39/13: He wore his socks to his calves

i used to have a dad;
he was a good man with a barrel chest
and a ruddy face.
his hair, plain brown and his hands smelled
like oil.

he's dead now.

he died in a frenzy;
his voice broken apart by fear the last time i heard him.

i'm still incomplete

38/12:all put together and pretty

the anatomy of my body is set.
My bones are formed,
my ribs are both true and false
and my cervical curve starts with atlas
and ends with my tail.

my bones are trees and i wrap my legs around the earth
at least 1000 times.
this is a truth i can only know in autumn,
it's something about dying.

my blood is here, too,
tying me directly to you

as i sit under my nest, all put together
and pretty.
being part of every thing is exhausting.

37/11: secrets, also known as personal preferences.

I have pieces of truth hidden between my ribs
and
very particular reasons for
not shaving my arm pits.

You will never know either.

36/10: quiet musings of a server

Sometimes life is cleaning carpets
and picking up straw papers.

Other times, it's not.

35/104:09/30: "The Smell of Leaves"

The smell of leaves is deep like lungs.
It's a brittle smell, submerged, flowing with my blood
and rooted like love.
Each inhale is a breath of earth,
it smells like a hymn for the sky and also,
a flowing ovation for calming down, digging some holes
and crafting a nest.
Each leaf is a sensation of dying and living
and singing and grieving.
Leaves smell like ancient dirt
and becoming.
Deep, like I said before.

34/104:08/30: "Pretend You're an Old Man"

I once had a face that was different and I was younger then.
I had days that stretched seamlessly into more days
and in any given moment i would live and had lived
forever.

My steps were ethereal and nimble and, had I known,
I would have praised each movement as holy -
something worthy. Each heart beat might have gotten
applause.

The rust in these bones have turned my eyes orange,
time is done and my skin says so. I was younger once,
I think. Now I'm just a relic of a lifetime gone
by.

33/104:07/30: you know about Gingko trees? for andy

So what if the Gingko leaves fall like rain?

At a certain hour the top leaf might decide
the sun is cutting him a little short.
He's definitely made up his mind after he thinks it through.
No one likes getting one minute less than what he's bargained for.

Once he falls, his friends summarize the past few days and decide
this is how it must happen. (and you know what they say,
if this is the way it must happen then this is the way it shall be done.)

One after the other, and sometimes handfuls at a time,
fall
and
fall.
Little yellow fans spread out like the sky.
And just like that, the day is done.