Stress Relief

Let’s not and say we did.

Do and say we didn’t

Tell secrets and lies.

Hide the truth behind our eyes.

Whisper in corners.

Kiss in darkness.

Succumb to our desires.

Light each other’s fires.

Steal glances across rooms.

Laugh as we consume.

Act less than our age.

Let’s play games.

Let’s tickle and tease.

Please with ease.

Let’s giggle and smirk.

While we’re putting in work.

Commonality

What defines us as human?

Our species?

Evolution?

Who deigned us humans?

How can people so different,

Different races, different ethnicities, different languages,

Always seem to find something in common?

 Pain is universal,

Love, suffering, happiness, anger,

It seems that feeling is above our division.

How else can we be moved by Latin music?

Weep during a foreign film?

Gaze in wonder at ancient artifacts?

Our emotions drive our commonality.

A unit uninterrupted by past or future.

A multiplied presence.

7 billion nerves in a giant body.

Individual cogs in a collective machine.

A Poor Substitute for Happiness

What happens when we search deep in ourselves and find something missing?

Something named, but undefinable.

An indescribable piece of our humanity that causes us to yearn for another.

Love perhaps.

We reach out, pleading with the universe for someone to reach back.

We give, hoping to receive.

And then we attach.

Our souls intertwine hopelessly, helplessly, unbreakably.

And then life intercedes with its misery, its reality, its stupidity.

For how can we give completely, when we never have all of ourselves?

How can we love endlessly, when we don’t truly know what it is?

But we are humans, we are relentless.

Even as we hurt, we stay.

Even when it’s wrong, we stay.

Even as we cry, we stay.

But the need is never filled because the love we find lacks the truth we require.

True love does not lie, we do.

True love does not scheme, we do.

True love does not cheat, we do.

So with smiles on our faces and sweet words on our tongue,

We serve this false love on a gilded platter to the ones we hold dear.

Never realizing that this is a poor substitute for happiness.