#writingalchemy

[writerraines]

I laid you down

in the moonlight,

traced sigils on your ribs,

outlining each rose.

Mangled dreams

slipped between the seams

of your sighs.

You said you’d felt something real—

for the first time in forever.

But it was over

before it began.

I told you this was nothing new,

at least not for me.

You said that made you sad.

I asked why?

You had no answer.

And after that,

not many words remained—

only your apology.

I didn’t understand why you were sorry.

This was life.

This was normal

for people like me.

Not many can sit in the pauses,

when a writer craves words

over shared wine,

solitude over shared air.

I think you were one of the few

who understood.

But you had other realms to haunt,

no more time for mine.

So you laid yourself down—

one last drink,

one last time.

[writerraines]

The sun was aghast.

Right in my eye.

Sweat on my cheek.

My hair wild.

You said it was perfect.

If the dead can dream, I wonder if you sometimes dream of that night.

Where nothing but the new moon was our common companion.

Sometimes I wake up in that field by that back road where the dust never settles.

My research attempts failing me again.

The early sun always shining too deliberately.

I swear the four wheelers have tripled.

You would have hated that.

I crack open a can of coffee and set to work.

My research was always different from yours.

You researched life.

I researched grief.

Ever curious how much sadness the human heart can carry before it gives out.

How I never realized how deeply your own griefs had settled.

So I carry on alone in the desert, observing and watching.

I write and I wonder if any of it adds up in the end.

And how I wish I had one more chance to argue about the the difference between corvids.

How the crows still follow me.

And the ravens still taunt me.

How my heart will never quite settle.

g.m. Raines

@writerraines

[writerraines]

The song replayed itself taking me back to you. And that backroad the tourists have yet to discover.

And corporations have yet to exploit.

Why does American progress always begin with a bulldozer?

Why does love always die on a backroad?

I reread your last message reminding me to stick to the familiar road and always stare up at the moon.

You were the only other who loved the moon as I did.

Always reminding me of its rising in all of its ethereal stages.

But the familiar roads were not the ones that saved me.

g.m. Raines

[writerraines]

Novelty

Wearing off.

Patience wearing thin—

thin like these lips

that once plumped your little lies.

I was bored.

You were boring.

Even your lies were recycled,

hand-me-down deceptions

from someone else’s script.

Is that why your ex still stalks me?

A ghost of your past, haunting my present,

while you linger in the shadows of your own mediocrity.

I left you on read.

You left me for dead.

But now I rise—

a phoenix you never met,

inked into skin you wanted blank,

empty,

a canvas for your beige imagination.

You preferred me bare,

like your mother’s walls,

her bland soup,

your mind—

a matching set of nothingness.

I heard you let your replacement wife paint,

but only in shades of tan.

Nothing too bold,

nothing too real,

nothing to risk your mother’s fragile approval.

And now you sit there,

behind your screen,

your miscoded firewall,

seeking approval from me—

the one who got away.

I’ll bet your skin is still blank,

while mine blooms with color,

a masterpiece you’ll never touch again.

[writerraines]

I used to be soft.

I craved satin and lavender,

roses and realness.

Now, I’ve grown scales,

like the reptiles I grew up with,

the ones I watched with fascination

while others recoiled in fear.

*“But they’re poised. Misunderstood,”*

I argued to my second-grade teacher

when she said no to my Show and Tell.

*“You always looked so poised,”* you told me,

after you’d gotten to know me—

this side of me.

Not the soft part.

Not the smooth, rigid, scaled part.

But the fiery part.

The one forged in the unrelenting

metamorphosis of life.

The one that lingers, silent,

fueling my nature.

And I could see it scared you.

Not a single line of ink

over your wiry frame—

of course, the thought of scars

terrified you.

You’d spent your life

dodging flames,

craving only what you could control.

Then you met me.

And the one thing you couldn’t do

was bend me.

I became your new craving.

And you still wonder

why I refused to play your game.

[writerraines]

There are moments with most desert terrain where we come to the same unsettling realization of our humanness.

Absorbing the full magnitude of our frail weakness.

Our pathetic neediness for water.

For shade and respite.

For real relief.

Yet we trudge on - carried alive by the rabid wanderlust within our primal core.

It can take a few hours to finally walk away from our societal urges for proper meal and rest times.

For proper care of our appearance as our sweat and sand baked bodies give in to the horizon.

We travel onward with new eyes.

New vision despite the piercing sun’s rays.

We carry on seeking waterfalls and rest.

Renewal and hope in the promised hidden oasis.

It’s the surrender that gives us new light.

It’s the wonder that keeps us true to our core spirit.

It is our pain that keeps us grounded and grateful for each of our bones.

Our hearts and our lungs.

Oh our precious lungs.

How often we see what we do to those when we assume that we’ll alway have time.

That we’ll always have air.

It’s the very definition of absurdity how we fight against the elements of our nature seeking reprieve in the form of that high that never quite qualifies as the vista that our legs currently climb.

@writerraines

[writerraines]

“We’re on the edge of the solstice.

Yet it still feels like the fickle spring.

There’s a thread of eeriness in the air.

It’s soft and insistent in its temperate warning.

The skies are too bright and the air is too dry.

The water is shallow and stagnant.

Yet still they keep flocking - RV’s, boats and third and fourth homes.

Tearing up the delicate desert.

Tossing in pools, grass and palm trees.

So desperate to recreate their old home.

They talk of a lack of assimilation - never addressing their own.

They ask me again how I like it here.

How lucky I am to reside amidst towering cliffs, ancient fossils and precious sage.

I tell them my rent is past due.

And I fear I’ll never again own my own home.

But at least the moon is my companion.

I can still see the stars.

And the lizards and scorpions listen when I let them.

And now they’re asking me about scorpions.

And if I know anyone who does pest control.”

g.m. Raines

[writerraines]

[writerraines]

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