When We're Awake At Night. Levi Laws

is an unrecognizable satisfaction.

      Peering up to a front yard, with a rusted old fence.

      My children ran past chasing each other.

      Their laughs levitated into the air, filling it

      with the simplest joy I have never experienced.

      You came up behind me and touched my arm,

      laying your soft cheek on my shoulder.

      The scent of rose perfume filled my senses

      as we peered out into this new reality.

      My glance snapped back to my broken gaze.

      Face now flushed, my eyes began to fog.

      This reality is inconceivable

      This reality is never real.

      Remembering

      I picked you up at 1:30 p.m.

      Watched you skip to my car to the beat of my heart.

      Can it be like this forever?

      I would eventually accept all your love for me as genuine as the love a mother has for her child flaws and all, I thought as I looked at you at the stoplight.

      But how could someone like you love me?

      How would I ever believe your reassurance was enough insurance?

      You turned back and smiled at me, and I decided to believe.

      I cherished every moment that day,

      and I dropped you off at 2 a.m. for the last time.

      ?

      Each time you looked me in the eyes and told me you loved me,

      I wonder if you felt the same pain I feel now, knowing you were lying.

      Would it have been so hard to just tell me the truth?

      Insufficient Instructor

      Brought here by the ones before me.

      Unwavering desire to inspire.

      Give back to what was given to me.

      Each day, a moment to admire.

      Each bell rung, each sheet passed.

      Every moment spent,

      listening to their laughs.

      This is my destiny, where all time will be spent.

      Sudden moments of disgrace,

      did take it all away.

      To never see their face,

      To this affair made a heart decay.

      Each day fought for triumphant return.

      Sauntering nights of no reply.

      A weary heart did ever yearn,

      for sweet release of last goodbyes.

      Shunned away to Hell's despair,

      A moment of mercurial misery.

      A perpetual nightmare.

      I have failed the ones closest to me.

      Alone

      A monastic mindset manipulates my mind.

      This is my new reality.

      Staring at my ceiling, sequestered from my soul.

      My sheets are binding to me.

      There are no more thoughts that haven't been thought.

      A cycle has situated itself in my

      psyche of kisses, subtle touches.

      Every red flag that you so beautifully

      explained away that I bought without concern.

      As a battered child in a toy store, mothers card in hand.

      Solitude is where I should surrender,

      but surrender is a sweet release that I am not ready for.

      So for now leave me alone.

      13

      Over-saturated words said.

      Munificent acts over and over again.

      Wafting in the scents to remember.

      Torridness becomes tortuous,

      Kismet is purposeless.

      Mellifluous music sours in place of silence.

      Sedition seems to be the best compliance.

      Immutable feelings are immortal.

      Soliloquy's don't feel necessary; not anymore.

      Tumultuously Trapped

      I could never scream.

      Anger was never to be shown to you.

      Held in by fear and my self esteem.

      How could I ever stand up to you?

      Hold the upper hand,

      Turn the other cheek

      Take the higher ground.

      Cliches to bottle your feelings inside me.

      Men are supposed to scream

      Isn't that what they tell us?

      Be angry, be manly, be mean.

      That's always the right thought process.

      My father believed this was right,

      and this is what I saw each day, more and more.

      So why whenever voices sail to the sky,

      do I get shaken to my very core?

      That is what they teach us,

      men are supposed to scream.

      But no matter the lessons I have learned,

      that can never be me.

      Grin Truth

      You tell your boy

      to grow up and

      then you wonder

      why he has

      stopped smiling.

      A Prudent Promise

      Shrieks of substance,

      their siren song.

      Crashes causing consciousness.

      Gambits of grief

      is our genesis.

      I promise to protect you,

      as the door begins

      to decimate.

      Tonight we suffer,

      surrendering to strikes.

      Blood red tears pass by

      the faces of innocent.

      One day, the promise

      will be prudent.

      But tonight we suffer,

      together.

      A Way to Feel

      Purple ambiance stains my eyes.

      Tracks of serotonin feel