silly justwrite

Until the end when I let my ribbons go, watch the wind lift them and then leave them behind, I will keep my hair in braids because I'm afraid it will leave me if it tastes freedom. I set my marrow on fire just to feel my insides burn, not worried about being empty because my skin keeps the smoke from escaping, except the very edges that crawl out of my ears, send their cursive wisps to blend into the clouds then disperse across the atmosphere until they are hidden before my eyes, glowing in the darkness, trapping shadows without really knowing what to do with them. I'm still on the ground, shifting more than the plates I'm standing on which isn't hard because they really are very slow, slower than molasses in January as if I am my grandmother's mother, not a relative to me because we only share a name, and a middle one at that, while the rest is a secret on a black and white photograph, not sure if the women it holds are really as eccentric as you say because they have no voices since their words are candles that reaches their own bases decades ago, and their hairstyles and buttoned blouses are only as foreign as I want them to be. I pick up my sketchbook instead, draw zigzags and corners in every color I have except red, write a letter in the middle and address it to myself, can't find its place in the alphabet until I take all the numbers away, not by subtraction or division but by mentioning there are biscuits with jam in the sun room, enough to share while we rest and the silver rusts and I forget where I put the polish jar, decide it doesn't matter unless the company doesn't like us, in which case we shouldn't care anyway. I imagine notebooks opened across tables, my family sniffling not because it's a funeral or because it's a wedding but because people really grow so quickly until they're so old they shrink like my grama, except I haven't noticed because I've been getting taller all the while, but I take her hands in mine, wonder about the secrets that have made her bones so soft, listen to her lessons that she sings in the kind of whisper that a whole room can hear, and I can see dreams dancing behind her eyes, leaving muffled patterns in the grass until the stars rise and taste the next morning and set again, then I am so old I don't know what to do with myself other than set me on a shelf and write about what the world is doing, pretending I haven't already felt what they're feeling. But soon I have to give my grama her words back, altered slightly, framed by zigzags in every color but red, and I take a picture because someone told me once that it will last longer, but I'm not sure that's true because by the time it's developed and sitting on my counter I've forgotten why I took it, what my voice sounded like and how tall I was and whether or not those footprints behind my eyes were really mine, but I let it all go and wander to the next room to see if they have my favorite kind of jam, noticing the cursive the smoke left on my walls, nod at its message, deciding I will know the end when it's here.

[also, now my writing notebook is full]

A Fish Story

The children of the village learn what they desire to learn, which is often everything. Some of the youngest girls are endlessly entertained by the throwing of fishing nets off of high rocks into the sea, how they always come back full of plenty to eat or set free. Three such girls were so entertained by this idea that one day, while the adults in the village and the older children were back at the clearing eating lunch together, they snuck to the rocks and cast the nets repeatedly into the deep waters, pulling as many fish as they could from the ocean. They set the fish in hollowed rocks all around them, and soon all the rocks were full, and the girls laughed at how the other islanders would be so pleased that they would have enough to eat for the rest of time. However, the nets soon became lighter as they were pulled back. Fewer and fewer fish were caught in the fibers, and soon there were none at all. The girls desperately tossed the nets again and again and again into the waves, crying salty tears as the nets were always empty. Then, as the girls were becoming most upset, a large bird glided down from a nearby apple tree, shaking its head in disapproval to the girls. It explained that the ocean can only hold so many fish, and though there are a lot, they don’t last forever if you are greedy and take them all at once. The girls sobbed and pleaded to the bird to help them fill the ocean again. The bird opened its beak wide and they filled its jaws with smiling fish, watching them glisten like jewels as the sun reflected from the water below. The bird then flew over the ocean, dropping fish like raindrops back into the sea, and as they hit the surface, they waved good bye to the girls, who laughed in delight at the lesson they’d learned. They then tossed two small nets into the sea and pulled up enough fish for each villager to have half of one. When the adults returned from their lunch, they praised the girls on knowing just how many fish the world needs to survive.

mossy justwrite.

