snow day justwrite

The light outside is the color my palms would be if they didn't have so many creases, if I were smooth like sand after it had been melted, if I could pour myself on the floor in front of your feet and dare you to find a flaw. There are so many you can't pinpoint one, trying to find a limb in a forest, a drop of blood in my arteries, my pulse so fast and hard but never catching up to itself. There is dust in one of my eyes, dust that fell from a shelf like a snowflake, a tiny parachute, a dandelion wish, rising and falling at once like how I breathe when I'm asleep. You tell me to blink, tell me to cry. I never could make myself cry, but when my father cries, his tears form rivers across my cheek bones. I tell you I think I'm made of ivory but really I'm not so precious. The color in my eyes stains my skin, ink blots that can't be interpreted as anything but static; my words are noise crafted to fill space. My lips assault your silence, leave fingerprints behind. There are maps of the constellations carved into my bones, bones so hollow you thought I could fly when you first met me, my breath parting the air like steam and yours caught, hiding in your throat. My whispers seeped into your bloodstream. I can still hear them, whirring past your ears. They sound like the ocean when the beach is covered in snow, red wine spilled across it, a stain you think is blood, melting everything it touches until it finds the ground. Your footprints used to be there; I remember trying to fill them, watching how I could only ever stand in shadow because light couldn't find its way beneath my feet. But I'm glass now, transparent, waiting for your breath to grow across me like frost or moss or words, to etch its pictures into me, to tell me I'm not a mistake.

visiting creative writing club and going through krut withdrawal justwrite

S stands for certified like a name on a birth certificate folded into the third drawer in my dresser, packets of seeds on the floor by my bed so I can remember thoughts spreading like wildflowers before I fall asleep and whisper to you that I want to be a vine because they are the only plant that grows toward touch. I remember the afternoon you fingerpainted my skin with shadows that I can still see today, the inkwells under my eyes pouring out onto the table, a black hole where my pupils wander, trying to remember their lessons but losing their footprints in puddles of ink. At home, the puddles are frozen and crack beneath my weight, crack like eggshells between your palms, thinking about the frailty of life and not remembering you've been making breakfast until the room is full of smoke and your lungs shake you back out of your mind, the french toast burning on the stove, an audience of strangers watching moss grow over your feet as your bones become stone, crack in the winter because water expands when it becomes ice, struggling to fill up space that isn't there. I'm a certified lifeguard who never learned to swim because the only pools I've ever seen were in your eyes, surrounded by irises, reflecting sunsets and my own face when the ripples stop and I try to memorize the lines on my cheeks, wondering if they are laugh lines or worry lines when really they're all life lines, sweat carving roadmaps into my body, only ever telling me where I've been.

Kooky cookies

I can never remember learning to count, but I know that I have one soul, two irises, three grandparents, and four cookie recipes worth mentioning. My father and I would made shortbread cookies in the winter time. They were my great-grandmother's recipe, and we had the same name. The kitchen would smell like almonds for days afterward, and I remember when I was eight and Dad convinced me to lick the excess extract from the spoon. My tongue burned for a week, but I will never forget that taste. After dinner, we would sit at the kitchen table. Mom would have coffee. Dad would have tea. Christine and I would have milk, cold and warm respectively. Taylor would be sleeping by then, the baby monitor interrupting our thoughts with creaking breaths between static. We would all dip our cookies, wait for them to soften, and think about the snow outside. In the spring, Mom and I would make sugar cookies shaped like I-love-you hand shapes. She had enough cookie cutters for all of us; the Deaf school gave them away at the end of every year. We'd roll the dough on a piece of granite countertop Dad had cut down after tearing it out of someone else's kitchen. He didn't understand why someone would want to get rid of it, so it found a place between the cabinet and the refrigerator. It was always dusty when we brought it out, and Dad would wipe away the spiderwebs until we were ready to pour out the dough in floury lumps. We rolled it thin and pressed it with handprints, the same message stamped on every cookie. We would eat them outside amongst the daffodils. I remember how they crumbled on my tongue, sugar breaking apart like it was dissolving into me. In the summer, we made blueberry cookies. The recipe was one for blueberry muffins Mom found in the Joy of Cooking Cook Book up on the greasy cookbook shelf. Instead of using a muffin tin, we splattered the batter in messy lumps across the cookie sheets and were amazed when everything turned out all right. We ate them on the back porch next to the blueberry bush, sun tea steeping in its pitcher on the porch rail, watching bumblebees hum idly around our feet. In the autumn, our cookies were chocolate chip, the recipe on the back of the bag the chip's came in. Mom would add vanilla and sometimes oatmeal. We ate them while they were so hot they burned the roofs of our mouths. Christine would sneak into the kitchen at night to steal more after we were supposed to be in bed. She always brought me two and three for herself because she was older. We thought we were getting away with something, but really the linoleum in the kitchen squeaked so loudly with every step I know now that Mom and Dad could hear us from the basement and laughed to each other, sharing a cigarette and calling us their daughters and nothing else.

stuck on 12,000

You said that she was breathing as if it was something to be ashamed of, as if she shouldn't gasp so loudly when the words in her throat are pressing down on her lungs. I know what that's like now. The hands over my mouth shoved my screams back inside, and I thought my tears were blood, thought I was shedding the lining of my eyes like the lining of my uterus, could taste it on my lips with their fingerprints laced through. I could feel my lungs contract like they were trying to hug themselves, tuck their arms tight around their sides and curl up on the carpet, let the leaves falling from trees cover them until even the moon couldn't find them anymore. She'd search all night, moving idly across the sky, searching each corner, night after night, but never find anyone. I feel like that sometimes, in the moments I spend in the corners of my room gluing bottle caps to the ceiling and praying the never fall. My hands clasp each other. My fingers are bent so long they forget how to stand up straight. They can see themselves in each other's fingernails, all mouthing the same silent words before they choke.

I have a warning for you. I'm not sure what it says because it's too far away to read, but I'm getting closer every day. I have two pairs of glasses in case the first one breaks but apparently glass isn't as fragile as it used to be. They've made it so it won't shatter, the shards falling like snowflakes into my eyes, reflecting light into my pupils growing smaller with each moment until they're cut away. My warning for you is on a big orange sign on the back of my left palm. It's hiding the scar where the nail went through. The other one healed into the shape of a heart so I want to show it to you, show it to everyone, keep it on my surface and convince it not to float away.

I carve your name into the loaves of bread I bake. My bosom is dusty with flour. It hardens in the cracks of my hands. The bread crumbs I spill look like stars. They taste like light mixing with dust on my tongue like your skin does.

There are flowers on your pillowcases. I tried to name them once. First I said daisy, then rose, then lily, but I think they're a flower I've never seen before. When you sleep, your cheek is pressed against them and you wake up with petals on your skin. You taste like nectar. The ocean tastes like salt. I know this only because I've walked into it with my wounds still open, felt it sting, felt my flesh say it is soil that will never grow anything again. I cling to the peaks of waves although I know they're already breaking. I cling to your forearm while you're walking away. My fingers leave white streaks on your skin where they stop your blood for a moment. I don't want these streaks to turn blue. I don't want to be like the people who have carved their faces into your bodies because they want to own you, measure you into individual bags to sell at stands along the street to gain their two cents. I want to bring my clenched fist to them and drop my teeth into their palms when they're expecting coins. I want them to look at my bloody molars, shiny with spit that isn't yet dry, and see themselves in the cavities. I want them to weep, open their bags, and pour your body back into your soul. I want to see you glow like you did the first time I saw you. I want to glow, but not in the dark between streetlights where my bones are like neon signs exposing every bend and every broken edge. I don't want them to know the pain in my wrist when I fell off the swing the summer before second grade. I don't want them to feel my pulse in my center, moving in tides down my body like I am a shoreline. I don't want them to like the sight of their skin beneath my fingernails, to smell their scent on my shirt. I want to be a flower so ugly no one would pick it, choose it to decapitate, bring home its dead body to display on the kitchen table at dinner time. I want to be a flower on your pillowcase, just in front of where you lay your cheek at night so I can feel your breath like wind in my hair and remember that we are both very much alive.

You tell me I have a pretty face. I want to peel it off and hand it to you, walk away painting myself a mask with watercolor. I want to look like a cloud to you, like a puff of white with light shining through, then grow darker and send as much energy as I can hurtling toward Earth. The surface of our planet is hit by lightning three thousand times a minute. I want to believe I was born from this light, that I blind people who look at me too closely and only have to exist for a moment to be heard. I want people to count the seconds between when I appear and when they hear me to know how far away I am. I think about thunder storms when I was young. The trees leaned in toward the house, wind jerking their branches in every direction, and we all realized how fragile roofs are and how close the floor is to the ceiling. Mom would take us into the basement when the power went out. There were no windows and we couldn't see the lightning, but we could hear the thunder. I still love storms. I remember when they meant spending all day in the little back room in the basement, telling stories by candlelight, teaching Taylor the alphabet in darkness so thick I couldn't see the lines forming on my mother's face, her skin like broken shingles.

