No one told me how to be a person until it was too late. Until I was already rosy pink with embarrassment at my own chosen foolishness. To go my own way has been a strong-willed passion of mine since the beginning. And I don't think my story is unique. Everyone wants the sky to be blue, when really it's pink. Pink, turning orange, turning apocalyptic red. To sing now becomes slavery and all I'm really looking for is the center, the stone, the pinkest peach pit in the middle of the sky to fix my eyes on. I need a hook, an anchor, a timeline for my feet. There has never been enough time to find this, until now.

We were both embarrassed and at the same time relieved. Writing down the bones of my first time before you ever knew it. It was in April that you let yourself go and called me with the simple prompt: "You free?" I loved you then, driving through suburban Texas... with the sky so blue. And I told you you loved me, too. We both lost it and not to one another. Your voice has never settled well with me except the once you prayed aloud. Turning leaves over, singing Joppatown always. Your blue and gold eyes have never been ore honest.

Language comes from yawning temples turning dust to anthropology. It comes from the twisting tale of the tongue and the stretching ebb and flow of the sea. Language is not an art, it is an necessity. It comes from pushing and pulling and getting nothing in return; nothing from the well bucket. Language is deeper than it is tall and has more history than it ever will future... for it is finished by the breath of one beloved Son, Father-forsaken. It is a far cry into the wilderness for help when my boot has fallen and the dirt is slipping. Language is the thing that brings me to you. You are language. You are the open door of this church.

I drift backwards into the shower. Fully dressed. Wearing wool socks and underwear over shorts. A forest green plaid on top, partially unbuttoned. Outfitted to travel to another world, another place I'd rather be.

Lurid water cascades from a stationary saucer. Eyelets stare at me from above. Soap mixes with streams, trickling down my sides. Opalescent bubbles dance, gracing a white floor and three walls. I rise to songs of tedium, sounds prophetic of our days.

Entranced by the hum of the flood, the curtain that protects me is failing. I tear it down. It falls to my feet and water pools in its crevices, valleys between mountains. I kneel to pray and fold a wet drapery into squares.

I step out and hear Amy shrieking to the nurse: Do not bother the Holy Spirit! To her, the Holy Spirit is water; water rushing and moving. I watch myself pass by the bathroom mirror, face dewy with belief.

Once the coast of our bedroom is clear, I bow to Amy. I acknowledge her and honor her. Today, she is my mother. She gives birth to the Spirit she imagines. And I am born. I emerge into a hallway that I christen with tap water.

Stepping lightly past custodians, I am patience and faithfulness. Drenched with a Spirit that is not my own, Amy follows me. She cries out: Holy Spirit! And we all, virtuosos of truth, go to the cafeteria for Thanksgiving.

Your mama is the ocean

She is the deepest of complexities which rise to waves crashing against the sandy shores

And you, precious one, are its pearls of opalescent colors.. gleaming with joy

Through her salty tears, she will love you

Your mama is the galaxy

She is the stars that shine and the red planet that spins

And you, brilliant one, are its comets uncatchable beyond farthest reach

Through her dizziness, she will love you

Your mama is the earth

She is warm and comforting, gentle and kind.. sometimes quaking with passion for its people

And you, growing one, are its living things, ever wild and ferociously free

Through her burning core, she will love you

Your mama is the mountain

She is the bending river and rocky hillside

And you, adventurous one, are its fresh air, keeping her awake and alive with the power of time

Through her strong stance, she will love you

Your mama is the woman who raises you, challenges you and comforts you

She is the mother who satisfies her child with goodness and grace

And you, sweet baby, are the one she will always adore for through her pain, she will love you

In line for examination, I jump excitedly. Vitals, my favorite part of the day. Staunch nurses look at digits and scribble in files. Who, at such a time as this, could be more alive than me? I am the sun and my potential is eminent.

