Nathaniel T. Hughes

Goodbye: It's something beyond this life, something they all say takes time,  but the fall knows this dark soul by name and illusions of the past insidiously circle back so many times before we die.

A few maple leaves gently fall; It tells a soulful story: Maybe we've never really been standing on solid ground, Maybe we've started life tumbling like a peaceful yellow leaf, And maybe the world is completely upside down And if we really knew we were falling we'd call this life         heaven finally breaking free of the suspension that never felt like home.

Fuck you Mars. And I really mean it but in a bloody cryptic way: thank you for showing me all the pain, the eyes of serious self inquiry, the inner hurt and infinite universal sadness, the triggers deep down between bliss and honey-like thoughts: sometimes the space between it all is an escape from what is really there. Maybe I never really loved myself, Maybe because of that part of me died a long hard death that I never really mourned. Resting there are the dream-like dreams, the never ending rains; the welling hurt, the thousands of tears deep inside. And somewhere there's gossamer like threads hanging, as if you're part of me and you awakened the me I never loved. And if that's true, somewhere in all of this I'm learning to let go of trying to let go, Trying to hold on to loving everything without needing love back.

Here we are where we'd never thought we'd be, here where it doesn't feel like much a place to start from because we've already come so far, here sadly it's where we are now and yes I feel my life is completely different, here I've never felt such surreal, unbelievable universal change that I can't quite turn around. It reverberates right to the core of my soul, to the eternity that we always talked about, to the edges of the opportunities that we never quite got to and back to the unfounded beginnings that never quite got underway. Somehow this has to be a beginning, somehow there is a sad and hopeful opportunity in that. And then those new beginnings have to find the thread that lends itself to the deepest desire to slowly mend this in an open unrefined way. And that could mean I'll have to let go of it being in this life. So I trust in trust as I trust in the universe as a way to refeed the trust you've lost in me. It's scary for

Ocean midst drips on everything, to old growth oaks, to stubby pines, bay laurel and tree ferns, all weighed down and ready to perk back up; It's not much different than our second trip to Maine and our departing day from the stormy Cape: All things can glisten with new dimensional perspective, reflect old points of happiness and then trail off in different ways. With a lonely Floridian cold, each turn hangs with little spanish moss, hangs like neverending waves, rolling white sand dunes and sparsely scattered beach grass swaying with the wind: In whatever distance we create, there remains our lifelines, our escapes inside each other, our fordged renewal and compromise - An unrelenting balance of universal tow, speed-up and slow-down; Here, from tinges of sadness, to footsteps facing conflicting directions, from scattered sea shells and waves of reflection, from Anastasia to home, There's still a huge a part of you that will always be with me.

There's a warmth in this cold, anticipation ringing clear, our future glistening on tips of melting buds: a rustling urgency, a fanning love; and beneath it all there's you: your heart wildly beating in candace with mine, drumming the vibrations of all I see, driving the motions for all I do: Nothing ever been this clear before, so ripe ready and restless: We're bursting with the linear nature of time; It's not long until you'll be infinitely mine.