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.