A rock to dance atop of; a door to stop the flow of space to cut off the air to stop the rage or the nerves, whichever comes first. A cup to slant a flower in and an old doily beneath to cup in yellowed hands the pollen and the dust. A road to skin my knee on; an arch to pose beneath hands and hips and shoulders. A brick, a car, a crib. An IV and a wish.
That's all I need. That's all
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Pulling knees to chest when grandma starts to claim she was once a girl with once a boy who stared at her the way the stars gaze unto the end of time, as if he knew she would always be his and there would always be light.
Wrinkled cheeks and wrinkled curtains in a room painted in decades of smoke from bacon on eternal stoves and ashtrays on each armchair's rest. Sauces from three years ago and dust cemented from oiled air, but a heart wrapped tightly around a crystal youth and the laughter before sorrow was known. Oh god, how clear. A brook. A cloud.
"Goodbye to the five in the ground, goodbye to the one across seas, but may I hold tight to the white dress he kissed me in until it is my turn to visit the stars, until it is my turn to die."
Knees have somehow slipped down as the clock has stopped on the wall, and I find myself telling a new small one of my grandmother's laugh and my mother's laugh, and the laugh of mine they will never hear.
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I don't need enemies. I throw my own journals away and sneer at my old self, you'd better know better now.
I dig up pictures fifteen years old, and stumble first thing into the same rut: no of course not, you were too fat, too poorly dressed, too arms-across-your-stomach, too wrong.
Who needs enemies when you already tell yourself they are all sitting drunk on the hill when someone mentions you to sour laughs -- so glad she isn't here with us.
What would an enemy say if they saw the evidence:
your back and my back parallel on the grass eyes locked over a dinner table, mid word the bird that flew against all odds your head in my lap and us surrounded by art
The poltergeist in my head says, for my own good:
[you moved nearer and made his skin crawl] [basic manners, of course he can't ignore] [a moment only you keep wrapped up] [art kids like being edgy. it is edgy to pretend to like a troll]
just being nice. Just being nice. Tolerance does not mean acceptance. tolerance does not mean acceptance.
Like a tree grown over a wire, my prejudice means that maybe I will hate myself until the end.
Even when he asks to be near. Even when he comes near. It must mean something else. It could never be love.
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I wake on a Saturday morning to my boy dancing four cygnets on my bed and close my eyes in the soft morning fog to revel.
Strong legs, sharp jumps, feet ever moving will take him and his head-tilted-back laugh to sunlit sights in all directions.
If someday someone writes poems of him, Oh god, I hope he shares them with me and says,
"No, you didn't make me who I am, but the nest you built twig by hair and the books we surrounded ourselves with have led me to be a stained-glass window in someone's holy chapel of someone's holy heart."
As I have cherished, so be it unto him.
Health and happiness, but above all that, eyes that linger brimmed with admiration for a man who once danced four cygnets on his mother's bed. Not in spite of, truly because.
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The nicest people I have known smiled and asked how it was to send bourbon back over my tongue asked without classification or prejudice, just joy for my first taste -- a flicker back to a simpler past.
They did not see the dark brown later, did not know I would wake to moments I would never be able to find, but still they took me to buy cheese and juice and water and laid me to rest in a bed that was my own.
The nicest people I have known echoed in my ears as I looked, half-asleep through the window whisking me home. That startled me to stars because I hadn't known they had meant so much I would save their voices in a pocket behind my ear to play back later.
Their names do not cross my lips and mine does not cross theirs, but the warmth of the whiskey is tangled in when I fish for memories of nice people I have known.
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They do not see us They see only light reflected off A plane we have named skin So what do we become Underwater When light fractals through our hair And sunbursts are swept away on currents, When darkness seeps up in cold fingers; Shadows across what was a nose, an ear
If I am to become new underwater I will hold my breath and wait and ask The passing fish "will we love this time?"