Mossy thoughts on my mind and on my bookshelf, stories where people grow wings and then nothing grow wings and then nothing happens, or at least nothing very noticeable. I let my hair down, not often enough but long enough to feed the wind its secrets, clean it of crude oil and lard, let the moss seep in, touch my skin with fairy footprints and deer footprints, instincts to turn away from the morning light, born without a scent, watching as depth melts from the world, an abstract watercolor or connecting all the wrong dots. On weekday evenings, I walk through the woods, feel like dancing but am so afraid the acorns are watching me that I can't, so I strip away my shoes, notice I'm not wearing socks, taste the Earth with the bottoms of my feet and the tip of my tongue, then wish for silence, just enough for an hour or a lifetime, enough time to rearrange my thoughts so I know the truth about myself, not my silhouette through a frosted window, not by interpreting the secret, quiet language I carve into the thinnest ice, not measuring the length of my eyelashes or counting the slaves I've freed, just something I haven't quite realized yet, or ever, it's possible. I weave blankets from the meadow grasses but miss my oak leaf pillows sometimes, the thick dreams they painted on my forehead, slow and rich like the smell of maple or pine or something else that's faster when it's warm, but not much faster. When I find my shoes again, the moss has grown over their soles, so I leave them behind and find my own way.

corners justwrite.

In the corner where I keep my handfuls of sand, tell myself I'll count them some day but am never really sure how to separate them from each other again, like birds falling from the sky or rising from the ground, meeting in the middle so you can't tell which is who and what this photograph is trying to tell you unless you look very closely, with a magnifying glass or a microscope, at the direction their feathers are pointed, pluck them away one by two by three, but that's all because the only thing you can do with so many feathers is to build more birds, but the originals were better anyway, not so out of tune or on the hour, just enough to remind yourself that imperfection is natural and it all works out in the end, or else it works itself into canopies of light, trying to catch the marsh air, unsure of where it begins, and ending up chasing shadows around the room, looking stupid in front of the video camera and laughing about it but only half the time. I unscrew the lid to your bottle of dreams, and you snatch it away from me again, not knowing that I was concerned it might be too tight, that I have my own to worry about, or not worry at all when I'm sure it's in a cardboard box full of feathers in a chest full of sand, no room to move, just to bend because the whole world is so soft sometimes that I'm not quite sure where I've been or where I'm going, and I figure it doesn't matter much as long as I've got my wings, got my cranberries and my bottle of dreams or something just as useful, and I'll forget about the corners sometimes.

tidbits

"Forget not that the Earth desires to feel your bare feet and the wind longs to play in your hair." --Kahil Gibran


oyster shell castles
sit proudly beneath the moon's face,
secretly waiting.


I am a shadow
knowing nothing besides the
stark absence of light


mud under my nails,
my hair smelling of marsh musk.
I let it remain.


By the time I realize I've never
seen the Bay in November,
December is already here.

ultimate connection

I strip plastic bark from the grasses, wonder where the trees went, remember home, remember empty oil cans and a twist tie or two, something I forget, wash from my mind like waves washing away the lines I sketch in the sand. In my dreams, they come back to me, drifting in the tides, bottles that call to me as they float, proud of how boldly they exist but still often invisibly. I gather them in my arms but find there are no messages inside, wonder where those important words dissolved, if the water stole them hungrily, but as the setting sun sends orange sparks across the glass, dimming the clouds, cooling the wind as it teases my arms, I realize the bottles are the message, the bags I clutch in my fists, lonely so distant from the secrets they held inside once, and I pour the excess from my skin, let my chosen color drain, have the world, all its sands and clays, mosses and trees, humming wings and frantically grasping fingers, write their poetry into me, dye me their own color which I will accept, refuse to blend in when I wait on asphalt islands, watching plastic skip across the parking lot, searching for somewhere to hold on.

