ACTS OF SERVICE By Judas H.

Moments and Memories

A home is sometimes a person,

sometimes a place.

But mostly it's million tiny feelings you can't erase.

A nostalgia,

A flutter in your heart or

An aching memory that makes you fall apart.

It's in the familiarity

Of a touch, sound, and smell.

How you can recognize footsteps so well.

It's in the fragrance of an old detergent,

The coolness of a freshly made bed or

Within the worn-out pages of a book, you once read.

The way you can recognize

The chair that wobbles and,

The coordinates of every dent from squabbles.

You'll be taken back in time

At the sound of a video game

When new high scores were the only mark of fame.

You're back at your childhood home

When you smell your favorite meal

Reminiscing how mum's food has powers to heal

Home could be right now,

Right here, but the feeling is

Forged out of moments that were once dear.

A CELESTIAL INSECURITY

Is the moon envious of the sun?

And it's radiance that cannot be outdone?

Is that why she hides behind the earth?

Calls it an eclipse but, doubting her worth.

What does she see when she looks into the lake?

Her molten silver face or the distortion that ripples make?

Is this why poets always write about her desolate beauty?

Because she's more like us than any character from a movie.

A celestial body far far away

Like all our insecurities in display

How many times have we envied others radiance,

And hid away from an audience?

Doubting our worth, causing self-esteem distortion

By looking at a person's life only in portion?

So like her, we go through phases

And like her, we grow through phases.

maybe the rain is there to teach us that falling is beautiful. some people are a map when you didn’t realize you were lost. you’re the ache that never left, the first line of an unfinished song. it doesn’t have to be a poem to be poetry.. have you seen how carefully the light can touch your face? and even though I’m an abandoned house in search of a ghost, I don’t need anything from you. I want everything with you.

you're not hard to love. you were only made to feel that way by someone who didn't know how.

A Vampire Fever Dream. 👀

Centuries ago, one chilly winter night,

You smiled, held my hand in yours to leave behind,

Memories that twists my heart like a dagger,

While I wish my every sigh to be the last one

Since then I searched those amber eyes everywhere,

The color of maple leaves during the fall

I searched for you knowing that you are nowhere

Until I met someone who understood my pain.

Years passed away, and my companions with it.

I stayed the same, and so did our memories.

The only immortal things I've come across.

The living me, and the intangible us.

Now centuries later, this chilly winter

With this lovely human curled up next to me

I feel mortal. Not alive, just plain mortal.

Every second prized, every moment precious

With those same amber eyes, like a setting sun

One that threatened to burn me eons ago.

Have I wished for you often and hard enough?

That you had no other choice but to come back.

I tell you, I tell you not.

I love you, and I think you love me.

But that's how far it gets, so I put it in poetry.

I write about you sometimes.

Hide my truth within similes, metaphors, and rhymes.

Of hushed conversations in a crowded place

Memorizing each thing so I can later retrace.

You ask me how I feel when I'm with you.

Like I'm in a cellophane bubble of a soft pink hue,

La vie en Rose

A dopamine doze

You ask me what I think of you.

Words to which I wish I knew

Universe pulled a few invisible strings,

Put you in my life to change everything.

We stand inches close yet light years away.

Cliche!

We stay long enough to touch, not enough to hold

The world is unfair, or so I'm told.

So I pretend your smile doesn't put me in slumber.

Memorize lines on your hand as one would with numbers.

You ask me why I hold back. I say I'm scared.

What I hold back is what I'm scared of:

It's not being unable to find the right words for what I feel

It's being able to say the right words and never heal.

I love you, but I don't tell.

I try to show you, like casting a gentle spell.

Through metaphors and rhymes

And words that were written by dead poets sometimes.

I read between the lines when I can't write.!!😶

“Hey,” he said, half-asleep, “what were you before you met me?”

“I think I was drowning.” A pause.

“And what are you now?” he whispered, sinking.

I thought for a second. “Water.”

At that point in my life where I FINALLY understand why people cry when they hear certain songs.

Exhibit A:

FLOWERS AND SCARS

The flowers you once gave

Are now my bookmarks.

Dried and black,

Yet somehow artful.

Like the scars, you left behind

To bookmark

The person I was, and have become.

Dried and black,

Yet somehow hurtful.

(13.11.20)

The feminine urge to ignore my TBR and go spend all my time and money at the bookstore