I can't stop coughing. My clothes smell of campfires and my sweat is drenched in charcoal. I have rings under my eyes that remind me of raccoons, and I think I am tired when I see myself, then realize how dark my fingertips are and how often I've been trying to rub away my eyelashes, catch them all and blow them away. When I have extras, I give you my wishes. I tell you to think very hard but know all you're noticing is the way my eyelashes are transparent at the base and black at the top. They look like a reflection of something that doesn't exist yet. They look like my great grandparents. I never understood why I didn't look like my father until I stared into his eyes and noticed the same gold growing around his pupils that spreads outward from mine. If you cut through my center, there will be more gold rings you can count for every year I've been alive. My mother keeps her gold wedding ring in the bottom drawer of her least favorite jewelry box. My father proposed with a handful of gems. He was younger than I've ever seen him, and I imagine his hands without callouses although I've never known them that way. They were softer than you'd expect, grasping me by the arms and lifting me over piles of lumber, his fist around mine while he taught me where to hold the hammer to pound in nails. I was always afraid he would hit my thumb, sometimes moved it the moment before the hammer came down so the nail would fall over and we'd leave a dent in the wood. My dad called it a dimple, and said it added character. I think about that now when I pace messy rooms with piles of unfinished work growing around me. I think about it while I count my talents on one finger and ignore the others. You told me once I have the smallest pinkies you've ever seen. There's not much you can do with pinkies that small.

nano excerpt blah

I used to think that the sun beams streaming down to me through clouds were ropes I could catch and climb on. I would imagine pulling myself up into the sky, feeling the warmth of the summer in my palms, parting clouds like lace curtains with my fingertips, urging myself through them. I used to think that mushrooms were stools. I would imagine the fairies that pranced on them at night. I believed in magic, in wishes coming true, in the stories adults told me. I would make wishes on dandelions. I wished that I was a mermaid and that I could fly. I thought the reason they didn't come true was that I was greedy. I knew, though, that every dandelion had at least a hundred dandelion fluffs and that a hundred dandelion fluffs could probably carry two wishes. What I didn't know was that the mystery lollipop flavor was really just all the extra bits of every flavor mixed together so no matter what you guessed you were wrong. What I didn't know was that people plant land mines to kill other people when they could plant forests instead. What I didn't know was that my parents wouldn't love each other forever and that my two best friends would move away and we'd forget each other eventually. I didn't know the weight of my words.

They tell me that no two snowflakes are alike, but I know that they taste the same. I've fallen into snowbanks on the side of the paths up our mountain. I've slipped while ice skating on my aunt's lake in Ohio, ended up on my back with snow falling on my face, onto my lips. I've rolled down the window on road trips to Grandpa's ski lodge, let the crystals melt on my arms and leave spots on my seat belt. I remember Mom driving through the long tunnel, how the radio would cut out into static that sounded like snow, how the sun would be so far away we'd realize that we were driving through the base of a mountain. The lights were yellow and came from above me so when I looked out the wind shield, all I saw was my reflection with a strange halo of polluted air mixing with the color of my hair. On one side of the tunnel, it was still fall, and when we came out the other side, Mom would always gasp, her breath turning to clouds, tell us to look at the snow. I'd roll up my window and watch the flakes running toward me, hopeful, then hitting the glass.

I read my poetry out loud because I feel like that makes it more real. I think my voice is alive sometimes. It sneaks up on me when I'm not expecting it. I imagine myself differently than the mirror tells me I am. I'm always surprised when I catch a glimpse at myself. Maybe I think I should have more wrinkles by now or maybe I think I should be made out of stone. I feel sometimes like I've been carved. My edges seem too sharp to be natural. My bones are too hard to be made of bone. I think I'm made of granite. You tell me I'm crazy while you eat pomegranates with the skin still on. You say you feel bad for peeling the skin off of anything as if it's not good enough, as if its sour taste is offensive when really it just reminds you of the poison you've poured into the world. The oceans have a salty aftertaste and the rain is too bland these days. The soil makes my throat too dry and I can't chew bark anymore; my teeth are forgetting what softness is. I read my poetry out loud and they ask what these noises are. I weave my tongue into baskets and use them to carry everyone else's words.

Today I learned that trees can grow through fences. They just reach out their limbs and refuse to stop growing. I think people are like this. I think they are like this until I listen to them speak. They tell me that they've given up.

I whisper words to no one in the nights that feel like very early mornings. I wait for the sun to rise because I know it's more likely than the rain, although I wait for that too, as if it is a sure thing. I think about god and pretend to reach a conclusion or two. There is a box of tissues on my nightstand. There is a silver comb in my top drawer. It belonged to my grandmother and is carved with roses, cold metal petals against my fingers, reflecting my fingerprints so close there isn't enough light to see them. I want to comb your hair. The closest I've come is running my hands through it like they're raindrops. I glide across its surface like your body is a frozen pond. I take careful steps when I'm near you because I don't want to scratch the ice, etch it so it looks like lace from the sky and birds are distracted as they pass over, run into the windows of our living room and only turn around at the last moment, just enough time to see their reflections, see the fear blooming in their eyes, blooming in metal roses harder and stronger than bones, even those that aren't hollow.

I like to sit in leaf piles because it's impossible for them to sneak up on me. Every time the wind shifts the leaves, I turn, my eyes burning, and wish that I'm still alone.

We're all parts of an alphabet

A is for apple. We only bake the sour ones into pies, add as many handfuls of sugar as we can grasp, marvel at how much they've changed afterward. The only poison I've ever heard of is in the seeds of apples. But if you place it in the Earth, it sprouts nothing but more apples. An apple reminds me of my uterus. The red ones especially. They cup the seeds as if they'll become something one day, even though we mostly just leave them in the stripped core, place them into trash cans or, if they're lucky, toss them into the woods.

B is for butterflies, like the ones we had to brush from our clothing in Costa Rica. They stand around for too long, except the ones as blue as mirrors in the sky, the ones I try to capture in photographs but only manage to paint as blurs in my memories. You are like that when you dance, blue dress spinning outward, hands moving so I can't see them. I think about my mother's hands, how they are really words, how she speaks with motion. I think about my own short fingers. I think about my angry fists, clenching and unclenching, trying to tear the movement from the air.

C is for center. The center of gravity, higher than if I were a triangle. I center myself around an axis. I center you around my center.

D is for delinquent. I think of people who are older than me. I think of my friends and the people who are not their friends. I see jail bars, night sticks, bruises. I see handcuffs digging into flesh that might as well be plastic to them. I see my skin, remember how you told me I was transparent once, my veins like road maps lit beneath. I don't know where I'm headed. I can't recall where I've been. I pretend these footprints behind me are mine, but when I look down, I have no feet.

E is for elegant. Elegant is something I almost never feel. I feel clumsy. I feel large. Only my fingernails are elegant, like shined pearls or beads of sweat on the ends of each of my fingers. But then sometimes they're short and I garden with them and they have dirt underneath and I'm embarrassed when adults see them and I try to hide them in my mouth or my pockets or beneath me. I sit on my right hand when it moves without asking me first. I don't want the other kids to see. It takes me years to show you even, and you think it's cool, don't believe at first that I'm not telling it to move. I think you're jealous of its freedom, or maybe I'm projecting. I'm afraid to take a step without checking the rule book first. My hand contorts itself, as if calling out in agony or rage, and doesn't take the time to ask or let me know. It just knocks over my glass or tears my homework in half. I sit on it. But sometimes I just watch. I wouldn't call it elegant.

F is for forgotten. I've forgotten books on dusty shelves until they smell old, although they haven't yet been opened. I've forgotten my little brother in the back of a chain store with tanks of fish. I've forgotten until I was at the end of the aisle and a goldfish with a puffy head looked me in the eye with such longing I knew it too had forgotten someone important. I've been forgotten, left out of a photograph of an incomplete family. I've been forgotten purposefully, while I rush to keep up, realize I don't understand bus schedules or know how to leave this kingdom. I am a thirteen-year-old, and you expect me to be quite young; I look much older, but there are tears carving canyons into my cheeks. I chat with a merchant while I wait, and I feel bad when I'm distracted by how crooked her teeth are. Later, we see an armadillo. You think you're hallucinating. I think you're right.

G is for geyser. I've never been to Yellowstone, but I wrote them a letter during fifth grade when you were teaching us how to properly address formal writings. I placed my soul into that letter, creased it gently with unskilled fingers, and drew my self portrait on the envelope, a mirror image because that is how we imagine ourselves, the only way I saw me daily. The envelope I received back was blank, spare my name and the address of the elementary school. I have no image of who sent it. I think about overalls and maybe a rain jacket. Inside the envelope was a brochure for Yellowstone Park. I've never been there. But I've seen pictures of their goats, their trees, their faithful geysers. Sometimes I feel like that's close enough.

H is for hyperbole. I use about a million of those every day.

I is for ice. Like in my veins, ice that only melts on those summer evenings when the sky is so clear I can see myself in it and you tell me that if there were no branches above us you wouldn't believe we weren't drowning. In February the icicles on the roof drip dirty water into my hair. I stand there anyway, stubborn. There is frost crawling across my skin, spelling my name over and over again in cursive. They all look different somehow.

J is for justice. I grew up knowing my country was drowning. You stared at the backs of my eyes and found only water where my soul should be, soaking into the window frames until they are so swollen they crack like my grandmother's feet like the layers of the Earth like young people bursting with laughter, their seams stretching until you can see what's inside of them.

K is for killing. I try not to think about war, which is easy because I live here, where I see more red in trees than in blood and the mountains slouch on all sides of me as if they were put there to protect us but know their job is really a joke and are just waiting for the week to end so they can head home to easy chairs and mugs of hot tea or hot spiced cider or love. The soil beneath my fingernails when I dig my gardens used to be alive. The world was made of bones so recently I wonder how we can grasp sticks to throw for our dogs and not think first that they are femurs.

