i'd keep you,

catch you in

a glass jar

like a firefly,

if you'll let me.

i've got an old

blueberry jam

jar that i think

you'd like.

we could

watch the sun

go to sleep

on the other

side of the

glass, smell

like blueberries,

and dream of

nothing more.

would you

keep me,

if you could,

in a blue

glass sun jam

firefly berry

jar?

would you

make sure

i'm never

lonely, or

is that too

much to

ask?

we could

chip out

glass holes in

the shape of

our hearts,

and patch it

over with jam,

and dream of

nothing more.

It sat on a small table by the window. To catch the sun's rays, Granny always said.

Lily was never allowed to touch it. It holds all our secrets, love. Better they stay in there. Lily knew she didn't want Granny to know it was she who had eaten the last cookie, or who had crushed Granny's herbal plants chasing butterflies...so she kept her distance.

But she would spend long sunmer hours lost in the stained glass swirls that seemed to slide across the wall on beams of sunlight. Laying on the elderwood oak floor, she would hold her hands up and marvel at the way the colors created patterns of slithering snakes or burgeoning butterflies or, once, a phoenix rising. She would entertain herself with stories about the fairies caught inside whose effervescent wings created the colorful designs that so delighted her. And whose magic kept their secrets safe.

Sometimes Granny would listen to Lily's stories. She even made her crowns of flowers and wings of leaves so she could be the princess fairy of her dreams as she danced in the light of the jar. Some days she'd tell her own. As they pulled weeds or Granny baked, she would enthrall Lily with tales of beautiful little creatures in the woods that granted wishes to the foolish, stole pretty little girls for their own, whose wings could sing as they flitted amongst the flowers, sipping the colors, absorbing the light. Who lived forever. Lily hung on every word.

Until she didn't.

As she got older, she visited Granny less, until she stopped going at all. She forgot about those forays into a world of light and magic. And secrets.

Until her mom called to let her know Granny had passed and asked could she come for the funeral. You were always her favorite, darling.

After the funeral, they all went back to Granny's house at the edge of the woods to eat and grieve. As Lily sat in the living room, mourning the years she had let slip by without visiting, she felt her eyes drawn to the table by the window. Her eyes widened as a surfeit of memories overwhelmed her. Someone's young daughter was reaching out to touch the jar. The jar. She was across the room before she could think, picking up the curious child.

Mustn't touch the jar, love, she whispered. It holds all our secrets. Best to leave them there. Okay?

Looking down at the little girl, Lily froze at the kaleidoscope of colors swirling in her eyes.

Too late, the child replied in a singsong voice not her own.

Lily slid to the floor. Before she lost consciousness, she heard Granny's voice, tinged with sadness. I had always hoped it would be you....

there’s a famous

Calvin and Hobbes

comic strip

where Calvin catches a butterfly

and puts it in a glass jar

gleeful of what he’s done

Hobbes says

“if people could put rainbows

in zoos, they’d do it”

and walks away

a sobering and weary

philosophical commentary

perhaps we are greedy

wanting to capture beauty

when it’s meant to be free

of the constraints of humanity

They came at night, calling it beautiful, how it “glowed”… storybook. It was fate did it, some said, and I believe they were right. They used all kinds of nice words before leaving and never coming back, unnerved by the strangeness of it, but I knew there was nothing to fear. I had been here to witness it all.

Our worries turned to him when she finally passed. We watched with some alarm as Grandpa held the canning jar to her lips and nose, sealing the openings between them the best his crooked fingers could until her struggling breaths ceased. Ever-so-quickly then he screwed the cap, shutting it so tightly that the rubber washer squeaked with displeasure from the force of it. Then he cradled the thing to his chest as though it were alive, carrying away what he believed to be her, leaving the rest for us to do with what must be done.

I will admit it was odd how you could see the jar on his bed stand in the dark of night. It did not glow of course, how could it, but the glass outline caught every gleam of any vestige of the faintest starlight when all else in the room was blotted by blackness, leaving the impression that the jar was in fact glowing. And every so often he would wake breathless, his bony fingers dousing the gleam as he touched “her” reassuringly, the feel of the familiar, knobbed glass allowing his slow, even breathing to resume.

And how quickly he descended once she was gone. It was only three weeks later that we were gathered around him, holding back tears, offering up our assistance as he used the little strength left in him to press that glass jar to his shaking lips.

At the very end it was I who twisted off the lid, and held the jar’s opening to his face. His eyes flared open one last time when I did. Tired lungs sucked hard at the jar’s mouth and it was done. There were no last words. Those had already been used on her.

We buried him beside her. On a whim I tied the jar between the headstones with a tight string, so that it floated and swayed between them, the jar connecting them in death as their love had in life, glowing between them in the moonlight… well, maybe gleaming, and not glowing.

After all, an empty old canning jar couldn’t possibly glow.

She kept herself

In the corner

Where she could hope to continue on, unnoticed.

Somehow though,

her unobtrusive way was sought out, and prized.

Her reflective opaqueness recognized for the simple

Beauty and clarity, shining from her intangible Soul.

Like a brilliant, misunderstood mosaic.

The pieces fashioned painstakingly together.

