this world isn't mine.

i've got one hand buried in the ground,

holding the roots of the peach tree

planted so many times over in the

backyard of my parents' house.

one foot here, in an apartment

that no one visits unless you're

staying the weekend, arms full

of new-plastic-smelling board games.

an ear in a newlywed's white house;

half my face a few states over on

the phone screen of a girl i grew up with.

a few fingers still in a cabin in the woods

somewhere.

a crescent of my soul across the country,

in the closed eyes of a forest i've never been.

teeth, scattered at the doorsteps of

relatives i remember and forget.

one foot firmly placed in the side of a lake,

ankles enjoying the waves,

skin soaking in the sun.

my heart, firmly tied to a rusting door hinge.

to the trunk of a beat-up car.

to the feeling of being and unbeing.

committed to getting torn apart.

all mine, and not a shred of it belongs to me.

9.27.24

it is the fire of the dragon

taken up residence behind my heart,

between my lungs, and deep

within the recesses of this flesh

i call my own.

intoxicating, intricate rhythm.

unique to you; unique to me.

i would carve you a home if you

didn't have one, house the

earth-worn clay you own underneath

the shade of the eastern trees.

even now the skies drip rain,

but the moon rises, as it always does,

and presses kisses to my forehead

just for seeing another night.

we are taken.

deep within the forest, in the worm-laden

grasses and the half-eaten cherry trees.

an imperfect eden, and we will

find our own shadows, one day.

but for now, take me.

common words in common places

my car smells like sugar flowers

sweet as the sight of you through a doorway

ghosts wander through butterfly gardens

and the stone gods watch, larger than life

- the fantasy is us together -

pinned like insects against the wall

tea stained pages, double dip,

books that have touched a thousand eyes

i want every forest to know you,

every rock to feel the memories through my feet,

seep into the dark earth below and

grow tiny flowers or crisp leaves or rough bark

that remembers this love

and tells the stories to the wanderers

long after our time has passed

It was summertime. You could hear the frogs croaking down below the jut of land out back, announcing their presence from the edges of the creek. You could hear the wind chimes singing on the porch of the woman next door, five-foot-one and sun-wrinkled, but I never learned her name. You could feel the sweat in the summer breeze, blowing all the fisherman's early morning sighs right to your front door.

Summer's more than just a season, here. A haven, religion, way of thinking. Summer like slow humming, like wet ankles, like the texture of chewing on a blade of grass.

He was dropping off milk, the first day. Four days into summer, and I was wearing these new purple-blue-plaid shorts that Mom had bought me after I asked and asked. I thought they were cute, and it's hard to find things to wear when your wardrobe is stock-full of pleated school skirts and blouses, stained at the pits and the same colors you've been wearing since kindergarten. Begins to wear down your sense of self, when it's been that way for more than ten years.

Sixteen and I probably should have learned how to shop for myself, brought a group of friends to go shopping or something, but I'm not that kind of girl. Kids at school all look the same, feel the same, talk the same. Seems like the stray cats at the docks and the birds in the backyard would have better advice.

He had freckles all across his arms, and I didn't know him from school. I stood in the doorway and watched him. He couldn't be younger than me because he had just gotten out of the milk truck; made me jealous because Mom said I wasn't allowed to learn how to drive yet. She says I don't need it, not when I can bike to school, or Lou could take me if I really needed it. Lou lives three doors down in a nice big house with four siblings, though, and I don't like riding in a car with all of them, even when it's winter.

He watched me watch him, but didn't say a word. Didn't blush or anything, so he wasn't shy, just took our empty bottles from our milk box to his truck, came back with the full ones, and stood for a moment, looking at me.

"You want these inside?" he asked. He had a skinny nose and more freckles on his face than anywhere else, thin arms but strong enough to hold all the milk no problem.

"No," I told him. I didn't know where Mom wanted them. I thought she could deal with it. I was going to bike into town and hang around there all day, anyway. She wouldn't know I was talking to this milk boy.

I didn't ask him how or why he was delivering the milk, but I wondered it. Usually Mr. Sherman did it, lots of smiles, very round pink cheeks like a year-round Santa Claus.

