I watched in grim disbelief the greatest of dreamers be cast into a snake pit &succumb victim of venom hiss & become a numb prisoner to the dreamless ___________________________ People are born to be free to escape the past to defy to lead to be strong to divinely intervene to rebel to go against their captors ___________________________ Drifting in and out of sleep still fighting to climb the staircase of dreams _________________________________ (c) 2013 Jessica Robbins

I remember what I was like as a pure and wholesome child before I ever knew what it meant to like boys. I was always relatively smart, teacher's pet, the first child in the classroom with her hand raised with the correct answer every time. I was more friendly with the teachers than with most of the other students and I preferred it that way, it made me feel more grown up. I always thought the other children were too childish somehow and not as evolved or devoted to the learning process as me. The more mentally challenged boys used to sit around me, not because they liked me or thought I was cute, but to cheat off of my papers on tests and writing assignments. The first boy I ever really noticed was this kid in the eighth grade. He was much taller than the other kids, he was like a Viking, he had raven black hair and blue eyes and skin fairer than arctic tundra. I was seated directly across from him in history everyday and I would just stare stupidly at his eyes and his jet black hair for the entire hour of fourth period History class. He captivated me in a way I didn't understand...he looked familiar to me the first time I ever saw him...a recognition that arouses you in the most secretive part of your soul. I had never kissed a boy at that point...I'd barely even spoken to one...I was shy...I still am...I still barely associate with men and don't think I am cut out to be around them much of the time as I am accustomed to men taking love or emotional feeding and then leaving and vanishing...never saying... never waking...just the leaving and abandoning and making excuses or dishing out a lie to spare my feelings. Not then...I hadn't had the trust raped out of me at that point...I was virginal...I was fourteen...I never rushed into boys or kissing...but I remeber staring pathetically at that kid with the mysteriously blue eyes and angular fair features for hours praying he might notice I exist and at least raise his eyebrow at me in approval. We rode the same bus home. He used to sit across from me on the bus. Sometimes he would throw crumbled up pieces of paper at my head and then rapidly fold his arms and start looking up and whistling, moving his eyes to and fro across the top of the bus, pretending he'd hadn't done it. I smiled inside but pretended to be irritated with him. I don't know if he ever liked me so much as he just liked to antagonize me because there was no other girl within the radius to annoy...he used to talk about one of my blond friends all the time...he would ask me about her and her interests or if we were hanging out on the weekends on the bus rides home...the rides became longer and more unpleasant whenever he would persist with the line of interrogation... which upset me because I thought he was just trying to make a good impression on me because he liked her and I suppose he favored blonds in spite of my peculiar shade of strawberry hair and I was merely some kind of haplessly awkward, clumsy, leftover displaced redheaded clown with bad skin to him that he simply liked to tease and taunt on the bus because he knew I liked him and it made him feel powerful to mess with my feelings but never be with me for real or hold me or be close to me or care enough to stay around after the bus ride home from school was over.

I went to visit my grandmother's grave on a cold fall crisp day. There was no one left for me to talk to. She always had a way of understanding, of coddling my pain, of making me happy effortlessly. When I was with her I felt the world was safe as she only strived to make me feel loved and devoted herself to serving my family. My Grandfather always used to call her, "Honey," so before long, all of her grandkids would affectionately refer to her as, "Grandma Honey." She was a sweet woman, just the same, so full of grace, so demonstrative of faith. She had an abundance of love and resourcefulness and determination to exhibit life in a way I don't know if I have ever been able to express entirely to another living soul. She was married to my grandfather for 53 years...they were giddy and flirtatious and affectionate and considerate and uplifting and eternally in the kind of love that makes you wish you knew it for your own or could put it in a bottle and sell to drink and taste, just to experience the rich lasting flavor. I stood by her grave all alone as the wind batted at my face and tossed my hair behind me. None of the flowers on any of the graves appeared to be real, they were all silk and collecting dirt and debris from being unattended and neglected for so long. I tried to picture my grandmother's face as I'd seen it in dreams after she'd passed...so fine and inviting and full of truthfulness and that knowing grin, confident she always had. I wondered how my grandfather had made it so many nights without the pureness of her gentle love. She was untouched by desires of the world...she never asked for much....she never wanted to travel with my grandfather...she liked to stay at home tending to her garden and cook and sew and read all day. The times she would write, she wrote only love stories about her love for my grandfather, some of which were not truly matured and adequately compelling until she was composing them at his hospital bed when he was 79 years old and in the midst of open heart surgery. She jotted down every recollection she had of their life together, as well as kept track of his condition and progress as they slowly upgraded his condition and stabilized him. I've never seen a more loyal human being. They were never harsh on each other...I never heard or saw them ever speak an unkind word to one another...I don't think an unkind word ever went out of my grandmother's mouth and my grandfather has gotten onto me several times for using foul language just for saying "hell." He would edit my poems for me and change any curse words to "heck" or "shoot" or "dang it." I don't feel like writing anymore...I don't feel like living anymore...I just want to go home and be done here and be back with my grandmother. I'm tired of people who don't know me prying into my life and attacking me and putting words in my mouth and trying to pass the love and poetry in my heart off as their own. I don't know how the person who sees my dreams could ever stay with a terrible excuse for a human being like that after he wakes up from our love... I do not know anymore, I don't want to stick around to wonder any longer.... I am tired, I am fed up, I am done being patient with it. There is a difference between being a healthy person who writes and creates your own work and then being a very sick person who tries to pass other people's love poems off as their own just to keep their broken joke of a loveless marriage going and some people do not know the difference.

I don't know what love is left in the world for me.... Heaven has opened its arms completely.... summoning me by the sound of my own song..... to come home and hang my harp.... the only residence my soul belongs.... So what love left in this world is there for me? .... Nothing to cradle me, not even the adulterer of my dreams .......... They judge me by my past.... they judge me by my hair..... they compare me to other people ..... just because i am the red of a flare ..... they judge me and keep me from my own dreams.... severed and torn from seam to seam.... no, no ..... even my own dreams do not want or love me.... even my own dreams find something wrong with me .... my dreams of mutual knowingness and peace.... thought lust in adultery was worth more flattery.... than tiny, pathetic, unlovable meaningless me ..... what dream could this be to me?.... A dream of despair and emptiness ..... of being ignored, forgotten, and cast aside .... as i make way, I pray to die .... i will be alone, i will be comfortless .... i will reside by myself.... in green weepy mists..... for there is no promise of a future.... in an empty nighttime kiss .......................... -Jessica

My walk alone with God is coming to a close and now for a funeral decorated with a mourning rose before my time, beyond my time i was here before the same life in another happy score was it more than enough or was is satan calling my bluff i couldn't pull it together once the road became too rough and now satan is calling my bluff -Jessica

My ears are burning but my heart is always cold
I'm still young but I've traveled through his old
So many times I put my life on hold
waking and shaking
with visions of reciprocating
I've made mistakes
but there is no mistaking
his love is worth waiting for

I could go anywhere
If only I knew where to go
For a while, I thought he was my home
second chances may never come
after my volcano explodes

she wandered in here and stole my everything
the expressions I'd written
just to keep her fake ring
she can deny it
but my face will never hide it
and I'm sighing
as she's lying
while inside
the most beautiful love I've known is dying

-Jessica

"For whosoever believeth in Me shall not perish but have everlasting life." ~Jesus