two midnightwrites

You touch my heartbeats with your memories, the way they fall off your tongue and cling to the air, to my flesh hanging soft in the moonlight, drying on clotheslines, my soul still inside. I hope when I die my eyes will help someone see again and I can show them how beautiful people are, cover their kidneys with mine and feel the pure red of their bloodstream, how it feels so familiar, and my soul grows heavy with light.

Too many walls and not enough time to write all of them because the fingers in the sky are searching for each other, blind to my voice because I'm so far away I can't see the clouds anymore except the ones that I cough up from somewhere so deep inside I couldn't reach it until now, and I hope my breath condenses into snow so the roads will freeze into skating rinks where our sneakers will grow blades that never thought they could break skin, especially when it's so warm it can't shatter, not like my tongue when I try to scream and my sounds break apart on his teeth, fall back down my throat and clog my lungs with a stench that still stings my eyes when I dream. I can't concentrate on the words I wanted to say, only on hacking up blood that I hope is his so I can at least prove that I stole something, too.

avoidingmathwrite

Treehouse dreams tickle my branches as I lean out the doorway, trying to find my roots, avoiding these things you call facts sorted into tables with no legs and too many lines. I wonder why the distribution of living things is usually symmetrical and why sometimes it isn't, watching the stiff-suited men writing glossaries to define me, three words for each letter at least, when really I'm just a prayer, whispered into an envelope and tied to a balloon, given to fate to find a stranger who needs an even stranger friend to email with blackberry pie recipes, licked from the brick lips of a building that was less beautiful when it was standing. Now all that's left is a porch, clinging to the trees on either side that I swear appeared overnight, moved in close from the hill maybe or the valley where limps are always falling like icicles into the streets. I understand what it's like to be so afraid of seeing one more thing collapse, afraid of tripping a friend, of someone at least, on the sidewalk outside the theater, because the pain will shoot from their skinned knee to the base of your mind and stay there, where your aloe fingers can't quite reach and your eyelids twinge open just before you fall asleep for the rest of your life which really isn't so long you can't fit it into a poem or a book of poems or even a photograph if the lighting is perfect and your shutter slows down. I nail boards across my window panes after the hurricane takes my glass away, jealous that I stole the sand from the beaches, but I'm already planning a trip to take more, loading my hot air balloon with empty buckets because I never wanted my driver's license enough to get it and both the tires on my bicycle are flat, so I float above the trees and catch the dreams rising like smoke from make-believe chimneys.

nightwrite twicewrite

Mumblings ooze and I'm sick of these pages and the shades in their patterns on my bedroom walls. The cluttered seems empty after a while, when my eyes are used to the same images in the same places and there's an itch at my elbow trying to remind me I have a funny bone or two to tickle the strangers at my sides while I memorize their faces in the late night lamp light.

I'm waiting for the rain as if it is a sure thing, watching flowers crumble to dust in my fingerprint canyons, the children so parched they're thinking of drinking the sky. Our breaths seem heavier each day, yet still shallow, like the air we breathe is solid and we can't gasp enough of it to sustain our thoughts, the colors nestling themselves on my chest, waiting to seep in, waiting quickly, clinging so they won't blow away. The steam beneath my feet is smoke, and mirrors--shattered like a million tiny smiles or maybe just one from a million angles, tossing itself hope but never gaining more because you can only give yourself what you have left after you give all the good to everyone else, in knots you tie with sticks, knowing that none are perfect but each is tied with love, and the moon lends you its light to help you count before the morning comes and the cold returns.

