things I never said justwrite

I'm the one you throw back. I have seven hooks through my lip, dust on my teeth, and I'm waiting for the moment you touch me just before you let go. I've lived in this forest as long as it's grown. I've talked to more trees than people. On Tuesday evenings, I nap in pine needles and come to the door at dusk wearing a fir coat that smells of firewood. My hands and feet are warm. You have a song rising from your chest on each breath, and in this light, I think you're a cardinal, or maybe a crow bleeding from its beak. I used to have nightmares about teaching birds to talk. Now I am topless at a stranger's dinner table and have no voice to give anyone. You are whistling outside my window. The trees are scratching their knobby fingers across the panes and hissing whispers that sound like wind. I'm awake and searching for words. My bed is made of pine needles. My hair gathers around my eyes, the ends feathered. On a morning like this, I jumped into your hands, my mouth caught open, a paused vowel stuck beneath my tongue. If you would turn into a tree, I'd press my face against your trunk, your bark scraping my cheek, and say the things I never said. But you can't be a tree. You open your hands and let me go.

collapsing justwrite

Dance across caverns because they always told you air is too thin to hold your weight. I am a grape beneath your heel. I am ripe, swollen. My skin is splitting. In my mouth, there is juice that tastes like springtime. There are stars behind my eyelids. I can dance. In my dreams, I am losing all my teeth. Their roots slice my tongue. They fall into my cupped palms, leave gaps the size of oceans in my gums. You tell me I taste like salt. I want to bury my teeth, round white seeds, but nothing grows in this earth but thistles that tangle themselves in my hair like your fingers when you have nothing else to hold. I reach for your hand, my face to the sky. I used to stand in a half-burned house wondering if the floor would collapse. You used to dance across that floor. I told you once that birds have hollow bones, bones so light air can hold them like cupped hands hold sprouting seeds. This movement is so slight my eyes see only teeth, detached and fallen in my palm. You twirl to me, one arm around my waist, your face tilted down to the earth. You say you're dancing while we wait, and even if the floor collapses, we won't.

true story justwrite

I am missing my flight on purpose. I'm getting off three weeks before I got on. I have bootstraps to pull and a knapsack full of hard tack. I had a dream I've been dreaming someplace new instead of leaving this town where the streets drown in autumn leaves every springtime when it's time to begin again and I think maybe a seed will sprout another day, things my brother tells me weighing down my tongue, my voice broken like ice skates the hour you need them most to conquer this lake, fish sleeping beneath your blades. When the light is off, I'm afraid to open my eyes. When I'm moss, I grown on the eastern side of tree trunks because if you go east you'll find more of me, two or three pieces I left floating in the tides for you to find and then bury like a small handful of lost teeth, the kind we take off when we're young so we can forget how frail they are, my fingers unfurling banners that all say your name in capital letters because of emphasis because tone is important. It's all dogs understand, you know, except when the cat chases a moth under the door and it escapes through the crack but still flies as if it's frantic and the dog looks at me as if to ask if my wing is broken too. When I cry, you tell me the cat was only playing, that no one told her the rules or how fragile a moth can be, with legs like thread and thin paper wings fluttering in the darkness. It lands by my foot, choking on my tears, a flight ended, a seed planted, two lives joined plus the cat's, the dog's, and yours.

something justwrite

You look at me because my bones are antiques you want me to dust off and sell. You look at me because the gold rings in my eyes would fit around your fingers perfectly, if you could only reach them. You go in through my belly button, come out the soles of my feet so I'm knee-deep in your memories, burning off my skin in billows of steam so white the people down the street think they're sails and I'm standing in a crow's nest searching for my new world that is neither new nor mine, and I think maybe I'm just searching for the crow, standing in her house, my big toe smashing her bed. Suddenly, I'm a wax doll in summer sunlight, my limbs losing form and gaining fluidity. You are so close to me your breath leaves ripples on my surface. I try to run but fall instead, land in the ocean choking on salt, a gold ring caught in my throat. I haven't felt air since then. My body is under water, the sunlight bent away from my face, my whole world above me and distorted by the tides so even pictures of myself look like dreams I can't quite describe. I wake up happy and alone but wake up again with no bones and empty eyes. You fingers are fanning out from my belly button like petals on a thistle. There is a gold ring on each one, and for a moment my body is the sun until it's so cold I'm numb. My skin is sprouting a pine needle for each memory and every time you touch me I taste blood, copper pennies, gold rings.

first non-private August justwrite

People are not pictures of trees on your windowsill. I water my potted plants on Tuesdays because schedules are natural to me--tides, revolutions, lunar cycles, all of them circles I slip onto my fingers like promise rings, turning my skin green then swollen red. I chew on my arm like a wounded dog, but to you I look like a hen preening, my feathers dusted with earth, a girl turning to her grandfather and asking whether or not I have a tongue. I have at least four limbs, carved with initials and worn smooth by bare feet. I have a beak that was sharp once. When the moon comes again, I will have a thought that becomes a dream. The next morning, I'll call you and tell you because some things are significant until they're given words or placed beneath glass and framed. On my windowsill, I have my fifth grade rock collection, a funeral announcement, and four forgotten photographs framed and upside down. Outside, there are trees leaning in, straining to hear my secrets I whisper from behind these panes. I think I see you in their bark, your initials at least. There is a knife in the grass, dew resting on its blade. Nearby, a spider plucks a lullaby from her web. I try to catch it with both hands; I want to frame it for tomorrow. But in the morning, my hands, the yard, and these webs are empty. You're standing in the doorway to my bedroom. I think I'm saying your name, but the walls are leaning in close and their faces are blank.