You are not a pretty girl.

You are a girl who finds humor in strangeness, whose eyes come alive when you look at another, whose cheeks are flushed with love, who was made from love, who receives beauty graciously, allowing it to run it’s course.

You are not a girl who can sing.

You are a girl who opens her mouth to the beckoning silence with vibration and longing, who when the silence is deadening, yearns to fasten to the birds and the beings and the colorful and eternal tones of summer.

You are not a nice girl.

You are a girl who would rather feel the next door human heart beating strong and loud because you chose to be kind, because you know sadness.

You are not a girl who can cartwheel.

You are a girl who tumbles when the rush of spring takes over her body whose lungs long to fill and burst. Whose feet long to bury themselves in the clovers and the dirt.

You are not a talented girl.

You are a girl who aches to be in time; to feel the beat of the floor off the wood. Who yearns to belong, who wakes for the rush of creation and discovery, to stare out into a black sea like a pirate at the portals of the mind, like a fairy waiting in the wings.

You are not a sum of parts, of things that you can and cannot do.

You are a flower in a field swaying in the breeze among galaxies of gardens.

Some things are better left unsaid.

Like when he told me he liked my overalls and I was scared to ever wear them again around him for fear he would think I was wearing them solely because he liked them.

Or if I told you how much I adored your hair it would just never be the same.

The way you touch it lightly like its a cloud

or how you pull it back slowly as if you were emerging from a dip in some frozen lake somewhere would just never be the same.

All I want to do is read my book.

Get back in bed with castles and dragons and swordfights and knights

and magic and far off lands far far from here.

Let me forage through the woods with comrades. Encounter wolves and giants and children of the forest.

Let my bedroom be held under the spell of the soft cantaloupe light until things worth living for fall like snowflakes

and settle in my heart again.

Ash suspended in the air under the spotlight of the morning flood through our aged windows. Ash covered shoes, ash covered books. Ash in my nose and ears, words trapped beneath the smoke in my throat. I am cold until I am hot.

My baby is the keeper of the fire. And just because the flame is away doesn’t mean the fire is out. He knows this better than I. Our wood burning stove is all that we have this winter in the mountains. And so we tend to it like my mother to her spring tulips.

Do you remember when we were staying in that cabin in Evergreen with my family over Christmas and we were put in the kids room with the wooden bunk beds and red flannel sheets and you answered to me in both realms?

In the deep black of the night I had that horrible nightmare where I was being chased and I called out to you in my dream, over and over and over again.

But remember? I didn’t realize that I was calling out to you in that little room as well.

It was the wildest thing.

In the portals of my mind you were running to me, and right there in the middle of the small room you crawled down into my bunk and held me the rest of the night.

I’ll never forget how your arms and legs were hanging off that bed in every direction while you snored and I smiled and held you closer.

Sometimes you are a damn Norman Rockwell, and maybe it’s just for me to remember.

two closets two bookshelves two dressers two beds a drawer in a dresser, a toothbrush under the sink, a key on a ring, one closet one dresser one bed two closets two bookshelves two dressers two beds a drawer in a dresser, a toothbrush under the sink, a key on a ring, your very own bedside table

Sometimes at a thrift store, I buy a book that I have already read. One that I have two copies of at home.

I don’t read it again. I just hold it and immediately feel so warm and nostalgic inside that I want to cry because inside this little treasure is a world of love and loss and joy and sorrow, and friends who remain tucked away between two flimsy sheets of paper, faraway from my own rainy reality. And I just can’t believe that they were sitting all alone on a shelf for 99cents. And now I get to hold their world in my hands.

And then I think, maybe this is how God feels. But then I brush the thought away because it is too big a thought.

My dearest,

I need to know that there will be stillness again.

That I can be enough to hold your undivided attention for a story I’m bursting to tell you without your eyes glazing over, distracted.

That my singing, to your ears, will not forever remain bittersweet. I need to believe that miracles still await us.

That there will be laughter, and tea, and wine, and songs in faraway places.

And that at those tables, in foreign lands,

you won’t be longing to be higher or farther from exactly where you are.