L is for liminal. I find myself in a doorway and don't know whether I'm coming or going. You push me, they pull me, and I don't ever move. My life is a transition. I have no name. They look at me but never see me, stare through my sometimes, or see themselves reflected off the beads of sweat on my skin.

M is for money. It stains my hands. I can smell it on me for days. When I clutch coins in my bare fists, they eat through me like I'm candy and they're deprived children on Halloween. I string shiny silver dimes from fishing line and hang them from stars so we think we can see more of them. You tell me it's a bad idea, but you help me name the new constellations anyway. You polish more dimes every Sunday, repeating over and over that you need to see yourself in them before they're ready.

N is for neo-Nazi. I see myself in their shaved heads. A shadow with a swastika in the middle. I haven't met many of them lately. The people where I'm from scare them away. We don't want hate like that. We don't want your kind of hate. We have children here.

O is for organs. I have them in my body and your fingers run across them, playing dirges with some lullabies in between. When I sleep, I dream about the circulatory system. I hear it pumping through my ears, feel it in the parts where my body folds into itself. Sometimes I have ten heartbeats folded into my fists, one at the base of each of my fingers. They keep me up at night, penetrate my dreams, reminding me that I'm alive when I didn't ask and don't need to know. They hammer my flesh, oscillating through my bones to my chest, interrupt my breathing and shove me out of bed. Then your fingers come, weaving mismatched lullabies throughout my body, chasing sleep back into my core.

P is for pretty. I listen to you too often and my thighs not often enough. The veins in my legs look like the naked branches of winter time trees that don't sprout buds of new leaves when spring finally comes. They look like my mother's. When I was seven, the doctors cut tiny slices all down her legs and tore out some of her veins. I remember her on the couch afterward, legs bound in ace bandages; I remember bringing her cups of almost-clear tea in glass mugs, my reflection drowning at the bottom. I have a spider vein on the top of my left thigh. I think about spider webs hidden in the grass, sticking to my toes so I pull strands of silk behind me wherever I walk. She tears them off and rubs them from her hands, a disgusted look on her face.

Q is for queer. Strange. Odd. She had a queer feeling that they were being watched. Informal, usually offensive (esp of a man) homosexual.

R is for reason. I don't always have one, other than the halo of fog blocking my eyes and the boxes of matches in my pockets.

S is for silence. I remember how invisible I used to be, how I opened my throat to scream and moths flew from it like ashes. I remember choking on them. My breath fluttered like wings, trying not to exist, to disturb the air as little as possible so they wouldn't notice me. I would lay my face on the desk and pretend to dream but really just try to form syllables upon my tongue, try to feel the words to match my feelings. I wrote poems about how beautiful mountains are and about waiting for winter to come. I watched her write my name in her skin with a knife. I watched her blood stain my carpet, watched her try to clean it up, remember thinking she was only rubbing it in, deeper, deeper.

T is for train. I think about my little brother's second birthday. We rode the train and saw Santa Clause. He gave us gingerbread cookies and told us to be good. I was good back then. I wished on stars every night and sang songs to ease my brother to sleep. I read during recess and wanted to be like Cam Jansen, read all of her books. I think about the train of a dress, heavier than it should be. I think about trains that carry people into the after-life. You told me you tried to catch the same train as your mother once. My eyes teared up. We were sitting at a table together at the time, in an anonymous cafe on the corner of some quaint street. I wanted to fold you into my pocket like a love note. I wanted to tuck you under the velvet layer of my jewelry box. You smelled like citrus, and I wanted to get lost in your hair. I cried every time you spoke.

U is for understand. I can't. Not now. I still have bruises that looks like fingerprints on my thighs. I still have foreign breath on my neck, can smell it when nightmares shake me awake in the dark. I dream about streetlights, about drowning in pools of light that are meant to keep you safe. I dream about being alone, about walking alone, and now sleeping alone. My flesh has grown back where the chin stubble rubbed it away, sand paper to my wood finish. I planted seeds in my open wounds, nurtured them with kind words and sunlight. Nothing has grown back yet. I can't tell if there are roots. Sometimes I think I feel them, winding down around my ribcage and up toward my belly button, intertwined with my vocal cords, resting on my eardrums, stretching their limbs down to the bottoms of my feet, out to the tips of my toes. But sometimes there is nothing. Sometimes, most times, I am empty.

V is for violets. African violets were my paternal grandmother's favorite flower. After she died during my seventh grade school year, we went to Ohio to her funeral. Going through the things she loved, I found a plastic violet in a pot. I took it, liking the knowledge that I had a plant that would never die.

W is for window. They told me once that the eyes are the window to the soul, but I think my soul is in my throat. I can feel it there, strumming songs on my tendons and teasing my vocal cords. I saw you through a window once; the glass made the highlights in your hair disappear so the next time I saw you through only air you seemed somehow different to me. I was never sure how you looked. Even now, I can't picture you unless I draw the world around you first and then fill in the missing space. I draw the corner of the doctor's office waiting room, the tiny child-sized chairs you insisted we sit in even after you were taller than most adults. I draw your shoes folded onto each other on the floor. I draw your bed, the covers thrown to the side, none of the sheets matching the pillowcases matching each other. I remember that's how you liked your environment, clashing but always making sense. I draw the garden, empty holes awaiting bulbs, your gloves sitting lonely in the grass while you have wandered inside for lemonade. I draw the kitchen floor, remember you sitting cross-legged in front of the door, tossing aluminum foil balls again and again all afternoon, laughing every time the new kitten would bring them back. I draw the glass pane of a window. I see you missing behind it.

X is for x-ray. It usually is. One of my earliest memories is of my dad carrying me through the hospital parking lot on my way to get an x-ray. I was wearing puppy dog slippers with bells on the ears. One of my ankles was broken. Dad had dropped me in the kitchen. It was two days before Christmas, and my hair was the color of snow. My sister was at home laying cookies on a plate, wondering whether they would last long enough for Santa to come. We didn't have a fireplace back then. We hung stockings on our doorknobs so we'd have something to do when the sun woke us up. We weren't allowed to go into the living room until seven. I carried mugs of hot tea to my father in his chair. He could pick me up as if I were paper. He called his hugs bear hugs and I felt like all of me was being squished at once. I didn't mind.

Y is for you. You are the one who reminds me of me. You are the one who reminds me of who I want to be. You pick me bouquets of daisies, and you know to break the leaves off the stems so the water doesn't turn sour. You dance. You like the moonlight because it reminds you to dance, the way it tricks the grass with shadows that are only slightly darker than the dark, the way it seems so thick you could drink it but you can't quite reach it anyway.

Z is for zipper. There is one between my lips that I try to open, but it closes in both directions. I tug on your shirt, needing help, but when you turn to me you are caught off guard by your reflection in the metal. You hide your face behind lace curtains in the desert. I want to tell you I've walked around the Earth three times to get here and that the bottoms of my feet have been worn away. I want to tell you that there is sand in each of my pores trying to be castles but my body's tides are too strong to let them last. I want to tell you that I saw you from miles away and memorized your shadow before we even met. I want to tell you that you have your mother's ears, always ready, holding faux gemstones, unashamed, too busy straining for music to feel much of anything but love. I want to tell you these things, but my lips are metal sealed tightly to each other.

dawn seashore mango Italy turtle

You think about turtle time and tell me I walk too fast, that dawn is licking the horizon and if I get there too soon I'll catch on fire. I hold you in my hands and you curl up inside yourself like a turtle, arms tucked over your heart, silent whispers soaking into your knees. I remember our weekend on the seashore, how the light at dawn reflected in the sand and made our footprints seem even darker. The first sun rays were so free you had to capture them with your eyes so your pupils were ripe mangoes, and when I lifted my hands to shade them, you stopped me and let rivers form on your cheeks. You told me that in Italy there are women at bakeries with dough stuck to their fingers, flour on the sides of their noses. You said you feel like that when you're waiting for me to wait for you, like everything you touch sticks and weighs you down, your wedding band caked and the cracks in your palms white as the sand when dawn has left. We wish she wouldn't as we watch her, skirt hiked above the knee, lips sweet as mangoes tasting the ocean air, more sugar than salt in the mornings. You tell me she can find us in Italy too, but she always seems farther away. I turn around once to see if you're finally close, but all I find is a shell on the ground and the skin of a mango, drying in the midday heat.

too early 9/9 justwrite

There are numbers on my eyelids, counting down while I sleep in a shallow shell so the trucks grumbling outside my window at four seventeen in the morning cause me to run across highways with nine lanes and wonder why it's so hard to keep from crying out when all you want is silence for a while, crystal champagne flutes beheaded from their stems while a cool breeze traces its despair onto my neck. I expect the worst but only find seeds scattered across my palms. Seeds some day grow more seeds, and I wonder how we can know this and still feel alone, as if everyone else is constantly distracted by something flashy on the horizon in the opposite direction, and sound can only travel backward so your screaming never warns them. A distant voice waits in the doorway and tries to convince you that everything will be all right, but it has poison on its lips and hasn't realized it yet. But there are windchimes, and the only poison I've tasted lately is in the seeds of apples that only want to grow more apples that will hang heavily on tender branches that bow to the wind.

