I step off cliffs.
That is where my mind takes me.
I exhort everyone pretending to know more,
and I do it innocently,
knowing how limited my realities are.
Many have walked roads
I would not dare follow.
Many have suffered
in ways my soul could not endure.
So bear with me
if I cannot love you more,
or see into the clear open space
of your eyes.
Everything I own is borrowed.
I gather up what the tide brings in,
until I have all the debris
of other lives around me.
All their tears and kisses.
All their dreams placed with roses
in keepsake books and boxes.
And I don’t know what to do with them,
except there are cities and lands
I wish I could see,
people cherished for their rarity,
words uttered like butterflies
and never recorded.
All in the distance,
all living in their time and place,
which I will never see,
share secrets with,
except artifacts brought by the wind,
by the ocean,
by time itself,
to know something of someone’s truth
and write a song, a poem,
to put back with love
for you to find and keep hold of.