This, especially I need to know.

I need to know that we can come and go together in new ways. Like cheddar cheese on apple pie.

That there will never again be red roses on valentines day.

That one day when I decide to order coffee black, you will love me enough to pretend that it’s normal, silently allowing me to change.

Because I will never be who I was yesterday.

For all that you are and all that you give I love you the most.

But I still need to know.

Fall makes me want to walk to the bus stop. It makes me want to collect acorns and peel moss off rocks, write in cursive and read Anne of Green Gables! The smell of smoke coming through the trees, I want to jump on a trampoline! The burning of pine and meat. I want to write a novel. I want my rain jacket! I want to splash in puddles and beg my mom for a sleepover! I want to check the mail, make soup, call my sister, plan a family vacation. I want to buy notebooks and pencils and compasses and calculators and all the things we no longer use. The yellows and oranges and reds! I want to fingerpaint a turkey, make a card with construction paper. I want to climb up a fire pole and sit in my treehouse, find an arrowhead and bury notes in the ground. The crisp air and the wind. I want to fight the neighborhood boys! Kick a rock, swing on my tire swing! I want to go to open houses, and haunted houses and friends houses and eat kitty chow and draw pictures and dream up what the bears and the squirrels are doing huddled in their homes, and what the birds are saying to one another and where they all really go when they go south, and how they know where to go, and wonder if they’ll miss their homes. I want tickets and tokens. I want to win the cake walk! I want to scream at the spiders and snakes that you know are there but never see. I want Friday! I want to be the teacher, and you be the student. Fall is changing, and it makes me want to stay. I want to race home on my bicycle and beat all the boys in soccer and lay my outfit out for tomorrow.

And you yelled at me when I told you. And I cried and told you that you weren’t allowed to talk to me like that. I can’t remember if you apologized or not. But I saw that you were comfortable in a web of lies, not me I need to get straight or I’ll be eaten alive. You brought me outside to show me your bike and I thought I might be dreaming because I’ve been dreaming of riding motorcycles every night. I was terrified thinking you might try to go for a ride, god only knows how many drinks you’ve had tonight. You said you weren’t going to beat yourself up about it. But if you won’t who will?

You like to hear yourself talk but you never asked much about me. I learned very quickly what all this was going to be, and you don’t want kids and your trying to get clean, the child inside still needs all the love but you won’t talk to me about your family. I thought you must’ve changed your name, but you said no as you held my hand from the front seat so confidently.

And then slowly it went, we talked nights away, your home dimly lit no matter the time of day, you’ve been to too many doctors, you know just what they’re going to say, you think you’ve wasted it all away, but I say you are precious and you can be brave.

You are safe and loved by powers greater than me, and you see, I’m too scared to love you because I’ve only just started to feel what it’s like to be free.

At about 5pm I walked a mile and a half from my parents house to the inlet. I watched the surfers in wetsuits brave the cold water, the sharks, and the wind.

I braved the vastness of the ocean of my mind.

I remembered walking this coast last December and finding a beau- tiful intact seashell with the perfect curvature of the first letter of your first name imprinted on it. I placed it in my pocket and imagined giving it to you.

I daydreamed of the conversations we would have and of the various ways I would explain why I picked up the shell and thought it special enough to carry back on a plane and across the states.

On the way back down the beach, I took it out of my pocket and tossed it back in the sand.

Silly.

Maybe I saw something that wouldn’t be obvious or even slightly re- markable to you.

I picked it up, held it close, and then put it back down. Just like I do with you.

In case you don’t see what I see.

I am the seagull waiting for it’s slice of flesh. I am the old woman dutifully searching for her treasure beneath the sand.

The map of ages, of rock formations, of planetary duration, of heavenly faces.

Light pricks in the blanket of our cocoon, like windows into infinity.

Burning, turning, hurtling, curdling, luring, concurring with one an- other.

Nameless until named. A nation of stellas, a constant declaration, of what is and what will always be.

The sailor in his endless black world, saved by the grace of an honest scent, pure as night, the miracle, of what dark brings to light.