So I asked him the next week, when I saw him again. I was sitting on the front porch step, tearing up dandelions. Not to weed, but because the house was locked and Mom wasn't home from the store yet. I'd been up early to get fresh bread, and the loaf was sitting next to me in a brown paper bag. Mom always says the earlier in the day you buy something, the better it tasted. Didn't make much sense to me because I don't eat breakfast and we eat the most at dinner.

"I'm doing it for the summer," he said. He was very short with me. Not in an unfriendly way, but in the way people who don't have much to say are. I noticed his sleeves were all scrunched up, long sleeves, and he pushed them further up his arms when he talked.

"Do you work for Mr. Sherman?" I tore off a piece of bread and started chewing on it, then held the rest out to him.

His mouth did a little twitchy smile, and I could see the perspiration on his forehead. Sun was hot today, and the air muggy. All the little insets in the yard were screaming with the heat. He took some bread, nodding.

"He lets you drive around all by yourself?" I eyed the milk truck. For someone who just started a job, it sure seems like he was trusted to do the work.

His eyebrows raised. The sun was so hot I thought I might die, or melt. I wanted to do everything and nothing at all. "You wanna drive around with me?"

Of course I did. He showed me all the pedals in the truck as he drove, explained what the buttons inside did. His dad was a mechanic, and so he learned how to drive as soon as he turned fifteen.

Every week I saw him. Most weeks I accidentally bought an extra cinnamon roll or had just been happening to be about to go somewhere, wearing a summer dress and ribbon in my hair. He talked more and more the more I knew him. I rode around with him sometimes, and he'd take a wrong turn and drive by the docks, letting me stick my hands or my face out the window and feel the sea-blown air. Once I stayed with him his whole route, face to the sun like a flower while he'd get out and deliver the milk, and then he parked the truck at an alcove by the cliffs and we sat on the ground, leaning against the tires, talking until the sun set.

He promised he'd teach me to drive. I promised I'd show him the caves down by the water. He said he'd buy me ice cream, and I told him I'd buy him a hat to keep the sun out of his eyes. He suggested we go skinny dipping, I put a hand on his arm. Summer melted into a single moment when he kissed me.

That night I came home with soggy shoes and watery hair and a sloppy smile. Mom stole all the joy, slammed the door closed behind me, told me to never do that again. She paced the living room, I started shivering, even in the stifling warm air in the house. She'd seen me with that boy. Everyone in town knows it. Elizabeth's mom said she'd seen me joyriding around town, distracting him, shaming myself.

"Shame for what?" I yelled back. Small, thin, red summer dress soaked to the last thread, hair in tangles and watery tears in my throat.

"It doesn't look good," she told me. "People notice these things," she said. "He'll take advantage of you," she warned.

"I love him," I clipped back. I feel like a fish caught in a net, wriggling to get free. Back to the air, the night, him, the perfect summer.

Mom dragged me by the wrist to my room. Told me to shower. Told me I was not allowed to go out at night. Was not allowed to drive around with that boy. Was not allowed to be in love when I was so, so young.

Mom doesn't know anything at all. Mom has photos of my father when they were sixteen, I've seen them, even though I wasn't supposed to, and I think they were in love. Even if he didn't stay.

The rest of the summer was my little secret. A love letter to myself: early mornings at the docks, meeting him before Mom would notice I was gone. We named all the seagulls, made friends with some fishermen, who don't gossip, and I learned all the ways I could love him.

He was gentle, like a passing cloud, and thought for long periods of time before speaking. We'd listen to the waves, scatter whispers into the morning air, kiss until we were tired. I kept it all so secret; I spent my days with Lou and her brothers so Mom never suspected a thing.

By the end of summer, the days were shorter, the air was less hot, the mornings less warm. Mom was too busy and tired to notice me sneaking out of the house at night.

He taught me to drive, though I was bad at it. The roads were empty, just us, headlights, and the low murmur of toads.