A walking rain forest of ridiculous, like umbrellas when it snows with no real reason why they shouldn't exist except that it rains more often. Even more often, there is sunshine, even when there's moonshine as it's second-hand, reflected off the sands with no real footprints, one or two maybe but mostly just doubt because of wind where there is no sound and studio lights switching angles in the background. I look at the crowds closing in, their faces turned, their steps backward, melting into forward only when the noise streams back so suddenly we forget ourselves for a moment, forget to be afraid of reflecting a whole like a handful of sand where you don't realize that one is black and one is clear and twelve are a sort of brownish-red, like the paint we made from mud and handprinted quite dramatically onto each others' arms and chests, not remembering that it's six short minutes until we're called in to garlic bread warm on the table and an untouched bar of soap. Glancing back, I see things I've never noticed before, tucked behind the trees, smoke rising like fog falling like it's too heavy, so heavy it thinks it's larger than the mountains, the deserts, the sky, only unsure of its original size and exactly when all the edges blended into each other, tapping my fingers against an unknown desk, closed umbrella on the floor beside me, convinced of my own bad luck so I might as well break the glass back into beaches, convince my paper it's solid enough to be wood or skin or something substantial, not like my idea to build the world's largest swing or really learn to verbalize my thoughts, the ones in my peripheral mind especially because that is why I'm most curious, seeing their colors because my nerves fill in the spaces I couldn't fill otherwise, like laying out my memories in sketches instead of photographs, writing myself notes I won't be able to decipher so I'll have to carry them forever to convince my pocket it's not lonely. Over and over, these rocks, this sand, new notes, and then the rain comes.

it's a rhyming sort of day somethingwrite

In the midst of fists of fafsa, trying to be faster to master scholarships than the other scholars, tripping over our minds, trying to find locked away social security on a card, the impurities on our transcripts, transcribing themselves into our DNA, keeping away those places, the one where my place is especially, the specialty school where I'll learn to expand and demand more of my self in a calm way, a safe way but not the grocery store, unsure of where I put my envelopes so important yet unportant because if I could cry out and they could hear me, they wouldn't fear the cees so deep on my grade reports, reporting insecurities and unsurities insincerely above my signature, signing here and there, selling my soul to be sold again and again, pretending I'm remembering life-altering memories but there's a tad of fiction on my cheek, friction in my speech, the words leaking absurdities into my palms, my lips reciting psalms I never learned but heard like birds heralding in Sunday rafters, waiting for the rapture when the admissions board admits them and bars me and three of my most disciplined disciples, waiting for a holy ghost, a shadow really, to trust our rusty excuses and see there are muses dancing behind our eyes, not waiting for a compromise because I know myself, I won't keep my bottles on a shelf holding in their elixirs, their potions and party mixers, not needing cocktails to enjoy a cocktail party, a snail's pace, a race between my tongue and my brain, each convincing the other it's insane to aim so high, for this color of the sky on my favorite day, waiting for me to say I'm on my way while it shines in all its glory, waiting for mine, waiting for the delicious it can't see, the precious it can't buy, at least not without financial aid, made to let me fall but maybe not, as the semesters I've got can't count with the government, invisible men I think, thinking they'll buy new suits tomorrow, a red tie will suit his brow furrowing, saying no thanks we'll take the harvard reject, inject her disappointment into an enthusiastic appointment for an interview in just the right department, falling apart, each worry in its own compartment and my heart aches like a cliche on the window sill, waiting for the wind still, snow's even better, to freeze my thoughts when I get my rejection letter.

stitches. from an application essay.

The winds of the hurricane outside growl at the windows, throwing all the rain they can, but it’s calm inside. The air conditioning unit in the wall is humming afternoon lullabies, mismatched and out of tune. My mother is sprawled on the sheets of her bed, my little brother, Taylor, who’s four years old, using her bare arm as a pillow, his hand wound in her hair. Their breaths are shallow, in unison. Their faces say they are dreaming about sweet things.
My dad is reading to Christine, my older sister, who’s nine years old, in the chairs by the little standard hotel room table. She’s bossy, though, so soon she’s reading to him.
Grama and I are leaning on each other, sitting at the edge of my bed. Her hands are over mine, her sensible fingers leading my silly ones. I feel the contrast of metal, wool, wrinkled and smooth skin. Her breath lands on my arms, cool and concentrating. My Grama is teaching me how to knit.
Each stitch is awkward, some not making it to their second row, jutting out at all angles, asking for something to hold them in. The end, where we started, is uneven, as though someone was pulling it in every direction as it was made. This is a scarf no one will buy, but I’m determined to finish it.
“Knitting is very important.” Grama’s words land on my arms like snowflakes. “It means love.” She stops for a moment to correct the position of my pinky. “Do you see how every bit of yarn goes through your fingers, so none of it is untouched?”
I nod, focused on not dropping the stitch my needle is holding.
“That’s so the person who wears it can feel the love inside,” Grama explains. “When I was in Peru last year, I bought a hat. It’s pretty—you’ve seen it. It’s the one with people all over it.” I nod, agreeing. “I don’t know who made that hat, but every time I wear it, I can feel that it’s made with love.”
I accidentally drop the next two stitches, their loops like little lopsided eyes staring at me. Grama laughs. “Once you practice some more,” she chortles,” I’ll teach you to fix your mistakes.”
The air conditioner begins another song to the beat of the hurricane outside as my sister starts on the next chapter of Dad’s book. Mom and Taylor remain still and sleeping. I imagine wearing out scarf when we leave Florida, the wool keeping me warm while I paste snow angels onto the ground and sled down the biggest hill. I learn to create love the day Grama teaches me to knit.