You gorgeous freckled back, how did you stay so soft? Time has made silk of your scars.

I can feel the sweetness of your little self, the scent of you, timeless.

You who have been through so much.

I am perfect in my imperfections I am perfect in my imperfections I am perfect in my imperfections I am perfect in my imperfections I am perfect in my imperfections I am perfect in my imperfections I am perfect in my imperfections I am perfect in my imperfections I am perfect in my imperfections I am perfect in my imperfections I am prfect in my imperfections I am perfect in my imperfections I am perfect in my imperfections I am perfect in my imperfections

I am perfect in my imperfections I am perfect in my imperfections I am perfect in my imperfections

I am perfect in my imperfections

I am perfect in my imperfections

And in the autumn I fell like the leaves off the trees into piles of you, twisting and curling into something new.

i was about 11 years old

i would put on my bikini and look over my shoulder into the mirror to admire this fantastically exotic mole on the corner of my left shoulder blade

it was my one and only mark and i loved it it was perfectly unlike the rest of me round and dark and velvety and beautiful

i had always seen myself as so... vanilla... so... pop sugar

and it made me feel sensual and powerful like i could leap right through the portal of that fabulous dark mark and into my womanhood

but then mom got skin cancer

and had to have pieces of her face removed and i had to have my portal cut

better safe than sorry all the grownups said and i learned that you can be both

you can stay so safe forever that in turn you’re a bit sad and sorry because of it

well...it was gone and it was a horrible red hurt until time made silk of it

the years passed by and i grew up and sometimes i would imagine it still with me

on my 16 year old shoulder in my strapless prom dress 25, glancing back at a man naked in bed

i’ve possibly been searching for this piece of me ever since

or i’ve been trying to prove that i am something that i’ve always been

but i know that safe isn’t better than sorry

and the world has too many of us that are both

baby like a front porch kitten

outside your door, thats where im sittin’ mmm you got me smitten

but you keep me out that door jus’ a little nothin’ more makin’ this lil lion roar

but you’ll be sneezin’ from too much squeezin’ from one little smitten front porch kitten

so I croon to the stars n make my livin’

aint nothin wrong with a lil’ wantin’ and missin’

A hummingbird, a butterfly the last few minutes of sleep;

I’m longing for the keeping of a thing that doesn’t keep.

Cold hard envy brings me to these knees of mine. Can you want more of something you’ve never tried?

What was that?

Felt like love.

Landed on my shoulder, then took off...

I don’t always hear what I want to from you. You don’t feed into what I want you to feed into. And though it feels so good to bleed tonight,

I’m scared of losing something that was never mine.

What was that?

Felt like love.

Landed on my shoulder,

then took off...

What’s it like -

Can I sing with you?

- going through life like you do? Do you ever get lonely -

Tell me a story.

- traveling around like you do?

Can I sit -

I’ve a million questions good sir.

- with you?

Do you ever get lonely - Sing me a song.

- moving around like you do?

“Follow the art.” What -

Where do you shower?

- art?

Three years?!

And you’re still going strong? What does it -

Can I jump in -"

"feel like -

- your van?

to be with you and yourself ? “My heart is my heart.” What?

“My he -

Can I jump in with you and ride off into a world of new?

- art.”

swirling blue kingdoms

atop jagged rocky thrones

in driftwood castles

They drink Pinot Grigios and I stare out at the boardwalk and into the ocean.

I get up and go to the bathroom. When I look in the mirror I am me looking at me. But back at the table a beautiful girl walks by and I am you looking at a beautiful girl.

As if... if I could just be you for a minute, I would understand and it would all make sense and it would all hurt less. She is gorgeous after all.

How did I get here?

I’m sitting at a table with my mom, my dad, and my aunt and we are discussing their recent trip to Oslo. My mother bought two newborn outfits for my sister at the Vikings museum.

I however, am in a lackluster room.

You hold me by the waist and say, “But I get you.” Emphasis on you. I smile and shake my head and you say it again and squeeze me tighter. Mom chimes in, “Where do they live though?”

