Joy

I’ve always wrote about pain

And of all of the unjust things

I’ve never known how to write about joy 

Someday I want to tho

Someday I want to write for you about the most beautiful things

Like

A morning sunrise so crimson and so gold 

That it actually heals some piece of your soul

Every blood blister, every bruise, every broken heart, every false I love you

Was a price you paid up front 

For all the true love, true peace and true joy now before you

Happiness is overrated 

It’s temporary and materialistic

Here in this moment and gone in the next 

I want you to feel pure joy 

To sit in the presence of God 

With the sounds of brood mares grazing and stomping and the panting of tired dogs 

To feel the warmth of sun on your face on that first hint of spring day

To smell a batch of cookies fresh out of the oven and a gentle hand holding yours

The little gifts of bliss

Someday I’ll write you something beautiful 

Something you can feel deep in your bones

Xoxo, Gussie 

And I Let You

I had a dream 

In it I held a wooden box of all our keepsakes 

I threw them off a cliff into a river 

And I saw you

Smiling, balancing on a dock railing

Just like the first one of my birthdays we spent together 

And then I watched you fall

And I let you 

And I cried 

Maybe that means that I’m finally letting you go 

xoxo, gussie

Make it sound like a cowboy story.

I feel a morning breeze trotting on the creek bank

The sound of sand hill cranes talking to me

And I’m just so damn thankful I’m not in the place I used to be 

I walked away with silver, diamonds and scars

I took a couple horses and what’s left of my little ol' shredded heart 

That makes it sound like a cowboy story

In a way I guess it was

You couldn’t pay me to go back to that toxic life that you call home 

You hate yourself so much you wanted me to hate you too

Hell I’ll give you credit

You put effort into that if nothing else

I prayed for your safety on a random day in February

Didn’t know why for a couple weeks

You forget that God and my gut tell me things 

I hope the man in the glass looking back at you can look you in the eyes

And I hope someday you learn what love is

The air is changing

Fall is flirting with me in the mornings

I can’t tell if I’m happy to see her or not

I feel like I’m home again in Wyoming

That makes it sound like a cowboy story

In a way I guess it is

XoXo, Gussie

Looks Like

I poured a whiskey drink in a truck stop parking lot 

Purification for my thoughts 

Wish I could sort them out but it’s looking like probably not 

I’ll bet he saw the bottle of whisky in the pickup door 

I wonder how damn lost I seem to the outside world

I wouldn’t know the damn difference 

I’m just swimming in my pain

You were pissed when I quit drinking 

Guess you got what you wanted, I like that shit again 

I wish I could feel as little as you

That’s never been a strength of mine 

I feel it twice as deep and go over it three times 

I wrote that once before 

I’ll bet you don’t remember 

You told me I should write again 

But then you took it all so personal

Like you didn’t know I wrote from a hurting heart 

You ended up hating me for all the reasons you loved me from the start

That’s the hardest damn thing

The endless never knowing 

I’ll never get an answer 

I suppose one doesn’t exist 

I guess the way you treated me was my training to survive the way you’d leave me

Never thought in a million years it’d be you 

To lie the way you did 

Xo xo, Gussie 

Looks like I’m writing again.  

XoXo, Me

Funny how life works

It was a Thursday

We worked horses till noon

Went to the courthouse and got married

The day we divorced

I worked horses till noon on a Monday

It’s that mundane

The beginning and end of an entire life

It’s that ruthless

The birth and murder 

It’s that silent

The bliss and the pain

I bought a bottle of Black Velvet for the drive home

You taught me that too 

Tear drops on tan hands

I’ll bite my lip

See you somewhere down the road again

My hair is longer than you've ever seen it

I'm healthier and stronger than you've ever seen

You missed the best parts of me 

I wish you would've stayed around to see it

XoXo, Gussie