A breath escapes me. Not through my mouth or my nose.
Through my heart, a clinching pain.
A body unknown to me, never crossed paths.
My footsteps embedded where his ended. A never-ending search.
A gasp. A realization.
One minute. Two minute. Three minute.
Three, two, one. Impossible, unimaginable.
A helpless scavenger. A lost soul. Silent.
Still, silent. Still, floating.
His footsteps were right after mine.

Most people read the newspaper while they walk to work. Just to be informed. To have facts - not fiction - to converse about. Walking amongst graffiti embedded concrete walls that lead no navigation. Walking, running. Reading the newspaper. To be informed. I find myself a little dry-hearted. Enrichment ceases. The life of a faceless business man proceeds. Coffee stains on your paperwork must get old, old man. Maybe set two feet to the left and you'll feel some spontaneity.

I can't even recognize what comes out of my fingertips
When you grab the pencil and make me follow. Babbling nonsense
about conceptual thought. My thoughts are thoughts just the same as yours.
How can I show you my own interpretations when you just impose on me
the thoughts that burrow in a mind not mine.
I am made of the same potential, the same matter.
But, the garden doesn't grow if you never start.
You don't know the possibilities of my mind, my hands, my lines.
Excuse me, dictator. I need a little space, a little space for my thoughts.
A free blank piece of paper that has nothing but my own.

Whats the feeling that borrows in my soul when I see the glitter of southern cotton littering the highway. Off the shoulders, it glimmers. From window to window, patches of earth with radiant colors gleam as my grandmothers quilt that keeps me warm at night. We can't deny our roots - baby. We are this. Our homey connections to the southern land. With music playing in my ears, in my own script - my shadow races before me to discover the opportunities. To discover the possibilities. To experience before I do. The colors of this earth, the season enriches me. Tires me. The rest awaits. This is the final fanfare before hibernation. Mother nature has to break too, Laura. She's gotta sleep, so she can show us her infinite beauty. All of that damn potential. Then, the cycle starts all over again.

The sun never sleeps.

The feeling that you're the exception. The one who's body isn't made from skin and muscle. That underneath this protective layer are bones and tissue. That my brain is inside my skull, confined by my identity and comparable to every other female. Not to suggest that I am above or that I'm different, but that I don't feel scientific. I don't feel like my body can be predicted by an individual I've never met. I feel like I breathe real air that only soothes my being and not my components.

Lying on this plateau, sweating in this heat.
from my skin, its puddling around my hands - my feet.
I am surrounded.
By nothing meaningful. I've never been so alone.
I am so in control, yet so un-united with myself.
Can I hold myself together?
Oh, the ball just started rolling...

Where does my love and consistency lie? Absorbed in this earth,
no longer tangible. Illogical it seems.
Erased from brain, from heart.

I have the garden, I am fully grateful. Beauty still -
It reigns. But I'm sitting in an orchard and all the near trees have passed.
The shade I loved so much. So gone. So lost.
I'm sweating on this plateau.
My palms are wet.

It never falls on needed ears, always my own.

I'm a paralyzed blank staring body. Empty of all emotions. For the split minute. How I wish these minutes would stay. My mind, the flood, comes back from all my suppression. Out my eyes, not out of my soul - I wish. I am human, with gardens growing from my stomach. Out of my mouth - they bloom. These words... do they find their resting place? A settled piece of earth.
A beautiful garden I am, with withering plants with no home.
I am nothing but soil - ready to hold beauty.
Where am I? My goal was happiness during this time. My season, my time. I feel nothing but yet I feel everything. I am nothing since I have no recognition.
I'm wandering mazes and there's no outlet. Where is my home?
My sanctuary.
Where do I feel myself?
That home is gone. I'm the ivy that's pulled off it's stand.