super happy group justwrite

Cloudless skies fill your sad eyes like the steam from my tea fogging my glasses an a message on the mirror after you shower, fingerprints like the dampness of morning, dew like lace on your lips. I leave the spiderwebs in the corners of my room because home is so dusty I can't see my reflection. I form shapes out of fog, people with four legs and no ears, and I know I can't watch them walk away, which is really floating because footprints I can follow feel like you're still near me. The wind is your heartbeat, so I walk backwards through snow until I lose myself and wonder how many hours I spent thinking about myself and how little I truly know about myself, except in those moments when the flies are daydreaming, fat and lazy on the empty picnic table, and I think of photographs bent at the corner and six faces looking in slightly different directions. The grass is like ice today. Your eyes are like ice today. The clouds flew from them and finally found the sky that wants to be the ground that wants to be the sky and the horizon in between in just happy, and I look at you and see happy. My sunset melts into your moonrise, and the stars are jealous of this recipe, cutting skin with the sharp edges of their light, then blocked from view by mist so thick my grandmother would call it soup and I wish it's warm soup that will fill her bones with summer air or smokey firewood but there's too much dust blocking her doorway.

super tired first Hampshire nightwrite

My muscles are tired from crying, from lack of sleep, from laughter as the katy-dids outside pretend they are birds and I stare at my life piled in the corner of the room, wondering if it's always been such a mess but the room was so big I didn't notice. I notice now like my fingertips notice the stubble on your cheek and my hands realize they're probably never going to grow any longer. I had my palm read once, in the back of a classroom, but now I'm staring at the place where the land turns to sky, amazed that it's claimed its own identity, sure more than ever that I am part of the horizon. My lips are turning blue because I blew you so many kisses I ran out of air, swallowed leaves like they were nothing at all and pretended I was a tree, a maple, a sugar maple because all I want is to taste like something you'll remember, watch myself dissolve on your tongue and forget that I could ever be measured. I'm leaving my window open at night so I can learn what it is to be cold, but the ice never falls and all the snowflakes have already melted rivers into my veins, stained the last ninety-six pages and realized something has shifted and nothing will ever be the same except my heartbeat and the katy-dids and the sugar beneath my skin.

muddled justwrite

On the edge of the riverbank I spend hours pressing my palms into the mud and wondering what color I was before I was born. I form the clay in my mind into faces to talk to when the grass is so dry it breaks beneath my feet and falls into the cracks in the Earth. I pretend my skin is see-through so my heart can watch itself beat. I'll stand in front of the mirror for a lifetime before it believes me, and trees will shatter in the wind so branches are piled in the streets tomorrow morning and leaves will wonder how they fell without letting go. I don't know the answer. My grandmother does. Her hands are waiting for me and I know they'll surprise me in sixty years when thread is trembling between my fingertips and my face is framed in silver and my lifelines are worn away. For now I count flower petals, wondering whether or not you love me and not knowing exactly who you are or really caring because I'm pressing flower petals between my fingertips and watching them become invisible. On the street, a stranger tells me I smell like roses even though there are daisies in my cheeks an irises in my eyes and a bouquet of wheat in my pocket, ready to be planted because darkness is something we crave as much as fresh bread, warm against our tongues like music made for dancing and hips that can't stop moving, and I have slips of paper in my jewelry box, slips of paper waiting for words while a letter waits on my nightstand with its stamp gathering dust because I'm always living on the edge of tomorrow, watching the mud dry and crack on my palms.

National justwrite

I used to be so small I had to reach up to open doors, and the shallow end of the swimming pool would swallow me if I wasn't wearing water wings, unclipped and unfurled, and I thought when I got more than two dollars in my piggy bank that I would buy a piece of land, just a modest piece big enough to unroll a sleeping bag and imagine a roof to keep the birds safe when they curl up with me at night. I knew I'd call it a Nation and write my own constitution three words long, or maybe five, or maybe three because "I love you. You're beautiful." is a little too complicated sometimes or maybe I would fill all the pages with words, or the whole parchment because every nation should be founded on parchment laid out on the grass, muddy fingerprints on the edges, a purple crayon tracing the same three words over and over until all the parchment in the world is full. And that would be my constitution. And my Nation would be a place where anyone could bring their sick teddy bears to get free bandaids and free lollipops, and even a free coloring book if they were about to start school where we'd take turns being teachers and the teddy bears would learn to tie shoes and learn to pick berries in bare feet without getting splinters and learn that naptime is really dreamtime, and we'd teach our bears sign language so they could talk to us when we couldn't listen and we'd try to stay up all night to count the stars before we'd realize they move sometimes and fade sometimes. I'd invite the leaders of other Nations for invisible tea, and we'd have a parents' weekend where everyone could pick their own parents or be parents or just be friends because who really needs parents in a Nation with my constitution. But we'd find them anyway and no one would need bumper stickers that say, "Did you hug your children today?" because no one wants a bumper sticker with such an obvious answer. And every night we'd lay out on our giant sleeping bag with our teddy bears and rag dolls and velvet-eared rabbits and plushie caterpillars and we'd read our constitution in low bedtime voices until the whole world fell asleep and dreamed about waterwings, unclipped and unfurled, and being beautiful and finding rocks shaped like hearts and sea glass with the sharp edges worn away and the sky full of stars echoing I love you I love you I love you.

really bad justwrite

Your lavender fields are resting on my eyelids while low muffled voices fade into my skin. The sun is growing every day and the moon is closer than I remember even though you keep telling me I'm just taller now. Years are fading into my dreams where friends I haven't met yet gather in giant rooms and your legs are all I see, becoming tree trunks as the bark strips away at my feet, and the tiniest fish swim through the holes in my net and into my cupped hands. I want to grow gills so I can live where it's quiet and even my thoughts come to me in ripples. Here it doesn't matter when I forget what to say because everyone is facing the corners of the room, whispering to themselves recipes for sesame pretzels and pancakes shaped like rainbows or candy canes or the cane in my grandmother's closet, the one she leaves in the grocery store and doesn't remember until her knee screams and the benches are all full and I watch her fingers trembling on the hand rail, fingers so light they are moths chasing the sun, parting the air in front of her lips while she waves away my concern. She keeps her bedroom door open at night and pushes the stool in the living room against the wall before she can fall asleep, and her Scrabble game has no "x" because she never knows what to do with it. The walls in my house are becoming shorter every day until the ceiling cracks open against the furniture and I'll be able to see the stars when I can't sleep, taste rain while I'm showering and know the world won't end before I can run to the window and watch.

insecurities justwrite

You look at these words and say they're not radical enough because I think fireflies are beautiful like a cloud with the moon shining through, beautiful in a way you can't touch, like me. My cactus skin waits for water, swells when it rains and smells like the dirt on the bottoms of my feet and petals crushed beneath, the veins of my leaves throbbing in the summer as great shovels dig more veins and more veins out of the Earth. I sit all day because I can't think when my thighs are making so much noise and your whispers are disrupting their rhythm when I walk. I used to dance, you know. I used to dissolve and let the air come in between each part of me, float away on a breeze like pollen in the spring, tickling your nose to finally watch you cry, your eyes watering just before you sneeze and I know your heart stopped for a moment, just long enough to murmur I love you and finally leave, fading to yellow, orange, brown, its shell falling as the children on the ground reach up to catch every wish before it burns out because I've had to many birthday cakes with wax centers. The candles melt to nothing while I try to think of what to say but only remember the wax burns when it is gas, like the kind that lifts hot air balloons but not the kind that makes rainbows on the asphalt when I know I should've wished to be barefoot. Everything you've ever seen reflects off your irises and stains the roses in my cheeks. Everything you've ever seen is so backwards it hits your mind upside down and needs to be flipped over before you understand. I wonder how we can trust gravity when we know this, but I'm too afraid to fly because you keep telling me I'm so heavy, carving numbers into my limbs, my branches, hearts with arrows straight through, and I remember it's been a long time since I knew how to dance. It's been a long time since I've danced with you.

thoroughly untalented justwrite

Piles of books wait at my feet while the windchimes outside seem farther away than your footsteps, watching the children in my memories build sandcastles and wait for the waves to take them. There are letters on my palms and letters that I can't see on my eyelids. I wonder how hands so small can hold so much and my pinkies shrink faster than you thought they would, lines forming on my face like a field ready for seed or right after harvest, the bones of corn stalks half-covered in the mud, turning to dust faster than my thoughts. There are too many people counting too loudly. I can hear them when I sleep and I forget why I exist, stare into my reflection like a waiter stares at the traffic light outside, trying to decipher its color. The world is black and white with no ecotones in between, but my roots find the sky and my names come to life on your lips, sound like poems made from broken lines and broken plates, a mosaic I can't forget, clumsy fingers inventing puzzles and explaining why I have to stand in this square and close my eyes and know nothing except that I know nothing. On cold mornings, there are sweaters and mugs full of hot chocolate and at least one sock, a stranger sitting alone but not waiting for anyone, a shadow on the floor. I step through myself and expect to be smaller but find only that I have twelve thousand pages left and not knowing how many those will take away. When you whisper these words, I want to give up because I love them so much.

snow dance sestina

I tried to find two identical flakes,
looked through the glass and only saw my breath
tracing designs and playing with the light.
A girl tells me she thinks my soul is blue,
tells me I am not lost. I have a string
around my finger until it's untied.