I see the television room, full of patients, from my throne of faux-leather and metal. I sit, strapped in. Velcro bands tighten around my left bicep and lifeblood pulses through my body, charged with manic adrenaline. A bionic clip attaches to my right pointer finger and glows eerie red, testing oxygen levels that leak ghostlike through my pores. My lungs breathe silent, but strong. Pharisees see a deranged extra-terrestrial, though my vitals display perfection. If I weren’t tied down, I would float. The assessor, a dinosaur wearing a white jacket, asks if I’m even alive.

Seated, regally, smiling. I live. More than ever before. The numbers say so. And I calculate 22.5678 years of success. It is my answer. It is August. The month of broad, warm, zephyr strokes. I am enveloped in the unknown and I am genius. I ensue, indispensable. My eyes dart to targets of empathy and wrath. I believe, for a fleeting moment, that I prevail a god; Athena, Nike, Aphrodite, or Ra. Perhaps the Son Himself. I am heat, radiating with gleams of iridescent energy.

A young soldier asks me to light his horse cigarette. I say I’ve never done this before. He says, use your power.

Mastodon daylight lowers itself

swinging into tower walls,

slaughtering tangled sunbeams below clouds

lifting monarchs above raindrop debris.

This is our first day, our last day.

This is cold cynicism.

This is not a desperate love poem to our tribe’s sheik.

This is the ringing in of natives speaking

Ashanti: peace, peace, peace.

We take our lives and

pierce them into the center of open whirlpools;

take our brutishness, nasty and short,

and stick it to the glittering mendicants of Time Square.

This place we call home

pulses with the quickening of a heartbeat upon grace’s touch,

hastening the traffic we call hell. It is morning,

bruising our temples with memories of last night’s dreams that

perpetually call us the heroines, the failures, the beasts.

It’s bloody. Because in truth we are princesses by name, yet

privileged to know bitter seas, thicker in courage than straw.

Employment is a dirty word, like “proprietary” or “information.”

Wrench the roots of hope out of our beauty,

sculpt a new kind of worship into our minds.

Like Midas and his touch, make us powerful to change crime.

Simply because it’s immoral doesn’t make it wrong or irredeemable.

Alarm the larks of America — because this is no longer ignorance.

It is time to wake up and time to siege our fortresses of false makeup,

false pretenses. Let our creator of mountain forests

set up before us

good news.

You don’t have to do anything magnificent to live

You could start by waking up just to fall asleep again

Or by pouring yourself a cup of breakfast tea

The weary breaths drawn by our feeble attempts to get through the day

The Venetian blinds dicing weak light from outside

And the seats with elbow rests, one for two chairs

You don’t have to do anything magnificent to live

You could find an old book to keep you company

Or make a phone call to your grandma

The faces of varying hues, bags beneath old eyes

The corner with primary colored toys, germ infested and never-changing

And the penny loafers nervously shifting on short carpet

You don’t have to do anything magnificent to live

You could tell me about the small town you grew up in

Or your first kiss in the front seat of a blue Jeep

The chatter over what’s happening at church this weekend

The grumpy old man browsing Sports Illustrated

And the clock ticking toward three in the afternoon

You don’t have to do anything magnificent to live

You could sit here and wait for a miracle

Or draw a line in the sand and step over it

Foregone conclusions:

Je n’aime pas les personnes de la nuit

Not to mention the terrors of the day.

Demons, a faceless black wind

With knives in hand, jab at me.

Music is no more: I’m small, have no integrity.

Taught not to complain, I remain silent

Letting the pain clutter in my mind,

It is a Good Friday wasted.

Magic has no place in curing this disease,

Zoloft did its best to mask the uncontrollable,

Still sifting, tingling and misfiring neurons.

Nothing good comes from hiding fear.

Foregone conclusions, words unsaid

Settle like cold ashes left from fires of the dead.

Cover cold shoulders when dusk sleeps

Souls like wheels, celestial throngs of time-tellers

Dive upward

Where dimes have no value

Use cash to burn a light

Like you did when you were sixteen

Take the team to win gold

Give silver a second chance

Choose bronze to sit next to the Fisherman

Make hot bread in the oven

Ventilate the kitchen by letting light in

Gather round the table

Bring burdens and baggage

Go straight to the King of our lives