merry justwrite

I unwind the wind from around about my fingers, let them breathe the cool, still air for the first time. The gingerbread people are anxious in my oven, feeling their edges begin to burn while their souls are still raw, chewy in the middle, a glass of milk already emptied and drowned in the sink. My pine needles fall to my feet, parched, almost on fire, watching the light leak out through the bottom, nothing to seal that hole. I tell him to stand here, to wait until he's done waiting. I hang shiny fish on hooks from his ears, comb his hair just right and tell him not to move much, to suck shallow breaths and pretend the noises aren't so loud. No use jumping. They're only echoes tunneling up from the basement, full of fury and those words I forget, signifying something that I don't want to understand because my organs ache when I think of it, playing low, slow carols that sound like dirges when I'm so far away, making lists of resolutions impossible so I can feel bad about it later, feel anything, and I forgot he was waiting in the family room so long the carpet grew up over his mind, clouded the room with clouds that I try to catch in my palms which are too flat to grasp, too empty to know what it is to be full. There is a spot on the ceiling that I chase with shadows because it's made of light, something I know how to hide, tiny footsteps in the corners, the voices in the basement ceasing, my unwrapped presents shielding their eyes with paper while gingerbread people feel their souls harden and beg for milk. I forget where I found it the first time, and I write myself a note to free him from the carpet before all my needles fall again.

club day justwrite

Herding cats in the faculty meeting, tile splitting apart like the plates of the Earth, things that seem small when you think of them without letting your feet tell you where they've been, which faults they've pointed out and scraped along the sand, dropping a rock into the sea from the ocean floor, knowing anything can float if you tell yourself it will. I break the light apart in my hands, not expecting it to crumble so easily, a battered shell pried from the boulder at the base of a hill, thinking it's holding up the whole world when really there's a lot of glue at the seams. The thread is just for show, spinning itself and unspinning upon the floor, running to the edges of everywhere I've been but cutting itself off before I can taste what the air is like on the outside, like my mind, like clouds caught in boxes, mist that disappears when you open the lid, but you wanted the emptiness anyway since I've always told you how great it is. There's nowhere to put the corners anymore, so I fill them with dust and watch them float away, the tides ceasing for an hour until the shadows meet the horizon, as untouched as my skin as I rest, my feet dangling into the sky, tracing symbols I like to trick myself into reading as if they mean something, as if I haven't already swallowed all of it, let it dig its way out of my throat, fingers pricking holes in the beach, expecting them to fill with blood but there's only starlight, and it's then that you realize the moon rose days ago, that it's been waiting for you to say goodbye ever since, not expecting a hello. In the summertime, I forget, let paint pour into my soul and trickle out the bottoms of my feet so the new ideas can follow me, teach themselves a new map of a new continent, free of waves, with lakes that rest silently under a sunny haze, reaching out toward the horizon but never quite touching it, waiting for the moon to rise, watching the rest break apart in your hands.

Quiet disarray of blankets tearing apart at the edges, but silently so you don't notice, like a ballet or a tiny waterfall caught be the sun and melted into air. I want to know what it's like to become the sky, to be unsure of where I begin and end, dropping feathers into my boxes so I can look at them later, frame them and let you wonder why, content in not knowing anything but how it feels to have birds drift through your arms, a needle through a hem, not as piercing as you'd think, just finding the holes that are already there. You tear up all your recipes and throw them into the wind, let your measuring cups fall against the hardwood, chipping so all the milk drips out, like tears but slower, distracted by the women in the field outside losing their keys and finding them again, always aware that the door is unlocked but trying to put on a good show, as if their fingers aren't trembling and losing their whispers, as if the cracks in the clouds aren't so noticeable, a red flower in a white room, the sheets clean, folded and crisp, as if laughter would bounce off of them and find its way through the window, sneaking between particles of glass, not realizing the dust has nestled in my mind, filling the corners because I saved them for too long, wanting to teach myself to sing or to fly without really understanding where I want to go, if my footprints are lily pads asking for more time, sending their transparent blooms as close to the sky as possible before they're plucked, beheaded, taken back inside. I only notice from the corner of my eye, leaving the rest for tomorrow.

To Miss Fannie Lou Hamer

Your road is lit by summer colors
as you carry a ballot and a pen,
ready to be freed by ink
with your signature, a scribbled work
that begins to speak but can only sing.
You fight fists with the force of a hymn.

