Times are hard and times are strange.

Can't seem to find a place to call my own. Everywhere I go I feel I don't belong, and I keep going through the motions like the trained robot I am.

My nerves are shot and my shoulders are sore.

I just want to sit in the sun and stay there until dusk. You want to know where I go, not far baby, it's all in my mind.

A car drives by that has something wrong with the muffler. I want to scream but no words come out.

Everyone downtown is dying on the inside. No one smiles. No one laughs— inanimate zombies in a trance.

I stand under trees in hopes to be enlightened. People talk and I don't want to listen. It's hard to fake like I care.

When the leaves begin to fall, I get sad on the inside. Something about life surging through the veins of leaves that makes me feel like we're all dying. When the leaves fall, I cry—beautiful, weightless, falling to the earth.

When the wind blows, I feel it shake the trees to the core. I would like to think the wind shakes the trees to remind them that they will breathe new life when winter dies, "You can renew yourself in the spring, old chap."

"Silly me," a tree says.

I remember walking home from class in college (that sounds weird to say) and thinking how I loved the fact that Charleston had trees that told stories. The air has a bite to it that makes you see things clearly...makes you understand why we are here...why we are alive.

What happens to your soul when you go? I want to think it lives on forever in the people you have met in your lifetime. I want to believe that things stay connected, interlocked and linked as one.

I miss everyone all the time. Even people I rarely talk to. If you have met me once, I already miss you. I want to sign all my letters and cards "With all my love" because I really mean it.

When Langston Hughes asked, “What happens to a dream deferred?” I want to tell him that dreams explode they don’t dry up. Sometimes the heart gets too heavy with life that it bursts with regret. I want to lie and say I never regret but I’m filled with regret.

Teach the children of tomorrow not to lose sight of hope. Maybe if they believe it at a young age they will believe it forever. Who am I kidding?

I hate stepping on city grates on city sidewalks. I always feel like I’m going to fall through. Someday you will too. You’ll learn to be paranoid just like me.

Wrap me up in down comforters and pet my head. Tell me things will be all right in the end. Tell me to embrace. Tell me…tell me…tell me over and over again.

Tell me…