moving on justwrite

This sounds like a revelation, and I tell him I have a whole book of them, pages and pages that leave my fingerprints riddled with paper cuts, my hands like torn lace. I stare at them and scream that I'm unique, hope I leave bloody handprints on your shorts, tell you to test the DNA and see if you find yourself. You won't. You'll find blueberries, swollen and warm, bobbing in bowls of cream, tiny life preservers floating like dandelion wishes on a whispered breath. You'll find fingers full of language, eyes that speak more than they blink, a pale, round stomach that has forgotten what it is to live for no one but yourself. I am trapped in a room with no door and no roof. I'm stacking books like stairs but haven't written enough to climb out. The dirt I'm sitting in fell out of your bones; I feel it in my lungs when I breathe. My voice is full of dust, an old photograph of dead relatives, a whole picture with empty space that's hard to realize but easy to feel, the colors off somehow, the shadows filled with noise. When I cough, storm clouds race from between my lips, but the rain they bring is mud, clay that sticks and dries, my joints stiff afterward, my features frozen. You call me statuesque, then bring a hammer down against my skin. These tiny cracks look like paper cuts, my body shredded lace, and from within me come skinless blueberries, oozing into each other, falling in motionless clumps by my feet. My stomach is round and pale, sheltering a thought, a dandelion wish, an old photograph torn in half. I face the sky and tell him I've had a revelation. I crumble. You pack the dust from my bones back into yours, hammer them shut, and move on.

chasing children justwrite

Each of my pupils is a seed. I try to see under water but sprout nothing until the sun comes up. By then we've already decided that frozen peas are quieter than sun-dried raisins. I scream while I shrink. There are roots clutching the folds of my brain, tight, like how I used to hold Dad's hand in the parking lot, knuckles white, snowflakes time-stopped on my skin, in the folds, stuck. When I can't see, swimming and drowning sound the same. I am a flightless bird perched on the edge of a skyscraper. I'm new to the city. The first person who ever held me was a farmer's wife, her hands rough and bloody, her face creased and kind, my eyes blind except to light. Your skin is like bread crust, at least according to Elizabeth. I think about crumbling. I remember feeling whole and then learning about broken plates, how you throw away a plate when it shatters. Always. Even if it was your favorite. Even if it's the only plate you'll ever have. I save broken dishes in the back of my top drawer, behind my underwear. I wish my hands could do anything besides write, wish they were made of glue, wish I could find all the pieces. There are vines feeling their way across my eyelids. There are branches tangled in my hair and birds' nests in my cousins' open palms. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, after the sun comes up. I'll let go of the skyscraper and call this city mine, knowing that really I'm a loaf of bread and the seeds in my eyes can't see anything but light.

deep creek dreamer justwrite

In my dream, Mateo's room fills with water and no one is concerned. We can wipe the writing off wet walls with our fingertips. In a few days, you won't know it was ever there. When I close my eyes, my bed has tides, and I almost fall in just before I fall asleep. Taylor is on solid ground, his feet planted, growing roots. There is a watering can in my left hand, a seed in my center. Walking down a dark street at night, I see someone familiar. She asks about my life as if it is a story worth telling. I like her hair and need another bus ticket, for Taylor, realizing his roots don't reach the state where I live. When I am awake, I know this room is empty, void of water except the condensation on the window, and that Mateo is in a place that isn't mine, isn't ours. I touch the walls with my fingertips and they look the same afterward. I touch these pages and their words don't smear. There are still tides, rocking my organs like wrinkled arms rock newborn people, whole people who have nothing but what others give them. I don't remember learning to sit up by myself. I only remember people carrying watering cans in their left hands, walking through gardens as big as small continents, trying to find the weeds.