messy wisdom

We were girls together in another life

in my dreams we are five years old in a field making flower crowns of wild plants we pretend are daisies 
and ten, giggling in the dark susurration of our sleeping bags in a language just for us   
and seventeen, stumbling arm-in-arm in a land of love and loss 
under the blinding light of romance films and high-school hormones

In this life,
your babies are young and we are too, for a moment
leaning across the kitchen counter
I am drinking in the moments like a fine red wine, 
flushed cheeks and rosy-lipped, 
until I am drunk enough to forget what order the years go  

I can't help but bet on the little girl practicing piano
her tiny tongue-tied fingers tangling and untangling,
divining where to dance
From the couch I give her a standing ovation and a bouquet of daisies and
hope she hears me cheering over the ticking clocks

If I could just preserve a moment, 
you'd be leisurely running errands in a ballcap and oversized tee
a perfect picture of drive-through coffee and daycare drop-offs 
and you have nothing but time 

In this life,
we are thirty
you notch your boy's growth chart higher, 
and I think you, too, have left your mark 
I know time travel isn't real because 
we would've found each other sooner

we're just children after all 

Death is in my chest

Death pours two cups of peppermint tea in her best china 
she meekly braids and unbraids her hair and
softly hums over the beat of my pulse and
taps her fingers on the table like glissandos 

Death whispers a prayer for the spiders in the walls then 
she sweeps away their long-spun webs and 
writes a letter she'll never send and 
whisks my sins clean in the laundry 

Tonight Death waits for my return
she sits cross-legged on the floor and
fastens my breath to hers and
wails in choral anguish and
aches to receive me in a warm embrace
on a coir welcome mat 

and tonight, when I close my eyes,
I will rest in the bed she has made. 

There is nothing quite as cruel as being a teenage girl
too many question marks pass my lips on sentences that do not ask questions
not enough calories pass my hips for days and days and days and 
Amber gangs the girls on me again.
so I listen to my friend with little golden curls and PA roots
I see myself refracted in her cd jewel case,
glimmers of precocious girls with music box hearts 

and like a sage older sister I take her word like gospel
emulating her stained glass life and still breaking mine all the same,
after school, Jesse strums Breathe on my voicemail to impress me 
as I play music videos in my mind's eye against the school bus windows


There is nothing quite as cruel as being a promising young woman
too many question marks pass my lips on sentences that do not ask questions
not enough calories pass my hips for days and days and days and 
Tom gets the nod from the CEO again.
so I listen to my friend with the $1 suit and a rhinestone blazer 
follow the lead of her red-bottom moves,
and hand paint the outsoles of my shoes to match

and like a kindred spirit we live concurrent lives
fifteen prismatic years gone by and she still gets me all the same 
and as I walk home, the faint descant of an old friend rings in my ear
and I will sing along for evermore.

Rugs swept,
slates clean

I kissed the ground you walked on as
you trudged your feet through the mud

The clock strikes ten,
and the steady hands that once sowed our seeds
scatter their ripped roots in another’s garden

He is building shoddy palaces on our ancient burial grounds
while I handwash his dirty laundry

always cool, separate, gentle,
agitate until it’s clear

There are petals on the counter
Light through the window
Food in my belly
But I am not in love,
and what a tragedy that is.

There are petals on the counter
Light through the window
Food in my belly
And now,
There is you.

I wish for you sandy kisses
and laughter roaring with the sea
a little lobster-tinted skin
from the warm grains of time 
and the salt air you were meant to breathe 

I wish for you snowy alpine visions
and chilled cherry-colored noses 
slowly awakened in sparkling scenery
and the crackling warmth of a hearth
radiating the tenderness you were made to know

I wish for you foggy morning walks
and drinking you in like pumpkin chai
a revolutionary book under heavy covers
stirred by the senescence of the leaves and
a million new yous fated to come alive

I wish for you bouquets of blooming tulips
and interlaced fingers in the gentle rain
late nights lit with clicking lightning bugs 
and the early songbird's soft melody 
under the sunrises you were destined to contain

I wish for a lifetime of second seasons, 
and a reflection of you in it all.

His loose grip on the steering wheel,
my freeze-dried eyes stay forward
I have no interest in his tirades on youth soccer
or the changeless red light we’re racing

I catch his glower in my periphery
and amidst my dwindling concentration,
he yanks the wheel to the left and thunders,
don’t make me

He takes a pack of cinnamon gum from the console,
wolfs a few between his scowled lips
razes their wrappers,
then shoots the foil to the backseat

I am overtaken with a familiar pang as
I, too, have been casually chewed and spit out
I, too, have been garroted
by his pearly whites

In solidarity,
I do not take gum for myself
Instead,
I imagine an ice cube enveloped
in my closed fist
The faster the ice melts,
the faster my nails serrate my palm
Thawing until all that’s left
is my soaked skin,
and scars of bite marks past

After Night by Elie Wiesel

Anguish
What had happened to me?
Prisoners
There they went,
Defeated
As if we had a choice
An open tomb
Empty and dead
A piercing cry
Alone in the world
Weak, frightened, vulnerable
Hunted down creatures
Silent, motionless
Souls condemned to wander
Was I still alive? Was I still awake?
Hell doesn’t last forever
Surely it was a dream