I have at least six nights until I'm tied
to the half-melted tip of a snowflake.
My tears will freeze along my cheeks like string
and I'll dissolve. I'll never need to breathe...
My hair my skin my eyes will all be blue.
A girl will tell me my soul looks like light.

I try but can not stare straight at the light.
I whisper to her that my soul is tied
around a tree whose bark is turning blue,
whose leaves are swept away in trembling flakes.
I whisper to her. I forget to breathe
and hanging from my palms are two frayed strings.

We are two. Then we're one, woven like string
that shades us from the penetrating light.
The air I taste is cold from her first breath.
They say she is a girl and she is tied.
She says she wishes she were a snowflake
because they're made of ice, not pink and blue.

The wind is cold. I wrap myself in blue,
a blanket knit from twelve miles of string.
She says she thinks my soul is a snowflake
then laughs until her eyes fill up with light.
We race for hours but we're always tied,
both of us gasping for our drowning breaths.

Her skin is always clouded by my breath.
Behind the clouds, I know the sky is blue.
I touch the string on my finger, untied.
It falls onto her palm, one lonely string,
twisting like a worm in the summer light,
then thin like lace, a freshly pressed snowflake.

She winds my breath into a rope, a string.
My soul is blue, is clear, is blue, is light.
We are untied, two falling matching flakes.

cloud forest justwrite

I hold my palm against the rainforest floor and you tell me to feel its heartbeat, its breath so cool when the sun is far away, your hands around my wrist to block the light, words tickling my veins with their fingertips. In the night there are voices outside and two women sit on a windowsill, their minds weaving songs as a lone trumpeter outside wishes he could sing so he could remember each verse like it's the same as the last, waves grabbing my ankles and rubbing my back, a seashell slipped on like a ring like the one around the moon when we're huddled inside a cloud, the cool breath in the soil climbing to our lips. The butterflies make me think of you, when they don't remember how to land and the cities look like they're exploding through my airplane window, voices growing distant or tides growing closer, like rain on my neck but it falls from the ground or just appears because the air is so wet we drink while we breathe. Today, the smiles of strangers are like fresh bread and a gold coin in my pocket, footprints with only two toes leading me up three trunks and not needing to steal my lunch because I'll share if you ask. What you bake is sweet, dissolving on my tongue like sand on my knees when I kneel and realize I've been praying all this time, palms against the forest floor, feeling its heartbeat and finding mine.

lapsus linguae justwrite

I assume the lunch position as wet dreams slip from your mouth and we make a movie, a silent film because the whole world is a little bit drunk tonight, scorpions gazing at us from the corner, watching you spin and really understanding movement for the first time. My tongue finds the marriage of a walnut and an apple, coconut milk like sweat on your chin, guttural music tumbling down the sides of mountains and swinging to you a face we can't forget. There are vines in the trees that wrap around our legs, women on horseback chest-deep in mud that is really ash, rain echoing off a roof that is no longer there, the men on the rafters wrapping each other in red tape. I watch almonds crawl over your hands for the second time and wonder how millipedes can be that small and still have two pairs of legs for each minuscule segment. Mine hurt just thinking about it, stair after stair until you want to jump off a cliff but you choose a ledge because your safety harness is just tight enough. The ground rushes forth and the trees follow like they were crouching beneath the mulch. The only metal I've seen that isn't rusted is the chrome on a beetle's back as it marches across a rock that is a continent, fire tumbling from my fingertips as moths circle me like snow and Canadians dance, shout, my dreams inevitable, wet or not.

Volcan justwrite

I slice the water and watch you struggle, lightning bugs against lightning above fire breaking apart, shedding my skin while you skin fruit I can't pronounce and I eat all the seeds because I've never had it any other way, trusting your count of stairs but feeling like it's not enough. Your eyes are the color of the pool under a waterfall in the rainforest, the vines hanging as gracefully as your fingers, and we met in a garden where the leaves came to life, painters dabbing patterns onto the backs of beetles and watching their legs scratching poetry onto a poor man's umbrella. The iguanas I chase down the path call to each other and ignore our mimicry, my feet black like a volcano's tears forty years later, bones hung in concrete and within rock where water sounds like unforgiving men on our balcony, their music serenading us as you talk about movies from the past and water that needs a bit more gravity. The sun nods and we lose time, your rain dance working almost as soon as mine, my arms moving so fast they're invisible if I close my eyes. I had sex on the hot spring, which seems like an impossible memory, and I was birthed again into a steaming sea, the air harder than I remember, and I fell into the arms of strangers but really had no choice. We shout to each other in languages nobody can understand but the butterflies, one tapping codes against Kayla's hand with its tongue... no... its proboscis. Gold coins fall into my pockets and there is a song that never stops, a fruit like a baby so I watch you cradle it for hours before we sip and slurp its existence into our souls. Your irises reflect anonymous flowers and your neck smells like lake. As the water piles around my mind, I see the place where the trees began to grow again.

Pura Vida justwrite

Roadside mimes while pure life is pulsing in my neck like an engine and wheels unsteady against the runway, the skin on my stomach, birds nesting in my hair while the Earth gapes at me from the edge of the street, metal becoming sand but only to empty eyes at a three in the morning that is one elsewhere, forgetting the gestures and being glad you bubblewrapped your lamp post because holding that position for that long seems like pain, like resting tired cheeks on garbage bags feels like relief, like a bite of bread and cheese mingling for seventeen minutes, wondering where two went and settling with pass as the doors clamp around our ankles and the men outside wipe each others' blood from their faces, like I did this morning with my own, water tasting like pennies and alarming on the silence only street. Kayla's hair is like a halo in the right light, and there is a face here more beautiful than a fountain with a much less intense mustache and a woman so short she is like a bird, with hollow bones and a song in her throat. The man in the corner burns maps off his hands, whispering that he's sorry and blowing a kiss that blows the ash away from the lips of a volcano, trying so hard to scream that everyone turns the other way, runs, whenever she gurgles a sound. Tomorrow there are seven places at once and a living history, but now there is rice setting early on the horizon and eyes closed at home, nodding to themselves as the night dawns.

ocean city justwrite again with pen

You say you feel like you're dissolving while I watch your palms cup handfuls of sand, build them up as if they'll never fall down again. There is air in my clenched fists and its burning my fingertips like the ends of cigarettes, glowing alongside the stars and the moths dressed all in grey throwing themselves back and forth through the light. I tried to teach myself to dance, but my feet were too clumsy to lead each other, so I learned to skip instead, watched you become the wind before you knew your first word, which was "small," which I found ironic, watching you blow on every leaf like it's a dandelion and my wishes coming true because they were the same as yours. Trees grew up to my knees before I knew I was tall, and the bark on my legs found knotholes that you had to touch before you could fly again, the creases on your hands like laugh lines, your toes curved in, smiling. Footsteps approached but they were only a reflection, a lake's surface before the rain comes and the whole world ebbs like a tide, swells like the ocean, ice so far away the air here is steam, but I feel it melting anyway, like my skin did the first time I saw you. In my lungs, there are whole forests growing. The breeze is cooler now, and when the leaves change their colors, I call them my soul.

ocean city justwrite

We need the clock more than we need a hairbrush, sand in the air teasing our roots so we wonder where we come from more than where we're going until the music fades into the bags under our eyes, into our footprints before more waves come, frothing, wondering how crabs can swim when they have so many legs and so few feet. I feel like that sometimes, when I'm balancing on the Earth as it spins around the sun so fast I can't count the revolutions, cities growing and vines sinking back into the ground, the swollen corpses of seaweed tangling themselves around my ankles, begging for my eyes to stop searching the horizon for the exact place the sky begins, the clouds climbing up as you try to crawl inside my chest because you don't yet know what my heart sounds like that close, how loud and uncertain its song is, like chanted words you can't understand even though the language they use is the same as yours but more angry. Water mixes with bleach around your hands, spots dissolving permanently and new ones forming in the negative so the light you shine through them throws shadows that are more accurate than your memories, and I realize my skin is mist that is fading into yours, and I've lost the colors I used to fling desperately into the wind, wishing the rain would find that puddle which used to be a lake and the rainbows would call the rainbow trout back home again so I could stare at the lines on your face and finally see what they're trying to spell, and as the tides change and the seconds find themselves more quickly, I speak.

greetings justwrite

Hello, my name is not what you think it is, especially in the night so late it's really morning but we say "good night" anyway because "good morning" sounds like a beginning when we really should be getting to bed, where we build houses under the sand and a wishing well is our doorway, where my arm is around your waist and every letter is a word. There is light in my clenched fists. I'm saving it to send to the stars because I've heard they're running low, and I can't imagine darkness when it's that dark, although I used to develop photographs in an absence of light room, glowing cell phone faces staining my prints, my father glowering in the corner of my mind, me wishing film was paper and I could write with my camera while your voice filled my tear ducts and you said you were nothing. I think about snow when there is steam outside, my bare legs wishing for sleds, sand dunes are drifts taller than my front door, and school is out because the tire chains are too busy gripping wrist bones and tying people in a line, me feeding my crumbs to the pigeons because they coo louder than you. I watch my reflection on the lake but never see it blink, and I think only of coconuts and turquoise, not noticing the color of the sky in February because I'm staring down, lost, drowning in the white.

