9/18 (or 9/17: 2) For Anna *

* to a best friend who is always a best friend.





one day, we'll be older.
and grayer with these lines, new lines, defining our faces.
we'll have the same eye colors,
but we'll care differently. deeper.

that day, once in the nondescript future,
i'll look at you and constantly remember our history -
we'll comment about being old, but not knowing where everything went.
and i'll say,
"i love you"
about a million different ways
and mean each one.

9/17

The de-evolution of a person starts early,
but we all know that.
I'd say it's the exact moment his hand slid down your pants.

This could have been approximately thirty minutes
(give or take)
after you snuck out of your house that one cold night in your hometown.
The moon might've been hanging low and the roofs of all your neighbors' homes
probably were lit up with frost.

Anyway, I don't know, exactly;
I'm just estimating.

9/16

Standing up is no less a miracle than Lazarus.
My skin, no less a sunset than an evening lost in chest high corn, sticky with summer.
Being still is no less a goddamned concerto than heart-breaking mornings wrapped in wool.

How many times must the night eat the moon? How many ashes on my head? How many feasts in celebrations?

Bones mended by sensation - sometimes just one touch.

This life is.

9/15

I can tell you about beauty. We all can sit around and tell each other - look each other right in the eye and sing songs composed from mountains. We can piece together strings of perfect moments and soak in the sunshine with iced tea, even just for a minute, to define it. But, we don't even have to. It's in the atoms we absorb into our skin and in the water that beads up around our noses and when you, hastily, pull down my green panties - the ones that are losing waistline elasticity.

9/14: Missed Connections: a Found, but edited poem.

It was raining that night and the rain slowed down.
I was in the Left Turn lane driving a Black Mustang
You
(and 2 of your friends) waved.
We both rolled down the windows. You were driving a truck, (i think it was blue)
you said you liked my car and asked if it was fast- I smiled and said yes, gave a light rev and you jumped a little.
the exhaust was loud like a race car.

9/13: a reprise

Wading through the balmy summer night, my face beams orange from street lamps;
I've buried you once already, but here we are -
mermaids, too close to the surface.

9/13

the ceiling fan makes noises during each revolution and the window let's in enough light. dying isn't planned for today, but if it was, this living room would be as good a place as any.

9/4: on being crazy

nobody knows, really,
but my answer is:
it's an ebb and flow
moving organically through space and time,
destroying things slowly.

9/3

The day happens to be dying - moving along any metaphoric river, slowly and just about as eloquent as a bloated corpse. The steps I take are unnaturally intentional. I have to convince myself, every time my feet hit the ground, not to walk away and walk and walk and walk until I'm bleeding
and walk and walk and walk until I'm dead on the ground. Excuse me, what I meant to say was "dead in the ground". But, I suppose we all know, that would take more than a day. More than this day.
This is the day that misery is felt on fingertips. And love is acutely pressing on my skin, desperate to remind me. Fatigue has clogged my heart ways.
These are the days that I die. 
My upright posture, the delicate actions my fingers make, my airy daydreams of no more fear - these things remind me I am human. Which is good, because sometimes I forget.

9/2

While wiping down the sink
after the cats finished lapping up water,
and their black hair smeared all over the porcelain,
I thought,

what a nice life I have.

9/1 solitary september

The house is quiet this morning.
the sun, shining
through the white curtains.

8/31

I had an uncle once - more like a stranger who ate all the deviled eggs at our get togethers.
He eventually got both legs amputated and died alone in his brick house.
But before that, he drank rubbing alcohol in the quiets of the night; only when times were hard.
His wife, Sandy, tried to withstand the coat hangers and the name-calling, but couldn't.
She left him for a man from Florida in a white car.
I mean, those were just the rumors...