On this night I was wearing just a tank top and skirt, my hair in a bun with little pieces falling out because that's how he liked it. I drove to the edge of the water, jerky on a few turns but he stroked a thumb across my arm and told me I was doing just fine. We ended up in the backseat. A messy, sweaty, summer. The perfect summer. And then he told me he was leaving. Back home, he said, with his mom.

"But you live here," I said, covering myself with my tank top. The air had never been so cold. "With your dad." I think I was trying to convince him.

"Just for the summer," he told me. "I didn't think..." He stroked my hair.

He was always thinking. But he didn't think about this? He was my secret, and this was his. "I thought you loved me," I whispered. You could have heard a pebble drop into the sea, could have heard every ripple.

He tucked my face against his arm. "I know, baby." It didn't make me feel any better. I pushed him away, put on my shoes, climbed out and started walking down the road. I walked the whole way home, no matter what he said. No matter how many times he apologized. He followed me, slowly rolling next to me in his dad's car, talking more words than I've ever heard him say. I kept my arms folded, my back hunched, to help me fight against the tears.

When I got back home I stood on the doorstep and turned to watch him. He watched me watch him. He got out of the car, engine still idling. This time he didn't say a thing. I kissed him one more time. Then I went inside.

Mom was standing outside her room in a robe when I got upstairs. It took everything in me not to fall to my knees and hold my hands over my ears, terrified as I was at betraying her. I still hadn't let loose a single tear, and I could still hear the engine idling outside. I was hanging on by a thread, and any one thing would break me.

It was when she sighed that I blinked up at her. Mom tilted her head, eyes tired, not angry. It was when she hugged me that I broke. She held me up while I cried, because she knew, and she whispered into my hair that it was ok. It was summertime, she whispered. Summertime makes us do all kinds of things. It's ok, it will pass. Summer always does.

9.5.24

i dream of too many songbirds

and silly little things

too wrapped in silk to see the consequences,

you see? and shadow minds on the other side.

croquet towers, a million little lights.

trapped ghosts in ivory towers,

those we've all seen before.

but lilac purple shawls don't lay across

our shoulders like they used to;

they hack and burn and sink through

the skin, right to the bone.

yellow sunrays, bouncing across the water.

and too many footprints in the wet sand.

brown paper bags on either hand, castigated,

sent to the edge of the forest until we can

remove the stain of life from our eyes.

mushroom dotted forearms, i look down,

see trails of ivy where my toes used to be.

wrapping around the earth, stone, sun.

bound by laws of gravity no one ever thought to teach.

repress the butterfly. silk wings for another day.

pinky finger in the sky, feel the wind,

like hot tea: surprise. and burn my lips.

birdsong for another day, lightning and

lighthouses for now.

shade your eyes from the light and

fight your way back to shore.

9.2.24

i've seen snow

fall on the other

side of this window,

evergreen tree,

a million

closed eyes

and sun rotations

to prove we're

only human

only human

too many soft

sighs to count

touch my elbow

again, it's too early

and too late and

every minute is

only human

another reason to

stay,

flower in your

hand or in my

hair or across our

lips like promises,

your legs my legs

ours, we know,

now the sun's

too hot and

your window won't

roll down, woozy,

sick, stumble over

our own words

drowning in the

feeling

only human

your, my, everything

i want to see

another snow,

catch footprints

raindrops

penny heads up

argue with the sky,

but you're still there:

evergreen tree

8.25.24

in the great between, we're dreamers.

the universe our shell, slowly cracking under the weight

of what Must, and, inevitably, of what Does.

like some kind of star séance, swirling beneath our feet,

murmuring stories of past, present, premonitions.

each outliving the last, each true, each caving in

until it cannot be possible, predictable, or profound.

again, space lacks meaning. and we let our hair down.

roll beads of sweat into boulders to sit on,

sigh and slip into children again, waiting patiently

for a goodnight comet to fall through the sky.

8-23-24

The sun is just beginning to set, caught in those few minutes where the sky is the most vivid. Like colored tears draining into each other, a golden eye open for just a moment before it's gone.

I drive home with the radio all the way up, the windows all the way down. And this time when you cross my mind, I let the wind take the breath from my lungs. I can't say for sure whether I make any noise at all, only that the speedometer is approaching eighty and the sound of the radio is vibrating my seat.