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Yes, lay your head down I will not turn away I will not shift my knees I will let my legs lose blood flow And push past the pins and needles To let you know you are safe and seen And you may rest as long as you need to And when you rise, I will not follow you And my head will slump to the side And my neck will ache But I will still gaze upon the paint strokes And wait for the next time You come to lay your head upon my knees.
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Grass curled back against the trunk And stars curled back hurtling through emptiness Leaving streaks of light across the planets Worms curled back as they are picked off one by one And we curled back as we squeeze into breath
Upright to walk But curled back in bed To be born again and again In the eyes of another Or in the mirror across the room
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Twin lights reveal stitches of worn backpacks while trees whisper in wind not yet born, sun still tucked in the pocket of the world.
Behind, eyes are shut tighter and breath is being held, close, until napes of necks are prickled and you look for the door at the top of the basement stairs.
A patch of Spanish forest colored by a solitary flutter of a waking bird's wing, but who is she to know who imagines viper faces, blunt men, and crisp beasts?
Unending left and right and left until the rhythm calls up the snail of a sunrise who unfurls his eye stalks in streaks first purple that lighten into juice between the clouds.
An unveiled world with pen-stroke scenes slows anxious strides and a minnow of a thank-you streaks away between the grass.
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Brick lane in between brick walls Cobblestones wind between bushes Spiked black paint metal fences punctuate city lines And the grove of trees hides the graves.
Jewish quarter painted into the trench of a canvas Gilded in cafes, kempt trees, and license plates. Did we come by tram or on foot? Did they come dragged or delivered? Will we remember them when we are gone?
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Shouting happy birthday happy birthday at the wall We miss you we miss you we miss you Scratched into a tree Where a swing once hung I forgot it hung And now she will cut it down.
Where are you we take our magnifying glass to the ground Unblessed with hound noses And armed only with your name we search
Shouting you should be here I am here Where are you Typed onto scrap paper That falls behind the desk And stays there until we move house When the uncles stuff it in the trash With dust and uncapped markers
You knew us when we bought the markers new You knew us when our dad was still alive God come back and bring with you A frame frozen from a kaleidoscope Of when we were young Happy birthday happy birthday to you
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Sometimes there are fireflies In this dried up well, And if they do not come tomorrow They may come the next, I know.
There are children who need grandfathers here And problems to be stroked in thought And songs I haven't heard yet And recipes pressed face down in dark piles of moss And sometimes there are fireflies, So no, not yet.
Yes sometimes mildew clouds like mustard gas Trembling, backed into a corner A scream ripping at closed off lungs, Torture in silence in this dried up well, but sometimes there are fireflies, Sometimes just one on his own, And so I will not claw up and out. No, no, not yet.
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Sitting on a strip of cement that boxed in a scrawny tree and peeling back the tin of tuna before Audacity strolled by and thought "That?" so loudly we heard it over the red line.
Wow, a real bodega! A bodega down the street! Cradled a bag of potatoes paid for from the bottom of the real bodega all the way up to our third floor spot to find a city of maggots inside when we cut in. Wow, a real maggot! A city of maggots!
Lakeshore drive was never driven because the L curves in toward the loop. But one awkward date was walked on early Spring shores -- cold enough to never want to go back when warmer muraled neighborhoods awaited.
I could not find the alley if you gave me a map and a history of my steps but somewhere there we got close enough to kiss but never kissed. No, never kissed.
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You have grown into the water that spins away voiceless after the oar passes through. I am proud of you for the silence, though the spiral scares me.
Babies haven't yet forgotten their hands are supposed to meld with your cheek, light passing through light, so they press just a little too hard and you take it as intention, intensity.
Okay, why not imagine someone loves you a little too much? Just a scene in a page in one journal out of many -- not even the autopsy can reveal the scars you leave yourself, looking too much like the muscle that shoots smiles up to your cheeks.
When you hold your thumb over the end of the hose, like that. It used to be the incessance of leaves on rake and leaves in bag and repeat and repeat until why did we even want to show this dumb dead grass?
Shh, shh, you were doing so well. Splashing wastes energy. No need to keep warm. Please let go of my finger, child, let me walk again alone.
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