reflections – Hayden Winston

2025-07-082025-07-24

35

(South Lake Tahoe, CA – June 2025)

older now
but no guarantees
of growing any wiser
less garrulous, much colder now
with no respite on the horizon

burn my love letters for warmth
those words were soft and hollow
basking nude in the sunlight
gin-soaked sweat flowing from my brow

the vultures feast on me like carrion
licking my bones, until the flesh is gone
yet each bite makes me feel alive
never thought I’d get to 35

2022-05-212024-11-25

Sorry for your loss.

Grief –
all consuming and endless,
like probing through pitch darkness for a light.
Grief sends you into mourning nearly every night,
and rouses you with kisses from pain soaked lips at dawn.

Grief, like hanging onto the last few hours of sun before your mother calls you in.
before you realize the world is full of hurt people, bumbling around trying to process.

Grief,
used to push it way down deep,
Tried to drown and bury it, along with any other facet of my personality that could be deemed weak.

Grief?
Now I’ve grown a little older and it flows out like a river,
Sadness, joy, and love, all wrapped up in the freedom it takes to allow myself to finally,
Grieve.

(Art by Lauren Halsey – Seattle Art Museum – April 2022)

2020-05-062024-10-13

Almost 30

Let your mind roam

to all the places you were never meant to go

all the rules you’ve broken

Non, je ne regrette rien

not a single lover or friendship laid to rest –

not a breathless night lost in karaoke

cursing, crying, drowning pain in whiskey

dancing in the wilderness

wild child running through the city

For that’s the charm of growing up

there are no real mistakes

just research

2018-03-142024-10-13

Gravitas

Sometimes looking back

you get livid with yourself

for being angry/pathetic/vulnerable when you shouldn’t have been

the permanence of the past rapping at the chamber door to your soul

find solace in the fact that while the past is permanent

the past has passed

2018-02-092024-10-13

Living

I don’t believe in Gods or Fate,

(The only devils I’ve known are men of flesh and blood)

But I do believe in love.

And Hell?

Hell is

loneliness,

loss,

abuse,

abandonment,

anger,

suffering.

I don’t believe in Gods or Fate,

But your love is

Heaven.

2018-01-252024-10-13

When Melancholy Calls

Unrest written on the walls,

a restless sadness sewn into your marrow.

From composed to utterly anxious in a manner of seconds,

wading through nothing but pure darkness.

Madness, they used to call this.

Carrying past lives around like the photo of a dear departed lover.

The burdens of your ancestors, kings, queens, slaves, grandparents and parents – all the same,

rushing through you, blurring your senses,

buried in your very essence.

Search deep down and you can find it,

drag it out from the great abyss.