Thorned feelings skitter across the earth, caked in glitter, hollow words fly, away they flitter; nothing more than sound litter

And, on the tongue, taste lies, bitter, a mind filled with idle chatter, empty chitter, stimulated blood, she'll shake, she'll jitter like a caffeinated bad news transmitter

But somewhere below the surface, balanced upon the edge of truth's precipice, is where trust and insincerity crookedly wed

Tear-soaked pillows and sheets composed of leaves from weeping willows, a burning mattress, vows mispracticed make this marital bed

Distantly plays the violin, off in the shadow of lurking sin, sending chilly shivers dancing atop my skin like winter nymphs skating pond ice, crepe paper thin

Iridescent feelings twist and spin across my face, dripping from my chin, twitching on the dry floor, emotion grows fin: scaled and cold; a coelacanth twin

But oxygen it cannot breathe, pale and aquatic, beginning to teethe upon the things that, beside me, seethe, reaching for their swords, slipping from protective sheath

There is no part that does still believe that to our love I shall continue to cleave when you said you wouldn't, but, regardless, did leave, I'll follow you to the ends; it's my heart I must retrieve

So draw the curtains against the day, I don't want to see the gold of sunray, when imp-like misgivings emerge to play and light and innocence are falsely portrayed

I know that I have reached a line drawn in the sand, I see it, though it's fine, hands behind my back, bound with twine, I step over it into darkness; no illumination to shine

No stars, no moon, no streetlights to see and that means that, here, no one and nothing can see me, in the velvet black, I can finally sleep, away from dastard and bleak blue secrets you keep

And though those tears for you still seep, I refuse to emit sound, I will not utter a peep, I would sooner approach a cliff and from it, blindly leap than feed you my suffering, the pain is too steep

For you to stomach, if you only knew, but, oh, the terrible torment my pining would put you through, the longing has simply melted my heart to cardiac goo and shattered my existence beyond the repair of any philosophical glue

What I felt with you was the most true, until you took an axe to it, splitting pure beauty into two screaming fractures of mutated love and trust turned to ashes rising to the sky above

If this is what happens when push comes to shove, I won't even cover my tracks, won't wear a single glove, when I strangle what's left, snuff our impassioned dove and bury it beneath the cold, dead ground

Sounds and sirens swimming around and moonflowers open on another planetary mound, sparkling clarity is nowhere to be found; we have been convoluted

What happened?

How was our connection polluted?

Somewhere along love lines, the transmission was muted; bad or good, I wanted it confuted and I guess it was, however transmuted; rewired, misfired, but never rebooted

And in the end, the champagne was fluted, tinted with an emerald oil, jealousy undiluted, my words from before, though transfixed, I've refuted but that we've been broken cannot be disputed

A glass jar sits on my desk.

Filled with coins,

every coin I’ve ever

picked up off the ground

since January 2018

never to be used or spent.

Buttons, buttons, buttons.

Almost spewing over

the top of the glass jar

and of course,

a few random matchbooks

and guitar picks mixed in.

Filled with sparkling brown liquid,

the glass jar

containing the oh so sweet taste

of Mexican Coca Cola,

I crave on the daily.

A glass jar sitting upon a doorstep,

filled with a thick, white liquid cream.

Slowly melting and rotting as time goes by.

Dropped off in the early morning

awaiting its retrieval,

along with the morning paper.

Like none other, this glass jar,

voluptuous and bold, filled with sand

trickling from top to bottom,

with no worry in the world.

Outshining any and all.

The fine glass jar,

I yearn to grab and throw.

Smash. Glass so thin and just right,

worth every shattering sound

that will echo as I release my pain.

Any empty glass jar,

sits and waits.

Longing to be used, needed,

wanted.

In front of me sits a glass jar.

Once full now empty.

I want to smash it on the floor

but that wouldn’t solve anything.

I want to hide it away

but that won’t help me forget.

I want to fill it with coins, one for every drink I have. I worry it would soon be filled and would show my true self.

I know I drink too much, I know my jar was once full of tokens.

Each token a day I went without a drink.

The jar is now empty because I can’t face the truth.

Without a drink I remember, I don’t want to remember her blonde pigtails and velcro shoes.

Without my vice I have to confront the truth.

The night I ran her over.

Window are out. Old fashioned and in need of renovation. We couldn't say we've been the greatest to them, what with all the crashing and fractals we lay into them, but we do our best to make them pretty.

Amalgam of roughness, rectangular wrath pent up and arrested. Why couldn't we be stuck in some foundation, lifting up the glass, the people instead of being a convenient source for violence. What an awful rep we have. We tough it out covered in goop, from scarlet to pink, unbothered on the outside and keeping it all locked up. I wonder sometimes if that hot stereotype was to ward others, our diligence and firmness mistaken for aggression. We watch you everyday wanting to hold you between us. Billions of us. Molded, plastered, and frozen in time. Would it kill ya to say: "Hey"

If I could, I would live

My life in a jar of glass

Kept far away from

All atrocities

And sadness that infuses

Every day existence.

If I could, I would live

My life in a jar of glass

Save none but loving

Animals to comfort me

And fill the loneliness

Of all my days.

If I could, I would live

My life in a jar of glass

Surrounded by the beauty

Of art and music

To fill the void

Of silent days.

If I could, I would live

My life in a jar of glass

Filled with flowers

And those whom I love

Keeping us far from wayward

Thoughts and ways.

If I could, I would live

My life in a jar of glass

But since life forbids

Such hiding

I will instead live my

Life to the fullest.

Instead, in my every day

Existence, I will treat

All things as if they are

As fragile as the glass

Of that imaginary jar

For which I do long.