Italian justwrite

Made in Italy, not in the window of an empty house with anonymous snowblowers outside, clearing unknown sidewalks of empty footprints, remembering cardboard boxes and tufts of air but forgetting balloons and the way your lungs contract, wind like fire, the natives dancing through it in their overalls and plaid shirts, eating corn straight off the cob because food is better without silverware, your skin creasing at the corners of your mouth and eyes, moonlight getting caught in the folds, mixing with shadow. I find a bed of pine needles, and while I sleep, my hair smells like pine, and if you cut me in half you'll know how old I am if you count the gold rings and divide by two. I'm thinking of imaginary numbers and waiting for my life to start while the best words pass by the window and I forget my stop so the conductor sends me back in time when she checks my ticket again, and I find peace in falling, especially if the world is as bottomless as I suspect, the walls transparent, like stained glass, coloring the people outside blue, and I don't know it now, but it's the same looking in, them staring into my blue blue eyes framed by blue hair, but my lips are grey so my smile fades into shadow. Soon there are vines growing from my fingertips, the one plant that doesn't grow away when you touch it, and I marvel at the smoothness of the walls, like skin before you've laughed or clay after you've thrown it against a table. I become mud for the second time and wish I could reform myself, but my fingertips are too soft, so I'm waiting.

silly last poetry cafe justwrite

Enough of this, and these, and those, too. What I really need is a pouch full of seeds because all I've been planting are my feet which only grow into footprints while my palms are aching for pansies and there are diamonds in the sky that I used to think were stars before they weren't, and my wishes weren't either, weren't etched on the backs of pennies or used to blow out birthday candles. Evenings are my favorite time for thinking, but they're usually gone before I start, Scrabble letters stacked on the floor and the foot of my bed, sheetless and cold because it's summer now, when you press your face against tile because you can, the air too hot and wet to breathe, but August is over just before you've drowned so the worst is piled around you, saying, "I'm the worst," and making all sorts of scary faces, like the one I see just before I go to sleep then is gone before I wake up, like everything heavy from the day slips out of my eyelids while they're closed and hikes skulkingly into the woods, staring at the ground because there are feathers sometimes or arrowheads or rocks that you think might be arrowheads because they're sharp enough that it was probably on purpose, and then Karam is here! and bird noise sounds like songs, and I remember warm blueberries and green gauge plums from when I was younger, brown betty as the sun set, sand still in our pockets from last week. There are six moons in the sky, and four of them have noticed me, nodding like they'd be tipping their hats if they had them, my fingers chasing shadows on the picnic table, a lightning bug searching our living room, and empty bowls upside down, drying on the kitchen counter.

what I learned in high school

When there are turtles in the road, pull over and carry them to the other side, but if they're snapping turtles, use sticks to nudge them back to where they started. Remember that rain is for dancing, with bare feet as the sky's opening above you. Carry tissues, or hugs at least, for crying hallway strangers. Never grow too big for swings or so small that playing hide and seek with you is way too challenging for your friends. When it comes to pineapples, don't hide them, or at least don't ask the administration where they are. And always make sure someone signs up to bring drinks. Collecting poetry is only productive if you use it to finish your original plan, but writing poetry is always productive. Use it as an excuse for not cleaning your room, and for inexpensive but meaningful birthday presents. Be proud of the dent pencils form on your finger, and say, "I'm a writer," not like it's your job, but like it's your identity.

last creative writing club distracted justwrite

Feeling blue around the edges, not as rough as yesterday when long weekends melted into long summers over a hundred empty pages, and I fed plants with the light behind my eyes, hunched over them until the storms came and I remembered that every time dancing in hail is like the first time, the ceiling opening up and people like reflections of themselves, pretending I don't know them until the time is up and I'm thrust into a traffic jam on my bicycle, but my legs are too long so my knees hit the handlebars every time I pedal, my head without a helmet and the crosswalks invisible so I don't know when to stop until my wheels fall off and the road caves in, and you're waving from the other side of a great canyon so I can't quite see your face. We jump together. Our shoelaces are untied and have been their whole lives, not like the newly unknotted with white spots like fingernails, yours like seashells, the underside that sand hasn't yet worn away, the callouses on my hands feeling smoother when I'm under water learning how to breathe again every time I surface. You have a camera with the lens permanently unfocused; I remember pictures of words that look like lightning, of rooms that are really nothing unless your nose is pressed against the page, since when you breathe all of something in, it's less focused and more clear, like one day ahead of you and knowing exactly what you'll do except the details because when your spontaneity is planned you don't believe it, like how fairies only seem real when you weren't looking, too many questions about light tripping over your eyes or trapped behind them, trying to decide if your tears are green or blue.

handy justwrite

Get your hands from the handy-man as he pedals his bicycle down Maple Avenue, avoiding pot holes as if they're bottomless, puddles as if they're oceans. I have a map in my pocket, the world folded in on itself and tucked down deep where I can't see it, and a compass in the back of my mini-van which I left three blocks away, where the parking is free after seven and teenagers stand around at midnight feigning adulthood with cheap tomato and basil sandwiches, pretending the air is more clear at night because all the cars are parked, headlights dimly reflecting streetlamp light like they're about to fall asleep, wind blowing plastic bags sounds suddenly like leaves, dry, thirsty as a July afternoon, unexpected hiking, his palm slipping across mine as I led him up the hill and pretended either of us believed he was leading me. There were no clouds that day, not in our sky, where the blue spread so far we would have drowned in it if the branches weren't there for us to hold like ropes sinking in the tides, growing green with age while toddlers trip on the edge of the carpet, cheerios spilled across linoleum, constellations without names, waiting for us to claim them. I find a broom instead because I can't remember what the doorknob looked like when I couldn't reach it, my feet arching upward, barely touching the ground.

not quite alone justwrite

Get anywhere except the front of the bus because the road thinks too smoothly there, more waterfall than asphalt, expecting steam to rise from the bottoms of your feet but sinking instead so you think you're drowning until you realize your knees are dry and you'd be breathing if you wanted to be, you'd be breath like fog on a January day, warm and wet and feeling too light to find the ground and too heavy to find yourself, pretending that all things with strings are kites so you can fly above the highway with your shoes on tight enough on a windy day, your fingers catching on the edges of rooftops and catching sunlight as if you could, as if everything you see is real and you can tear off shadows, fold them into cranes or just in half so they'll fit in your pocket, and you're not surprised when it's empty later, at least not as surprised you were the first time you had your palm read and learned that everything would turn out well, full of laugh lines and songs on acoustic guitars with words that aren't for strangers. You kept asking more and yet more empty faces until you found the bad news, etched it into your skin so deep it's permanent unless you learn to see through yourself, but even then the rain catches in the crevices and reflects the words in sunlight or moonlight or lamplight, so you turn to mist and pretend you're not searching for the ground, for yourself, for how long it takes to find the front of the bus and get anywhere.

living in the moment justwrite

Know the habits of footprints to disappear except when they are on the surface of the moon, sand so fine it is dust resting eternally in swirls from windstorms that dissolved into the universe so long ago we're not sure how it happened, which isn't much different from two years ago when apathetic glances were harsh and the grass was dry, sharp edges crackling against the bottoms of my feet, and being barefoot wasn't tasting soil but tasting blood, like bees darting in from the sky and out again before you learned what it is to be a bee, what it is to dance instead of talk and spend your whole life with flowers and honey, the weight of the fear when a their is nearby that nothing will be exactly like this moment, not even the memory of this moment, so I look into mirrors that are not mirrors at reflections that reflect everything that isn't my skin and wait for the time when waiting will stop before I realize the silence of the voices in this room is solid enough to stand on, soft enough to sleep in, and I stop to rest my tired feet until I grow my wings.

2-person cwc justwrite

Cheerful band-aids reminding my skin that it would rather not feel anything, a banana in one hand and your earrings in the other, winking like oysters that hide beneath me, filtering the salt from my tears. On the evenings when it snows, I can never find my footprints, regret setting them free from boxes and melting all of my keys down to molten metal, memorizing shapes and tracing them over and over again on the ice. Sometimes I melt, disappearing because I'm so transparent you convinced me I'm no longer here, telling you that black and white are the same color, see the laughter catching up to your eyes before the light does, waves breaking in the air because this argument is so convincing I accept it like a fistful of flowers, wet grass hanging on their lips, and I feel like I've been torn from my roots and am falling away from the Earth, eyes closed, sky rushing by, hanging paper snowflakes from my fingertips and watching them melt before I can tie the strings, coming unravelled at the edges like a voice behind a wall leaking from itself before it can reach you. My life is new because I am young and in a place I've never been before. I can leave my mind behind me and find another two streets down, recycle myself until I'm back to where I started, see the ice crystals fading from my skin, and realize what I've learned.

post anti-fail multiple choice write

There are spiderwebs on the books in this room, fingerprints lacing the walls in this room, fingerprints like holes; you can see through them, moments cut off around the edges, a cloud whose shape changes before you can name it. You see words that feel familiar but disappear like steam, leaving your skin sticky with moisture that is almost dry, warm but apprehensive because there is wind in this room, sneaking through the cracks in the floor in this room as you watch the ceiling, waiting for the weather.

cheer preview just for you

ahem...

Two, four, six, eight,
Seniors, Seniors, they're so great!
Thirty-seven, seventy-four,
Did you see the seniors score?
Eleven, fifteen, sixty-three,
They're gonna win; it's meant to be!

