches?

Gravity time is pulling sand to the bottom of the hourglass.

Somehow, the world taught us to sit back and watch.

But we won’t drown in blindness anymore, will we?

Let’s flee to beaches with warm imagination sand.

Mountains with crisp clean cold passion air.

Don’t ask if it’s worth it.

Capturing moments slows gravity time.

We forget to live.

Time runs out.

We die.

Feel.

So in the end, darling

In the end, I think I will sit back with a pencil in my grasp

And write what I feel,

With honesty rawer than one with nothing to lose.

Because who am I, if not someone who breathes words?

Why are those that die for their loved ones deemed heroes?

Is it not torture to leave a soul behind to mourn loss until their own death?

Do they not carry the heaviest weight, those that remain in this ghastly life?

I want to know when we forgot to

Doodle on Converse

Point at stars

And be still enough to let butterflies rest on our noses

What’s wrong with us?

We write and read, sing and dance

The most colorful life one would never need.

So the rain never seems to truly go away

Because crime doesn’t pay, but neither does art