October.

Through misty morn and golden haze, dawns a month, October.
With glittering air and black cat’s stare, a Hallowed month, October.
Pumpkins, apples, leaves and fire, harvest in October.
Magic dwells and memories swell, a cursed day in October.

She wore her white, he wore his black, bound together there.
And as the leaves – dead – rustling past,
We leave that memory there to stay,
On that one chilled October day. No longer looking back.

© 2017 Lauren Huyser. All rights reserved.

Oil painting by Lauren Huyser

Knife.

Most of the time you don’t see it coming.
Almost all of the time you don’t feel it right away.

The cut is usually so clean,
so precise and so direct,
that it takes you time to feel what’s actually happened.

Initially its a stab.
It makes your throat catch, your breath slow,
your eyes swell with salty tears that burn;
followed by a deep slice through.

The edge sharpened by lies; each lie a pass across the whetstone.
Each corrosion in the knife created from a truth omitted,
catching on every memory.

“Please don’t cut me again,” I plead.
“I’m still healing from the last time.”

From a knife of the most dangerous kind.

Conflict.

It’s that feeling in your feet like you need to run.
That ache through your legs pulling you, urging you to go.
The knocking of your knees and the restlessness.
Yearning to scramble away from here.

It’s that empty void in the pit of your stomach.
The dark black that permeates through your insides.
The feeling that you can’t come up for air.
Drowning in swift, sticky, wet tears.

It’s that love that rips through your heart.
The electricity that pumps hot and alive in your blood.
The itch in your capillaries that make you tremble.
A thud that moves slowly in your chest.

It’s that lump in your throat that tricks you.
The deluge of words constrained by barriers of blubbering movements.
The silence heard brought by the noise enclosed within.
Onslaughts of the wrong thoughts screamed.

It’s that sense of knowing they love you.
It carries you through in strides.
A wrenching forward into an unknown environment.
Extremities twisting apart while your head stays pieced together.

It’s all of this.

Beat.

Rain falls from the pools of blue.
A storm swallowing thought.
She trembles.

The beat is weary.

Gone are the singing birds.
The sun within dying out.
She gasps.

The beat is weary.

The grass whips from the howling wind.
Disarray, turmoil, chaos.
She weeps.

The beat is weary.

It stops.

Warmth extends from the outermost.
Calming are the flowers growing.
He embraces.

The beat is weary.

Humble light pierces the clouds.
A gaze finds inner beauty.
He loves.

The beat is strong.