January Dreaming Under The Crescent Moon Poem by Leah Ayliffe

Walking the streets,
tall buildings they gleam of midday Sunshine concealing the cold.
Frost on my hair,
breath visible with each exhale.
I look around at the city, my home.
It was not some days just before.
Maybe not for weeks at a time,
Courtesy of bipolar tendencies in thought.
See, one minute I'm happy just as I am and where I stand,
feet on the ground, head tall.
Then anxious winds blow in
and I can't help but feel controlled by a force outside of any version of me that I know.
Today I am in control.
Walking past the same houses,
gates that once held pink roses -
the stems still coiling the fence, dead and hard like the skeleton of winter months.
I see the colours in the sky of Sunrise, then again as the sun falls down.
The Crescent Moon glowing against soft evening blue tones,
set high beside the CN tower.
I'm walking all the time,
headphones in and the music makes me feel electric and alive.

Home is a word I never really found a face for
or a space in the external point of view.
It plays on my tongue and sits on my heart,
like maybe I found my souls rhythm belonging where I first began.
Where I never thought it would be.
I put my palms together in prayer on the subway,
sending a wish that this feeling can last for longer than a day, a week, a month.
Loud sirens and lights. Laundry machines.
Scattered ideas holding on to the corners of all that's being seen and heard.
In dreams I see the truth of all that's taken place in my past.
I wonder how I never knew the sweetness in creating something real out of the darkness of the unknown.
The trees and the flowers always told me, and my little creatures that whisper softly as they comfort me on Lonely Nights.
Yesterday, today, and tomorrow -
there is a pretty light of hope.
There are days to say I'm happy.
Nights to say I'm home.
At least for now.
For now...and that's better than I have ever known.