“Who? Oh. Ummmm... Los Angeles, I think?... Actually I have no idea.”

Then they are back to baseball and vikings and I am safe again in my worlds upon worlds.

I am on a bus, in a green room, onstage, at a pool.

You put sunscreen on in funny places and talk to me about fights you would get in when you were younger and I wonder if things would have turned out differently if I had worn a different bikini.

How did it get this far?

Maybe it’s comforting to imagine that we could possibly be in control in some small way of s meone loving us...or not. By choosing to wear a sexier bikini...or not.

There was once a time I wasn’t like this.

The conversation spins to Machu Picchu and my aunt’s upcoming trip. “You guys walked there right?”

“Yea, we walked ten days there.”

My eyes well up and I remember when “you guys” always meant him and I, when him and I were a “we” and we were always an “us.” But that is worlds away.

And I’m worlds away. I’m always worlds away.

Worlds away.

you put your butterfy boots on and u get in the wind

anybody pullin on ur wings gotta go you gotta fly

hair long down your back high noon Louisiana belly full of crawfish

more freckles than wrinkles

fingers graze cheeks under fringed daisy dukes huddling where the sidewalk ends

curl up in her humid embrace you still don’t know the answers you are young

and free keep a piece

of sweet spring 2019

Parisian dreaming

strolling down cobbled stories

the sway in my step

We ache, we spin around ourselves; a brick, an axe, a tree.

My land you don’t belong to me, but I belong to thee.

We wait, we spin around ourselves; a hoe, a rain, a seed.

My vale you don’t belong to me, but I belong to thee.

We run, we fly around the sun; a laugh, a stitch, a seam.

My heart you don’t belong to me, but I belong to thee.

There’s a girl in a house up here on the mountain, and she’s only got half a bookshelf, half a dresser, half a bed, and the mountain cries, and the wolves howl, and the kitten meows, and the puppy has bad dreams, and we all learn to grow and sometimes to be brave and throw away dead mice and wire electric outlets and kill spiders in the tub and make just enough coffee in the pot for one.

I hate how I remember everything you say.

Like a photographic memory camera locked on one setting. “They were like shimmering curtains. Like the spilling of paint onto a color- ing book in the sky, staying in the lines.”

You spill into my poetry and stay in the lines and I am sad all over again in the remembering.

Who are you to drink champagne down by the river, icy bubbling liquid spilling down strawberry lips into hot springs below. To have round ripe breasts that float in pools and nipples that harden under the eyes of men in the moonlight. Who told you you could sing out into the sky naked and laughing. Joyous and ecstatic in the middle of the night in the middle of July, feeling the rocks beneath your bare bottom, the cool air upon your belly button and waist as you cry out in pleasure. How dare you! To deserve such hunger and desire, such an utter rapture of the body under grateful hands, moonlight caressing deep caverns of skin. To let your hair be tangled and locked by the sulphur of the dead of night air. Unbrushed! Unkempt! Who are you to delight in spirits and friends and dusty roads holding hands while shooting stars fall before you on the horizon.

i never kissed you upside down

you never said you needed to be right-side-up for this

you never smacked me and smiled i never shushed you to be quiet

i never wrote my number on your side you never told me you missed me

i was just breathing silently in the dark with my eyes closed, under blue t-shirt sheets somewhere in the mountains, under the light of a pink salt lamp

Sometimes, after finishing a book, I pretend I haven’t.

I take the book to bed with me, and during the day it stays on the top right corner of my desk.

I pick it up and stare at the back inside sleeve. Paula resides in Cleve- land, Ohio.

For the following days, I wonder how Paula from Cleveland was able to dream up an entirely intricate world with all of the intricate people who live inside of it.

I stare at the cover. I fan the pages like a card shuffler. I try to re- member my favorite parts. I re-read the dialogue near the end where Hadley’s husband’s mistress slips into bed on the opposite side of him while they are napping and Hadley pretends to be asleep, “I never opened my eyes. The bed was sand, I told myself. The sheets were sand.”

I close the book and shudder.

I read the description on the back. What caught my eye?