freezing rain nightwrite

Take out your pens and write for two minutes as if you've never written before, the paper staring at the backs of your eyes, your sore, cracked ribs, your joints tired from holding things together and bringing things together. I think I remember how to let go of my body, but not when I'm trying to hard to change my body, tilt the lights so they don't get caught so harshly on my hard edges. My fingers are attracted to each other, run their knuckles across unsuspecting skin when my mind is elsewhere, in poetry perhaps, but the kind that is always so different, the kind with a grade. We paint each doll a third eye on its forehead, paint a sunflower where each ear used to be, watch it bloom into something we didn't expect, not better or worse than what would have appeared, reassembled itself in the mist, if we knew what we were doing, if we knew why we were doing it, if we knew to count our steps backward, if we knew what was freezing to the roads, only in our ideas, full of accidental mischief parading in a room built especially for parades, with windows in the stands that you can, assuming you bought a ticket, open as a portal where hope turns to confetti and doubt turns to streamers, more substantial but less of what we want. The environmentalists, the people I mean, shake their heads and begin to worry, but just as shadows fall across their eyes, the sun comes up expectedly and the confetti sprouts, takes root quite unexpectedly, and we see they were seeds all along. We need more fields of sunflowers or vines or trees or moss but we never stay long enough to find out which, just to see tiny white fibers reaching toward the light like the spindles of our hands reaching. Take out your pens.

1145andishouldbesleeping nightwrite

I stare at the past and feel it with me now, like soft ghosts caressing my cheeks, sobbing into my shirt, laughing. I know what it's like to wait on the porch steps at eleven minutes until tomorrow, watching the light dancing through broken bottles in the gutter, teaching my dreams to fly so they don't have to be right here at this moment, with so many lines to fill, so many lines of people I will never know. I have to create their lives so they don't stain my skin with longing, like ink at the corners of my mouth, showing the world how I gnaw at my pens when I've worn my fingers to the bone, set my notebooks on fire because I love them so much and it's so cold in January, portraits of pieces of a family on my wall, the nails digging in, plaster dust gathering around my toes. When I step back, my footprints seem so big. They crush the mountains so I have nothing left to breathe but the moaning trains I've never seen but always heard, spirits that are part of the darkness because I notice nothing in the day but approaching evening, halos of cigarette smoke sneaking through my vents, smothering the last embers in my chest then settling in my lungs. Statues in the park watch their hands crumble, ants tearing apart a cracker with millions of tiny jaws, starving, making me wonder
if ants had ribs and babies had six arms there would be no real difference.
My soul tells me to take the Earth in my arms and tell it that it's powerful, teach it that it's beautiful, until all its scars have filled with water, become lakes and tributaries, places where birds pluck fish like gems from the tides, where the bottom is just cloudy enough that I can't tell what color my knees are but I still know they're there if I stay under forever, breathing the seaweed and sorting my thoughts.

a secret sonnet waiting for a title

Fireflies flash their lights for the first time
as if it's nothing special, pretending
the breeze that tickles the porches' wind chimes
won't slow when caught by signals they're sending.

The breeze tears dandelion wishes free
and sends them up to meet the clouds they seek,
then lets the wind roar loudly through the trees,
pretending all the while that it's weak.

The flowers' seeds drift slowly through the air
and watch gardeners plant their shrubs and vines.
They let people place roots just anywhere,
then float above the mountains feet can't climb.

The Earth watches the creature, breeze, and seed,
in awe of power where it's meant to be.