Before You

Before You



Before you

I traveled roads unknown

just to see where they would lead.

There was no plan,

only a search for happiness.



Rivers, mountains, or city streets

the call was the same.

And each journey left me

longing for more.



Before you

I could not name

what was missing from my life.

How could I miss something

I had never known?



There was a joy in my freedom,

but also a sadness.

A comfort in the arms of others

that always ended with emptiness.



But now I know

what I had been missing.

I understand why I felt so incomplete.

And each road I travel

leads me back home to you.





-Rishell Graves

January 3, 2012

Eyes of Blue

Eyes of Blue

Last year

We sat at this same table

On a day much like today,

Drinking coffee

In the late spring sunshine.

You read to me

The poems of a lonely man,

And somewhere in those words

I found a piece of myself.

That day I was lost

In the blue of your eyes,

The sound of your voice,

The gentleness of your smile.

And when I surfaced I knew

To look for a man

With a tender heart,

To find the one with a smile

That matched my own,

And eyes of blue that would see me

For all that I am,

And love me

For what I can still become.

-Rishell Graves

Fall 2011

Grandmother's Tree

Grandmother’s Tree

As a child

I would sit beneath

My Grandmother’s Christmas tree,

Watching the bubbles rise

In lights shaped like candles,

The pink liquid percolating within.

Those lights took center stage

To shiny bulbs,

Tinsel,

Even the presents underneath.

Some years the branches

Were flocked with fake snow,

Which hid the green boughs,

But still let the smell of the forest

Fill the room.

My cousins would wrestle

On the living room floor,

In front of the big wood stove.

But I would sit alone,

Beneath the glow of that tree,

And dream the dreams of a young girl

Who still believed in magic.

-Rishell Graves

December, 2011