*insert many pompoms, smiles, and other cheertastic things*

a bit salty justwrite

A skipping stone, like the ripples where I used to keep my reflection, without air but not drowning because the wind is moving too quickly to be caught and the holes in my net are too big, minnows dancing between my fingers and laughing when I catch only sand that I use to make ropes for hanging mobiles from the stars and pretending they've been there all along. I've been here, my feet sinking deeper into the Earth. When I reach for the daffodils growing nearby, they nod at my fingertips and turn the other way, catch sunlight and pour it out again because what else is there to do all day if you're a daffodil. I see you through the open window, dusting with a cloth that used to be an apron for a doll. I remember the rain came so fast we couldn't save her, had to watch through the doorway as the yard turned to mud around her face, and you clutched at my hand the next morning, dragging me through the fog like I'd be lost forever if I didn't come along. We found her then, and her hair is still brown like it was that night in the shadows, like the ones that are tied around my waist now, heavy, and the top of my head is barely visible if you're on the other side of the hill, picking daffodils like there will be more tomorrow, letting the bluebirds dart by your shoulders with their fists full of sand, my reflection fading into air.

new justwrite

The tears in your eyes are ribbons that chase my wrists across the room and whisper that nothing's all right but they understand, came from the same box as mine and the rain before it was poured into the rivers, found my bare feet on a lemonade afternoon and reminded me that we're connected, threads in a rope in the rug on the floor of a dusty old room where the color used to live, creased now like the skin on the backs of your hands, road maps with the footprints drawn on in permanent ink, thinking my mind is a forest so you can have shade to sit in while you write poetry about fire and the scar on your left ring finger from making soap with your grandmother. It was decades ago, but you can still feel the pain if you concentrate, remember the surprise as your skin brushed the burner so I can feel it when your fingertips brush my chest, see it in your hair as you walk away, searching for sunlight like it's a secret you never told anyone, but we can see it anyway, branded into your pupils, still red coals so your fear turns to steam when you cry and the winter is melted when I stand close enough, our feet gazing at each other through the snow, and I think of puddles when they become lakes and how long until they're gone, craters left behind big enough to hold my voice on most mornings, teapot whistling, out of tune, on the stove and my hairbrush useless in my palm. Mornings feel like photographs when the light finds its way between the curtains and you shower with the door open so the water raining down blends into silence, a song that has no words and doesn't change until I really listen, more than I ever have before, and I see the drops staining your cheeks, magnifying the words under your skin. I search for a mirror, the surface of a lake with no tides, the curve of a metal teapot, wondering what you see.

tired justwrite

Curled edges, starting at the middle of scrolls that turn to dust when you touch them because they've been in the sea for a thousand years, the library pillars hiding in a seaweed forest like buttons that are so small I lose them in my carpet, have to crawl on the floor to find them, and realize how long it's been since I've been shorter than my bed, wondering what's on top of the dresser and imagining things more exciting than a college rejection letter and sixty-seven sticky notes coated in reminders I've already forgotten. I lose myself in an ocean of paper, and then I lose that ocean because there are rocks outside big enough to stand on, white as bones in the shadow-specked sunlight, like something being built into something else without taking away the extra parts, frayed yarn, ends woven in, hidden, knowing your time is up when really only half the world has already dissolved, and the outer half is what's left so it doesn't affect you anyway. You think about outer space and try to imagine something with no end, not realizing you'll never see the edges of yourself, not like everyone else can. In a few days, they'll be too busy staring at their feet to notice much of anything but the sand eroding from the surface and their skin growing darker as shadows finally find their way out. The waves in the distance are silent, petrified by their own power, frozen at their bases and boiling at their crests so you can't touch them without feeling everything at once, the paper piling around you, the notes you've forgotten, all curling at the edges, trying desperately to hide what's inside.

club day justwrite abstraction

Abstract elsewhere, unfolding maps in the back of the car and folding them again on the islands between highways, no time to dig for treasure because there are at least seven wildflowers to be picked, an empty cup on my dashboard just waiting for some stems. I build an earthen dwelling and watch the weather come in, waiting for the rain as if it is a sure thing, remembering how it all started with a puff of smoke and a twig I called magic, waving it above your head and knowing when the fog came we would be invisible, assuming we stayed fifteen yards or more away from things with eyes. The grass is less cold than I remember, melts the ice in my veins to water itself, drinks deeply and recalls what it couldn't face before, the strength of the moon in July and how long it takes to count the stars, having to start over and over again because they keep suffocating, sending so much light in every direction that it's gone so soon, the way stuffing runs out before potatoes on Christmas and toddlers are instantly teenagers unless you stare so close you can't see the creases form on their skin, the wonder behind their eyes replaced with pain replaced with wonder again, like realizing you'll never know how much you don't know but knowing that is enough. The lines on the maps are blurry now, but the lines on my palms are as clear as ever.

National Poetry Month April 1st poem

The pages cling to each other,
metal teeth
tearing manuscripts in straight
lines while the poets rest
in the corner, finger painting
on each other's faces, eyes
drawn in henna on
the palms of their hands.
The ceiling melts

into sky, a woman
with clouds in her veins plucking
secrets from the stars,
threading them to hang
in every window, moths
thinking all light is the sun,
fluttering, clogging
the night air like ash, grasping
with many weak arms as torn paper
covers the floor.

ended early justwrite

Icicles unfold from the spaces between my fingers, hot as your breath against my neck in the earliest hours when the teapot is whistling frantically on the stove and there is no desire in any room for someone to set it free. The dishes are three-days dirty in the sink, water long-settled in their throats and chests, heavy, waiting. There is dust holding silent meetings in the corners, a spider's web on the bedroom ceiling that sways each time the heat turns on as if an invisible guardian is brushing against the air.

short creepster justwrites

Adrien, like the only cloud in a vast, grey sky, like unlabeled spices in the cabinet and an empty blue bowl waiting on the counter, like a guitar pick talking to the sidewalk dirt, like charcoal drawings and a plastic bag that had cheese in it once, like those late nights that are really early mornings, like all you want to do is be, awake and talking, like watching the lights in the buildings across the street blink like time is passing faster, like letting wildflower seeds sprout where they land, like watching cigarette smoke fade in a city wind, like Adrien.

Holiday, like everything you ever knew, like a sepia-toned photograph of smiling strangers in party hats, like fingers snapping, like lettuce waiting to be picked, like a garden that lost its rows intentionally, like looking at tree bark closer than ever before, like really seeing it, like your head, light with joy, like you've been kissed unexpectedly, like saxophones calling to each other at dusk, like candlelight dancing on the ceiling, like silence feet dancing across the floor, like lying on the roof counting the stars, like the roof is so high traffic in the street looks like stars too, like Holiday.

Sam, like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks, like being barefoot on cool mornings, like finger painting like you're five again, like fresh grapes in the middle of the day, like lining up pens according to color so you can mix them together again, like jumping rope inside, like perching on a branch because you want to be a bird, like speaking as loudly as possible on a stage with no audience, like laughter for the sake of laughter, like looking forward to the sunrise because it's never in grey scale, like Sam.

Susan, like hot chocolate, like hot tea, like iced tea in the perfect weather, like going outside without sunglasses, like learning to taste the air you breathe, like the first time you're running so fast you think there's wind, like when you stop and see the world is hardly moving, like watching the sky after spinning around for five minutes, like deciding how to use a dandelion wish like you've never had one before, like leaving the dirt under your fingernails, like embracing the bottoms of your feet, like realizing that swimming is like flying but slower and more free, like Susan.

Layne, like trying to see the story but only seeing shadows on the walls, like days that aren't hot or cold, like late, late evening the moment before night arrives, like quiet music that becomes part of the silence, like bold black shapes against white paper, like tracing the lines on your palms in ink like they'll tell you where you're going, like trying to form the fog into birds, like a moments someone sees who you are, like empty picnic tables resting on a rainy day, like sitting on the floor and thinking about nothing, like mist gathering at your front door, like your pulse in your throat and a camera in your hand, like Layne.

Tyler, like finding an unplanned field of secret daisies, like eating as many cookies as you want because you can, like fireworks in slow motion with no sound, like strangers offering you a place to sleep, like curling up in six quilts like a kitten named Goddess, like a poem in your pocket and a hand in your hand, like meandering down tree-shaded lanes and soaking up the quiet, like lying in grass, cool green against bare legs, like early summer evenings when the sun doesn't want to leave, like the crevices that form on your cheeks after lifetimes of smiling, like folding paper frogs like knowing they'll come to life, like Tyler.