Of course it could never describe how I would cry in chapter 42, how I would question my destiny, how in the end I would be as sad as when I had to say goodbye to Jose Arcadio’s entire family almost nine years ago.

I tell people about the book. I think about reading other books that have something to do with the book. And I’m never sure where to put it.

Certainly not it in my bookshelf where characters blend into wrong times and places.

I think about making a shrine, a singular shelf for ‘The Book Just Finished’, so I can continue to not forget until a new one inevitably takes its place.

But until then,

I carry it alongside the book that I have decided to attempt next. Sure to show it how much it means to me, as if I could never pick up an- other world and just dive right in.

As if my mistress could slip into our bed, unnoticed, while you were sleeping.

You ask if you can take a towel. I am horrified.

They are your towels too. They are our towels. All of them are ours and nothing here is mine, and you still ask.

I start crying.

You take a pillow and two beige towels that almost match. I bend forward over the bed.

You choose the worn t-shirt sheets and the pillowcases we bought for our bed in Boulder.

I cry behind the refrigerator, unable to stand.

You take the ceramic mugs with the little indents, and the matching plates too.

I cry in the sink, washing our spatula. I wash our pasta bowls that we just ate from, made in Italy, a wedding present. It must be fair.

You come behind me and hold me.

I say that I’m sorry, and that you don’t need to say anything, it’s all my fault.

You tell me that there is no fault, that I am just doing what I need to do to be happy, “You can handle it” you say, and I say, “I don’t think I can handle it”, then you say, “Then why are you doing it?” and I wonder why I am.

I think that I think that this is a new thing that I can try to see if I can be happy.

You can handle it.

We finish together that night. What does it all mean?

But you say, “Stop putting meaning around everything, a question is just a question,” our chairs across from one another at the kitchen table.

In the darkness, I wonder if you’re going to take the desk, but its so heavy. I never liked that desk anyway. And as soon as I think it, I think of you sanding and staining it, sunkissed and glistening. Or was that the Florida desk? All of my memories are swirling and shuffling like cards in a deck.

Like the twine on the maps in the frame above our bed.

I love the sleeping and the waking coming in from the cold

the tender wild dreams with another

the sobering mornings of realization of the deep lost portals of one’s mind

I love the missing and the having the sipping and the growing

the understanding and the wondering

words born of words from far off places in past times and ages

wild animals that hold your tender vulnerable heart when the night wants to take you

You are not a love letter from a 7th grade sweetheart that I will tuck away in a glittery box somewhere in a basement. You are not a story that I will laugh about later. In fact you are not a story. You are a living breathing beat of my heart.

Though apart, I am not ashamed. Though in pain, I am still proud.

Like a painter whose canvas starts as a forest and ends up a nude cowboy. Such is life.

The forest was just a replication of someone else’s vision anyway.

We cry in a tub, naked. Warm tears fall into warm water and we hold one another’s sadness. And that is enough.

To bathe in our imperfections in silence.

You still know that french food is my favorite and that I love the city.

I still know that you love your head rubbed and that you hate crowds.

You thought I still put sugar in my coffee, but I don’t.

I thought that you weren’t capable of taking charge, but you are. Now.

Because sometimes things need to break to let some light in.

Forest or cowboy, I will never regret surrendering to our love under the full moon.

Lying in bed reminiscing of birthdays past.

All the rivulets of dreams and reasons for living

like songs in my heart and stories in my soul, stages to be danced upon and countries to explore.

The gentle forgiving

of my messy path.

I fling clean sheets like butterfly wings puff pillows like pastries

breathe in the late morning no calendar calling

no list crossing

just me and time enough

for doggy snuggles and cast iron crackles for making beds and the waking of spring I walk to my mailbox on my own two feet

only wheels wheelin, are the bins, on their way back; no cursing at rocks today

I hold steady and go slow

I watch bluebirds like broadway brush my hair like marsha brady I pour citrus like paradise

no chance of fading light for hours and hours

just me and time enough

heres to hoping the ache leaves

the very same way the love came to me swift as the wind among the trees

soft as the foam upon the sea

gone in the breeze