Nothing we did was ever loud.

I drive by the water, you know it's not on the way home, but I do it anyway. The seagulls outside the car circle and swoop, cawing at the light as it slips away. They drown out the music, somehow, but I still hear your voice in my head, begging me to stay.

You never saw the ocean. Not with me, anyway.

I turn the car around, backtracking until the roads are more familiar. Not that I don't know this town, but some streets I've been driving down since I was in a car seat. This is the path back home. In a sense.

When can you move back home? I hold a hand out the window to catch the breeze, remembering the first time someone asked me that. My new boss, as a matter of fact. And my father shortly after.

Home, as if it isn't still across the country with you.

I try to turn up the radio, but it won't go. I have to stop at a light and a wrinkled man and a woman hidden behind a sunhat look at me. The man's mouth frowns deeply, moving in unintelligible complaints. I wonder if there's enough sunlight left to see the trails the tears have left on my face. Or maybe I look too normal, I never was very good at getting emotional.

This is only a step backwards, is what you told me.

But how could I promise myself, I muse--foot on the gas, goodbye old man--to the life you wanted? Now that my brain's cracked open with the thought of you, it's seeping out through my skin. I feel like I'm burning from the inside out, knuckles white and my every cell remembering how you used to touch me. Hold me. Cry with me. You wanted a family. You wanted a stable life in a stable town. You wanted to fall in love, and we accidentally did. Are you sorry?

I am.

These roads are winding, narrow. I could just about navigate them with my eyes closed. Everything here's just as I remember it, down to the smell of water, the soft dirt. The distant sound of traffic and tree limbs hanging over the road, almost close enough to touch. Like a bubble with every point accessible from the center, just nothing beyond. Contained. Or waiting to pop.

I park the car in the garage. The radio is off but my mind is filled with deafening roar. I still picture what it'd be like to walk through the front door and have you greet me. A fantasy, but my mind itches for it. Instead, I greet the silence.

I only wonder: does the silence greet you, too?

and the ghosts had told her she'd never be in love

shivers from the air conditioner,

constantly murmuring, and tucking

her arms against her chest, bare skin.

a blanket thrown over.

the warmth of his back a reprieve.

cloudless sky, suitcase unpacked.

why does every minute seem like the last,

when suddenly time isn't just time but

tiny crystals of sand to be picked up

and examined. licked clean, relished,

tucked away and remembered.

the world used to be mindless and chaotic,

and now it's summer wind whipping her

thoughts back into her own face.

simple, reckless, and hedonistic.

she wakes up in a room with peeling paint walls.

as the sun was closing her eyes the space

between here and there -- then and now --

narrowed into a hallway of possibility.

became an empty, liminal type space

with outdated patterns drawn on the walls

and a line of cracked leather booths.

he takes her hands, the clocks on the wall

melt back into meaningless numbers and arrows.

it's not like him to be nervous, usually.

the context is lost to time; his words are not.

i think i love you

and a thousand moments happened in one:

fractal the possibilities, watch them all play out.

she stands. he is rigid and does not look up.

perhaps it is fear. she is not afraid, she tips up his chin,

because her heart has become the liminal space

and the liminal space has become her heart.

the room where they kiss is empty.

she has known for quite some time.

her ghosts are near but cannot possess her.

for once, she is sure.

8.6.24

It's always been a verb.

teasing, hoping, holding, waiting, touching, laughing, watching

Everything we've done together.

Finding a frog in the park, running away from the mosquitos.

Holding your hand in the backseat of the car, not knowing if anyone else sees.

Ordering pizza and standing on the sidewalk, dripping grease.

Holding you close, wrapping our legs together so you can never leave.

Driving three states away because you don't mind and I want to.

Kissing you in the darkness, never knowing how mad I've become.

Walking to the edge of the lake, looking over the horizon and past it.

Worrying that it'll go.

Hoping that we can make it work.

smiling, remembering, longing, taking, risking, listening, loving

It's always been a verb.

Nothing changed when we said it out loud, because we already knew.