Abi, like faraway waterfalls echoing against the rock, like lines of henna on your arms because there was nothing else to do, like tying knots in string and letting them stay forever, like a crack lacing the window pane like a spider's web, like how we realize nothing's a weed unless we want it to be, like embracing petals wherever they unfold, like using duct tape to fix torn hems, like seeing airplanes while your feet are on the ground, like marker rubbing off on your hands while you draw, like realizing how many shades of green there are, like walking a different way to work just because it's Tuesday, like watching fruit swell after a downpour, like letting the rain touch your skin and turn to steam, encasing you, like Abi.

comfortable justwrite

Comfortable captions resting on my feet as fingers chase invisible lizards across the grass, like shards of moonlight cold against my skin, hot between sheets of glass etched and etched again until there is nothing but steam like a fog and a shadow falling heavily with each breath, lost in itself, in an imaginary rhythm because no one counts syllables anymore unless they're lost at sea and the waves can't carry more than
one
at
a
time
until you've no more words, just empty sacks and a few torn magazine pages you think are mirrors but know can only reflect pea soup, thick and unappetizing, like tides of memories you wish weren't, tides of walls falling in and an unwelcome hand swabbing the sweat from your forehead so the ocean grows less salty, ice melting into lemonade, music filling the empty spaces because you don't know what else can fit in at such awkward angles, and you point all five fingers in your search for blame, ignoring the guilt creeping like distant sister laughs up your arms, her calling from New York and you pressing silence so you can avoid the inevitable, her wallet aching and her pockets twitching as your mom pours boiling water over the good china. It cracks like ice. You try to fit inside but only have two of yourself to work with, cram the corners into rounds and imagine what it is to be comfortable.

last night write

We're not crazy simply because we wander the streets talking to ourselves. It's just too hard to keep these lines inside, to silence poetry when it's meant to be said aloud, shouted; we could even sing it if we hadn't let our voices go so long ago, when the crowds looked on as if we were angels grasping stars like pearls from the sky, laughing at the way the blood on my thigh runs down like three tears, surrendering to gravity and asking why it didn't happen sooner, the salt washing in waves into my wounds, between my lips, and a girl birthed from the surf as if she were part of it and had always known, her thin hands pulling me back to shore, a city that is a tiny piece of a very large island, reminding me that the whole world is an island floating across the universe, running in circles, trying to find an anchor, chasing the speed of light but never quite fast enough. I am an island, the water on all sides begging me to let it swallow me, but I stretch my neck as far as I can before teeth clamp onto it, taste me so they can't ever forget and neither can I because I know my flavor is warm between cracked, cement lips, searching for the rest of me. My bedroom lights blink off and on, a silent signal to the stalker, the predator, unsuccessful camouflage for my glowing skin, and I pray I start to rust so the street lamp's rays don't bounce off me so well, the memories of when I was pretty projected from my eyes so anyone nearby wants to tear them in half or run grubby fingers across these images, thinking what it would be like to feel them in all three dimensions, my apricot breasts shriveling under a thirsty gaze. So I shroud myself in rainbows to scare them all away until a color-hungry monster feels the growls deep inside, wants to strip me of my skin and hang it out to dry in the sun, watch me age before my time, a raisin that used to be a dream.

steady justwrite

Much too steady hands, spilling everything within the boundaries, ribbons tied around clouds, burgundy in the sky like a reflection in your eye of my lips, tasting secrets starting to swell, warm fruit in July shipped all the way to January, all the stamps in proper order, nowhere to go from here but up because my feet are growing lighter as I leave my shoes behind for whoever is in the background, so they can finally see my soles and listen to my tongues and tie up their dreams with my laces, stringing sugar from your palms, waiting for spice between your teeth as the seconds wait for no one and trees turn to soil, then back to trees beneath my gaze, a place to plant ice cubes and wonder why nothing ever grows, to plant rosemary then but it dried at the store because everything is faster when you have a credit card or some moral credit, tracing lines in the sand, pretending the beach fades into the sunrise because you want to ignore how untouched the horizon remains, almost a concept except you can see it clearly in front of you, laughing like the time you colored your little brother's eyebrows while he was asleep and he went to school that way, threw his backpack at you when he came home, face flushed as the books spilled out, their titles displayed as vulnerable as childhood when angry voices are just through the wall, reverberating on your soul and coloring the carpet with shadows as you try to cover them with purple and yellow, fresh daisy petals pulled from your hiding place, still damp with spring air, telling you everything will be steady again, much too steady for the edges to fall away.

tuesday justwrite

Fully absorbed into the sky like rain evaporating from my lips as the snow creeps out of the ground, moss frozen pale as my eyes except the parts that are named after flowers that I only know are flowers because they are not trees or birds or the palms of my hands, doors outside opening and closing, the strings in my mind searching for kites. The moon is a kite, too free for me to catch, my hands encased in the cold of a creek, minnows darting between my fingers, not knowing what it is to be afraid of the seas boiling away and the clouds breaking down into minuscule puffs, searching for chimneys, searching for waterfalls, always searching because there's nothing to do if everyone stays in one place, nothing to sing about but waiting, your fingertips spinning invisible yarn because all they've ever wanted is to be warm, to hide, to have somebody find them locked away in a chest floating up onto the shore, anonymous photographs inside, staring back as if they know you, know who you are I mean, have memorized every line of poetry in your face and can see the wind beyond your eyes as the footsteps swarm around you, so sure of where they're going which has nothing to do with where you're standing, in spite of the future when their paths cross over your point and you have to move or jump or sink down even further.

haircut justwrite

Stranded hair on the floor, like wings cut away with nothing left to lift, nothing left to lift them. The wind picks up dust outside, full of hot air so we leave the windows open at night, dogs barking through the screens at sounds they can't remember, me clutching false security close to my neck, pretending I'm not safe, my mother's voice but not my mother, just a brief glimpse of sunlight before dawn when it's raining in the kitchen, bars of soap floating past my ankles as if pocket-stuffed tourists with dangling cameras are on top, missing moments they're too busy capturing so time doesn't run into itself any more except when the film is played fast enough we can't see the gaps or the BUY POPCORN in delicious fonts waltzing through the scene that isn't finished until tomorrow, when the hero, head bowed, cries into his palms and we all wonder if this is what relief looks like, or if we're missing the biggest piece, so far away we aren't even sure what shape we're supposed to be. The house is settling in for the night and sounds like unwelcome footsteps and masked faces gliding past the glass door which won't let my sight through when the stars are hiding behind trees, moths thick like ashes in the air, and I think for a moment that my outline will turn to stone and some day your weathered hands will pour plaster where my heart used to be, pull me out of the Earth and set me heavily on a marble pedestal, blinding me with their flashbulbs.

busy lately justwrite

The true colors on your wrist are hidden with dirt and shadows. The lights are off in this room, thinking darkness is something that truly exists and can bite back. I trim my petals and watch them cover my feet like snow against peaches, still warm from the summer air, potent enough to seal in a box and mail north, where the weather comes from, chased by harsh glares from mountain peaks, rolling over clouds thick as carpet, threatening to fall down onto us if we don't listen for a moment, remember, gather fog in baskets woven by one clumsy hand because it needs the experience, needs to know it can count on itself, whether or not hands have souls. The ghosts of last year's skin haunt me, as transparent as they were the first time they clung to me, veins pulsing bright indigo lightning frozen in time, trying out life and gasping at this new taste. I barely cast a shadow then, and caring faces looked down on my blood-streaked belly, warm and waiting for the wonders I hadn't met yet but glanced through thoughts connected directly to my center, a swelling line to hold me in place until my wings are dry enough, until I've shad my last layer and know my limbs, what they wish. I scream and they try to quiet me, thinking it's pain or complaints or anger, but really it's amazement, my eyelids drawn down like thick curtains before I'm ready, the light poured out through me, soaking into my bones. I clutch frantically at the cold air, trying to make sense of wind, of noise, of color. I don't love these things yet. I don't know their power, their comfort, how beautifully complicated they will be when I am walking, flying, lifting fistfuls of dirt and expecting myself to drop one, content whether it happens or not.

justwriting after timed writing

Weighing the difference between a pound of regret and a pound of cereal, thinking about missing breakfast for a few weeks but always remembering how long it will be until lunch. The shadows in your peripheral mind flash on and off and on but the more you notice the longer they stay, wasting something that can never be destroyed I think or created and making our footprints grow or something that's been on the news lately, a debate that doesn't exist shielding an invisible wall holding a clearly visible future with a science-fiction twist, with the ice coming in the wrong door and outstaying its visit, floating on your back for years before you realize you're getting nowhere, and by that I mean staying somewhere, staying in the same place because nowhere isn't a separate entity or a bowl that represents womanhood or being connected to something that isn't completely connected to you, pulling gold strands out of a tapestry and imagining the people around you are doing the same while really they're home, quilts over their heads because the forts are too small when your legs meet with time and expand lengthwise and width wise and teach you it'll be easier now because you can go farther with fewer steps but they don't mention how much tighter the tight spaces will be or how long it will take to get back to where you started if you ever want to shrink again.

today's justwrite (...)

Take off your shoes but leave your feet on because the time will come when you need them most, time to run, which is harder to do on your palms until the callouses build up, as big as a small town with new people coming through, only for the weekend to watch the green melt from the leaves. They'll be transparent soon, grey veins standing out against the sky, thinking they're clouds until the rain doesn't come and the violets reach their yellow throats into the air but taste only wind and wither and shrink back into the Earth like children do often when they're caught breaking rules, putting themselves into time-out to save hours they'll need later in life, when spring comes to early and stays too late, March coming in like three lambs arriving on the same morning, then leaving like an efficient dog with not-shifty eyes and many stories she'd prefer to keep to herself. The moon comes more slowly on weekdays, when the sunlight teases the window shades into thinking there's time to play, time to chase shadows and build bridges to Terabithia or Paraguay or another place that doesn't exist when you're a teenager, too old for imagination but too young to care because they tell you that's how it's always been and how it is and how it will end before it begins again, repeating itself like history or a history professor who left his coffee mug in the kitchen and his glasses in the wrong pocket and keeps pacing, like a soldier who's lost his place but not his shoes, tracing the back wall and ignoring the shadows, the empty-eyed faces with minds in the gutter if that's where last night fell when you dropped it. The time will come.