the mark

Etchings in mud soak into my skin. The color washes away, the smell mingling a bit longer, but the feel remains, the gritty base of everything clinging between my toes, in swirls and splatters down my legs, coating my arms. I watch the movement of something that seems silent at first, minuscule gills and eyes weaving between the grasses. My fingers search for where they begin, find no end and no origin, only shrimp flinging themselves into the air, searching for freedom briefly lost, the taste of it still tangible, ready to be gathered into glass bottles bearing barnacles' footprints, bleached by the sun like bone china waiting, but not impatiently, for something to happen. The waves greet them at each moment, lick at the sand like a cold tongue searching, for time maybe but not too much, enough sand to fill an hour glass that will shut itself in a drawer for the sake of being ignored. The clouds have risen now, wanting again to touch the sun, waiting for the shore birds to desire their mist, to slice through them like canoes slicing through bay and fog in the same second, me being most free when I am not thinking of freedom, when all there is is the wind humming at my ears, the waves whispering to my feet, and the art of the mud forever on my soul.

after the marsh

Sinking words into the mud, watching my skin disappear, I become a puddle, let the silver dancing fish run freely through me, not as if I don't exist but that I exist more than I ever have before. Grasses reach up through my hands, not bothering to turn away because the sun streams between the cracks that dirt an bay wear deeper, crevices of time on my palms, a quiet secret that those passing by will meander right over, not knowing that if they had smaller steps they would sink into the Earth, scrape ancient trees and long-dissolved animals with the bottoms of their feet. I see the surprise absent from their faces, taste the wind and let it take my thoughts in return, let the marsh air kiss my eyelids closed and ask it all to soak in.

Expectations

When I am at Fox Island, my feet will be coated in dirt, the mud in the cracks of my hands deepening.
When I am at Fox Island, I will listen to the Earth at night, memorize its lullabies so I can sing them later to myself.
When I am at Fox Island, I will smell of marshes and algae, go three days without brushing my hair, let my clothes grow less colorful.
When I am at Fox Island, I will sit quietly and feel a world without time, let the water carry the ash in my soul away with its tides.
When I am at Fox Island, I will rise with the sun, glow with the moon, and leave everything else behind.

Introduction

Somewhere on the Earth is a small island surrounded by miles and miles of open sea, waves crashing on the stoney beaches, tidepools flickering in the sunlight, every day all day forever. The water is like paint, deep enough that it can’t be wiped away or spread out because it will stain everything, turn all the white into itself, not be happy about it, but not sad either. That’s just how it is. There are people on this island, who have no name for where they live because they believe it is the whole world on a universe of water, breathing with tides, a creature they stand upon and respect but do not wonder about. They know nothing about societies that live on concrete earth flattened and scraped, covered with dirt, light bouncing off of office buildings to the ground. They know nothing of the life where people debate about what others deserve, where everything is colored or uncolored, where everything is changing, where we laugh one day and cry the next. Living is simple, and it is what they expect. They gather and hunt food, tell stories around small fires at night, collect water from the leaves when it rains, which is often. There are no seasons on this island; there are occasional tropical storms, but because of currents and the placement of the land in the deep sea, at the top of an ancient, inactive volcano, these storms are weak and often bring more good, with their accompanying rain and slightly cooler weather, than destruction. Under a watchful sky, changing at its own pace, the village teaches its children to read to stars, to find the best tidepools for digging clams, and to be kind to each other. The sea and the land give the islanders what they need. Fish jump into the nets the most skilled women cast down from small rock cliffs a few yards above the ocean on the back, or front, depending on your perspective, of the island. Fruits, like orange grapes and smoky blue papayas, ripen on vines and trees throughout the land. The grasses and many leaves can be cut or picked to take back to the village and grind into juices, ointments, or broth for stew. The people live off of what is given to them, laughing and learning and assured in each other, in a small cleared area in the center of the island, surrounded by trees which are surrounded by bushes which are surrounded by grasses, surrounded by stone, surrounded by water, and so it has been and always will be.