You said you only liked real girls. I said, don’t ever call me that again.
We were, just two people who were not supposed to fall in love again.
I guess, I’m just misdirected
because I stumbled toward you.
And yes, I am drunk
And you are beautiful.
But in the morning, I’ll be sober
and you’ll still be beautiful.
Alison Marie Johnston, USA
When it snows,
We talk about weird things
the beauty of all girls
who are not in your bedroom
while we tell stories to your pillows.
Blue, you said, was the color of my eyes.
In between your pretty compliments,
What we do is fatal to the way we refuse to talk to the halcyon days on the mind.
I’ve got to find my way back to tell you why I chase snowflakes
& write poems on days it should have rained.
You race around my mind.
It’s not my fault, you’re there.
I cannot apologize for not waiting for you, first
or the first time I cried in front of you.
I fear I will never stop deserving your affection.
I just need to know why I don’t fit in your life anymore.
Alison Marie Johnston, USA
with the wind. Standing upon the doorstep
of the foothills in the same way a tree
burns for no one in particular, every-
thing looks warmer from ten thousand feet. Trees
are strangers who pass by one another like
seasons who don’t say goodbye properly,
how autumn misses the leaves. For a tree, the
opposite of cold is what is west of
the Rocky Mountains, the gateway to the
free people. They talk to you, the way branches
protect their leaves until they are ready
to leave in a year without rain.
Alison Marie Johnston, USA
The Social Poet 