
We may not be a match in this life, but damn, does your soul see mine as if it always has.
-gws

We may not be a match in this life, but damn, does your soul see mine as if it always has.
-gws

I want to live in a cabin between the woods and the sea
I want to smell mossy earth and pine resin at daybreak
Wood smoke and salt air at sunset
I want to be surrounded by books and filtered sunlight
Candles, blank pages, and moonlight
I want to walk with hopes by day
And dance with dreams by night
I want to watch banana slugs explore my garden
I want to hear the chorus of crashing waves
Gulls crying exultantly from the sky
Wind playing chase through the cypress boughs
I want to be free of the chains of expectations
Free of the weight of the looming other shoe
I wish not to drink from any more bitter cups
Fall on any more swords
Remove twisted daggers from my back
I crave peace
Beauty
Lightness
Hope
Creativity
Freedom
I crave relationships that are mutually supportive
That nurture souls
That transact in honesty
Respectfulness
Genuineness
Ease
Love
-gws

How do you never wonder
Why the mirror never
Reflects your own face
-gws

My darlings
You became little men
The day we ran from the boogeyman
You met the task as an adventure
Not yet aware that the world you knew
Crumbled while you slept
I will bring you as much magic as you can hold
To keep your hearts moored in innocence
I cannot stitch your world whole again
I promise to weave you a new tapestry
Rich in dreams
Love
Possibility
My little men
You have learned too early
How unkind the world can be
But we will meet it
Softly
Gently
Together
-gws

Dear sister
I see you
How your heart is bleeding
How your soul is aching
You are transforming
Becoming so much more
Than you imagined you were or could be
You are becoming a diamond
Under all of the pressure
One worthy to be the center piece
Of your own glorious crown
I can't wait to see how you shine
-gws

"Love is not enough"
This was a truth I gave you
In place of a kiss goodbye
Love is not enough to bridge
The chasm separating us
Neither is it flexible enough
To withstand the tension
It cannot rewrite our history
Erase the years of pain
It cannot alter reality
Nor save our unsalvageable marriage
The love between us is a shadow
A wraith
A remnant
Of a hope dressed up to look like love
In third-hand threadbare finery
The illusion shattered
And the real state of things exposed
-gws

Glass on asphalt
Making a mosaic
Of the mundane world
-gws

Do onto others as you wish to be done onto
This is the call
Cast off the shackles of
Abuse
Neglect
Mistreatment
Harm
The scars that mar your ancestors
The scars that mar you
The greatest gift given in life
Free will
Wield it like a craftsman
Hold it like a pen and
Rewrite your story
Erase the patterns from your pages
Show your children that you
Can reshape the stars in the sky
Show them how to heal in the light of the moon
And the bright beacon of day
No future is written in stone
No fate inevitable
Let it begin here
By deciding the pain of the past
Ends here
-gws

I need to unlearn your touch
The sound of your breathing
Next to me in the dark
I need to unlearn a lifetime
Of everything about you
-gws

She is a poet
An enigmatic storyteller
A word-painter who colors outside the lines
Who sometimes rhymes
Language her artistic medium
Manifesting nouns and verbs
Seeking nuanced shades in adjectives and adverbs
Crafting simile and metaphor
Manipulating personification and hyperbole
Until a shape evolves
This scaffolding for allegory to be called a poem
A golem built from meticulously chosen words
Watercolor emotions
Empathetic evocations
The work imbued with the DNA of her life experience
Powered by hope for her audience to feel at a visceral level
A fraction of the tsunami that lives in her
-gws