Crippled by the law, you still wear hymns
on your lips, in your heart. Color
blank minds, teach them to sing
and to place their songs in awaiting pens.
They will listen, remember your words
and learn of the voice of ink.

Before you sketch your life in ink,
it's pictures, memorized like hymns
in the moments when thoughts mean more than words,
when peace means as much as prayer, as color
mixing with color, music finding its pen
so the world can find itself singing.

They cover your mouth but you have to sing,
more than you need paper or ink
while watching doors open, close, open,
taunting you with hard rhythms, breaking your hymns
as they broke your skin once, twice, coloring
you red, flinching at the harshness of their own words.

But you rise from the floor, feeling soft words
grown in your soul, still ready to sing
of the power of standing, the power of colors.
You give every person a bit of your ink,
give them your strength, your endless hymns.
I hum to myself as you fill my pen.

You still grip your ballot and your pen,
"sick and tired of being sick and tired," your words
heard and understood, clear as hymns
breaking through silence. They summers now sing,
their days long, illuminating ink
that speaks of the beauty of all colors.

I want to color my life with your words.
I clutch my pencil and can hear you sing
into my ink, my pages holding your hymns.

(gold)fishy justwrite

This is why there's a goldfish in her water jug and no mountains on the moon except one or two with mossy clearings where I stop to write in quick but not spontaneous moments, full of orange slices of orange, without the skin because as soon as it's broken it might as well disappear. The mornings come faster now than when I was young. It's as though time is one continuous morning, not the kind where I wear a black veil and pat handkerchiefs against my cheeks, only a yellow sundress with a red apron folded in the grass, pebbles in each pocket, spilling into the world. I sketch empty faces onto tree bark, tape it back up when I'm done, keeping out the cold like the newspaper pages in my sleeves, headlines crumpled against color, smudged so I think my magnifying glass is dirty when I try to read them. I sprout scales in the afternoon, search for water when I'm already submerged because I've been wet my whole life and feel that something is missing when you remind me so harshly, your breath smelling of the seaweed that grows from beneath your fingernails. I count the pebbles one by two until the time comes back again, reminding me to iron my pants and wipe the glitter from my face--evening is no time to shine, no time like the present, wrapped with a bow and nestled in my branches, soaking in the salts from the air, the sand from the puddles my feet refuse to leave. And that is why there's a goldfish in her water jug. Because the mountains were already full.

smallenvirosciwrite

I sit at the edge of my dandelion
wish, feeling wings
sprouting in my mind
beyond the places I can see.
I am as untouched as the horizon,
casting my seeds
into my own skin, watching
its colors change as the light
changes, as the seasons
blend into each other, fog
touching the ends
of my fingers, convincing them
they'll never need to feel
anything but the inside
of an autumn leaf, the petals
of an unnamed flower
that is only a flower
in the sense that I'm sure
it's not a tree
or a butterfly

or the palm of my hand.

new notebook, new justwrite

Good as new fireflies, flashing their taillights for the first time as if it's nothing special, but inside they're burning, not like lamps lit too close to the sheets or a cookie tray to the bare hand, but like tasting morning air for the first time in five months, finding a peace so calm even the wind seems still at first. She dances on sidewalk lines under the moon's pale face, framed by a crown of planets budding like roses carved out of gems. She digs into the Earth with each breath, planting emptiness and wondering why nothing ever grows, why the rainy season always brings ice, which isn't so bad because every time dancing in hail feels like the first time, tiny soft pebbles landing in her hair, thinking it's a wing and that the other one must be nearby because without two you can only glide, and even then you need to be somewhere high enough to jump off. When the ground races toward the sky, she slips and falls, thought only a few inches because one foot was already under the grass, planting its metaphorical roots in the dew, roots which she can think of later and wonder what they soaked in, brandy or poison or expensive perfume, though all are basically the same if you break it down to chemicals. She pulls herself up again and tells the cresting sun she knows how much time has passed. She doesn't really but neither does the sun, yawning, squinting at the harshness of the waning dark left over from the night before. I turn my thoughts inside out but don't like that side either. I give them all to her anyway, and she laps them up, says they dance on her tongue like saffron's sleepy steps and pepper's brief infatuations. I blush but she can't see it, decides my face is always that color, and it is really, as though poison has crept up through my soles and planted itself just below the skin. She knows what that's like, and she doesn't judge. I grab the end of her scarf before she can slip away into the dawn, not expecting it to tear because I've never noticed it's woven from leaves until now.