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.

come back justwrite

Don't come back to three minutes ago when the floor broke into puzzle pieces glued in the wrong places, too far away to see what picture they're supposed to make or accidentally stain onto the bottoms of your feet, like leaves falling from the ceiling or plaster clogging up the sky. You fear the inevitable, which makes your nightmares match mine only on the darkest mornings when the sun finally gives up, feeling guilty for melting so many wings, whether they were real or not or I was so sure they were that I knew my feathers would grow back before my hair grew long enough to bring my prince back again, awaiting disappointment, his handsome smile is only a smirk and there are too many babies lines up for any of them to be the right one, envelopes slicing through your fingers as you search for the hidden letter inside that is only hidden in the sense that it's invisible or maybe doesn't exist. There's really no difference and never will be until my x-ray specs come in the mail, the first time without cardboard lenses, so I can see into myself, my reflection at least, find machinery lacking oil or a box full of wind, the lid fastened tight like a coffin trying to keep the faces inside from escaping, as if they have anywhere to go. I put on my dancing shoes and crawl into bed, a quilt across my face because I'm tired and especially sick of searching for things so far away like the moon but further like Jupiter's moon except with more mystery, a new bacterium or maybe just a shadow I can't quite explain, with words or photographs, but later realizing I've had an answer all along--not the one true answer, but an answer at least.

today's afternoon justwrite

Get rid of that feeling, like wind on your face, hair blowing too close, eyes dry, with your skin telling stories that turn fish into sea monsters and the reflection of the sun on a pond into something you can touch until it sinks down so deep you can't reach and you have to learn the hard way that you never could breathe underwater, or at least breathe air underwater, like how you can speak in outer space but your voice can't find itself without an invisible someone pressed up close, ready to contract when the time comes, an accordion untouched on the floor across the room, too far to walk without shoes because splinters wait longer than any woman can and skin is softer than steel--but them again a lot of things are. I can find only a basket full of peaches soften than starlight. You need something harder to read by, but as long as there are no lines on your paper, you still remember how to write in the dark which makes life less scary at two in the morning when you're wondering where you live because you're sure there were streetlights there, wading pools where you could find yourself, reassemble your thoughts, weave them into a string and hold one end, convincing yourself the moon is a kite and the stars look like birds without wings, without beaks, with quieter songs because they've been in outer space their whole lives and know how to find music without a tune, without ears even because really all they have is heat and light too bright to read by and a faraway view of something so small they can't see the details anyway.

today's morning justwrite

Kind of pathetic like puppy dog eyes chasing cats with fiddles across the field and over the moon to grandmother's house where we bring baskets of muffins with blueberry stains, blue at the corner of her mouth, the round of her eye named after a flower but I can never remember which one, tossing handfuls of mismatched seeds onto the sidewalk, wondering where the roots will take root and avoiding the cracks because there were morbid nursery rhymes in my childhood and I'm still waiting for the dish to bring my spoon back home again so I can eat soup again and cereal again and again at ten minutes until tomorrow because I can't sleep when the screens in my head are playing static louder than my heartbeat and the stars have switched themselves to wind power to save energy. You need more than a breeze to power a star, so the windows are shaking, wondering why they didn't pick another job like a glass coffee table with no worries but hot chocolate mugs with no coasters. I place my paper in a music box because I'm a dreamer and hope that the words will write themselves because I want to memorize every song because I need something to do in the shower besides think of the springtime bulbs still frozen in the ground, sending cold breaths upward so maybe somebody can shout it out and we'll all buy chainsaws to cut blocks of ice and chisels to carve them into swans or angels or an octopus eating a sandwich and then we'll buy mallets because what good is a chisel without a mallet, a dish without a spoon, a cow without her moon, a justwrite without a rhyme, or me without you.

(veryearly)morningwrite duo

Paint springs from my fingers like it's as alive as the shadows that blink on and off on the stage floor, catching bare toes on their edges for such a small moment that no one seems to notice, but their feet move faster, pretending they are everything that's never been untouched. The curtains fall as lumps onto the floor, appear to have strangers sleeping beneath them in the dark, but we peek and find only a few fistfuls of beads, strung to each other like paths that lead nowhere into the trees for the things with no legs to follow.

I write now like I wrote then but I can't remember when exactly maybe the time I sat alone at the kitchen table, the hole in the ceiling above me round as a halo, the plywood that would later cover it leaning against the wall beside my chair. Mom's footsteps crossed paths with Dad's as they did grown-up things like dusting and slipping crisp, folded bills out of envelopes, other things I didn't understand. I tried to think of why my teddy bear was so important, what life was like through his scarred plastic eyes as he watched my dad grow and then met me and experienced his first of many tea parties. I wrote down my thoughts and then strung in extra lines to rhyme with each. I was so proud that I wrote another page about my favorite color, yellow. By the end of my third grade year, the neon colored horses on my Lisa Frank journal had grown a few grey streaks from my opening and closing the cover so often. The first time I heart of electroconvulsive therapy was at the library after school in sixth grade when my best friend was trying to explain to me why Hitler was such a bad person. It was nestled in with descriptions of a lot of other horrible methods of torture that I couldn't quite fathom, and I felt the idea of it growing more distant with each click of a keyboard or turn of a page around us.