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Freewrite. 5.16.13
as soon as we learned how to count
our pasts and hopes
beyond
the things our fingers could hold,
everything turned to math.
we tripped and
fell and
became an equation,
a scale,
a problem:
something to be solved.
the type of thing you
can chart on graph paper
and that calculators can
boil into numbers
small enough that they rattle around
in mouths like loose change
in baggy pockets
I called it love every day
we were
inumerable.
Conversation Series #6
Me: what's all of this?
Her: I bought supplies.
Me: it looks like you're building a sun box; is an eclipse coming?
Her: not for another 6 months.
Me: ... Okay...
Her: this is for when you smile.
Her: I want to be ready.
5.13.13
She crossed and
stretched her arms and hands;
used a cashmere collar to
pull her curls into a crown
and when they fell back
towards earth and every chakra
I knew how to open,
there were droplets of
light
falling out {onto};
(over)
the holes I’d dug ]into[
)out of(
myself.
Mother’s Day Haiku+2
I breathe, because
She did; long enough to know
That the air here was
Worth it.
5.10.13
Her dress hadn’t seemed
that ready to loose itself
until it fell
off like it saw it’s freedom
lying on the floor around her ankles
She was all
“Put-up-or-shut-up,” and
“follow-suit-or-turn-away.”
So
he undressed himself —
showed
skin and scabs
and suture scars;
there were places he looked like
an amateur first attempt at
quilt work.
she ran her hands
over
rough, raised seams;
fingertip-tight-rope-walked the edges
of pasts he had made a part of him
and
asked if she could have her own square.
he looked at her like she was hallowed;
hollow behind his eyes
“you don’t understand,
these are the things I can’t forget:
the things that took a part of me with them,
as they walked out of doors,
or jumped out of windows,
or stood in the centers of rooms in houses I learnt carpenter building as they smiled, watching them burn —
things that left holes that needed to be covered.
I hope you never need one, if only
because I hope I never need another one.”
Freewrite 5.9.13
My hands always shake
when I hold her
up:
like a map I’m struggling and
hungry to read
under divebar lights —
she, and I, and everything that lives in the
negative space between our shadows;
four shots wet, me frantically
stenciling her curvature on to
anything I can convince myself
might be more permanent
than this moment:
napkins wet from
the anti-convulsant-liquid-courage they carried
dotted with places I’ve travelled
and others I hope to go.
Can’t tell if she has become
my Atlas,
or if I just want
so badly to be hers
that I’ve begun to see
a world painted on her skin
that I hope I can fit and carry —
tattooed across
scarred shoulders.
5.8.13
Couldn’t feel
your ‘far’
until a cell phone
picture of ‘close’
reminded me
of how when I reach
my arm out (as
far as it goes),
i’m barely
breaking the surface of the water;
left asking whether
you were the stone
that caused the ripples
running up my fingers
like they know me
5.7.13
Tomorrow:
wake; laugh
uncontrollably
a shout-followed-by-an-apology-because-you-didn’t-mean-to-be-that-loud
or a guffaw-guffaw-guffaw-snort
for each time you ran yourself
ragged
chasing
love;
trying to clutch
water in leather-pruning palms
you blamed your fingers and knuckles
for their leaks and insolvencies,
like they weren’t exactly the way
God gave them to you,
instead of washing
your hands
and eating
with me.
You know what, though? Coffee.
5.6.13
She got lost at the corner;
that place where his dimples broke open
and formed a delta;
mouth of tooth and gum and voice and tongue
fertilized by a lifetime more smiles
than numbers know how to name.
She immediately became
overwhelmed
by all the deficiencies
she’d never had problems counting up to.
Tried to add up the downs and get a number that felt right for him,
and cried over the left overs,
never letting go of the remainders,
asking her pillow why this division took so long.
Believe in your climb — Freewrite 5.3.13
Molehills feel like mountains
to men who have invested their lives
living from the waist up;
divesting their legs at the knee,
breaking their hearts and hopes
into a stride that made
passers by comfortable
and let them blend
into the pack.
Freewrite 5.2.13
And then suddenly:
you feel the bottoms your shoes turn to omnivorous mouths of starving shop-vacs —
you feel your soul grabbing,
clawing, desperate against
whatever lives at the bottom of your stomach
as it is inhaled through your soles
and left in the fear-filled footprints you’ve
never
not
walked
in
You almost break your neck,
looking back out of a window that seems never to show you enough of your past
as you realize that you forgot to pick
up your bags off the ground at the bus stop.
You had set them down
(gentle;
like they were prone
to shatter)
when a man you decided you wanted to grow up to be
asked you for a light.
All you could think was that he had done what you wanted:
he’d found a way to live his life.
He was, or sure seemed, free, and
happy,
and other adjectives
that you didn’t know
existed adjacent to real life possibility.
You had spent the mini-steps back onto the bus telling yourself
that you were not going to cry —
thought that it wouldn’t be something
that the man
would have done.
You had walked down the aisle to your isle of a seat thinking
that you had no idea how you would ever
carry
all
of
your
stuff
to the place you planned
to chase to.
