This is short.

Forcing out words -

gets twisted

like knotted headphones

you forgot to wrap

up

before you put them

in your pocket.

8/19/2015

Riley Welch

3 Right Turns

I don't know
when I started
taking the long way home
to listen to one more song
at 3 am
with my windows rolled
down.

And the sticky fall, summer,
winter, spring air hitting my hand.

But now
it feels
like I always do it.

Extra seconds of thinking
have become something
more normal
as if
sometime
in the last few years
I got stuck in my own head,
and I don't know when
or how
or why
but now I take the long way.

8/19/2015
Riley Welch

3 Corners

Can I have more count off poems?
Where I go back from ten
and at the end I feel better,
or at least
not as
crushed?
Overwhelmed?
Buried underneath
piles of broken
incomplete thoughts
where I can't get up.
I forgot my goggles,
I can't open my eyes buried
this deep
burning
churning,
can anyone help?


8/18/2015
Riley Welch

Out of Titles

I stood in shock
staring
at the picture
from
all those Thanksgivings
ago.

So many new built traditions.

I have adjusted
and the very act of that
seems wrong.

How did this happen?
How did I let it?

I am shocked.

But
I cannot dwell on what is not.

Maybe.

How do you?

What do you say to those
who lost so long ago
they have already
forgotten?

9/29/2015
Riley Welch

Grand Part Two

The sound of
pebbles
gently
crushing
under solid tires
echoed
off curbs
and all the insects
gathered
to see you off.

9/28/2015
Riley Welch

GMLMH

as the car
slowed down
the ground
appeared
so much closer
than I had
expected it,
galloping and rocking,
the road
seemed so
smooth
and slick
when I coasted it.
how did I remove myself
so far
from the Earth
without
even
noticing.

9/25/2015
Riley Welch

330

I woke up
shaking.

I knocked my bottles
of lotions and serums
on their side
when I reached for them.

I filled my body with caffeine
anyway.

I took notes
at the speed of a rocket,
But with many more mistakes.

Swirly, unreadable loops,
scratched out,
more shaking.

Feet tapping.

If I don't let the movement out,
it all runs inside my brain
left, right.

How am I
all at the same time:

concentrating so smoothly
and not at all.

9/30/2015
Riley Welch