Posts for June 10, 2024 (page 5)

The aqua canning jars
line the counter,
drenched in years of secrets
secured under lids of zinc and porcelain.
Seeds, those trapped air bubbles 
adorn the glass and whisper age like
the bend of a dogwood tree.
Seams, glass zippers fuse memories.
The jars are empty now,
a mere decorative splash of vintage.
Once they were full of whisked and boiled
ingredients, unspoken expectations
of gravity and grace.
Her finger pulse against the jars,
the kneading of bread, reaching for
sheets on a clothesline,
braiding a child’s hair.

one
thousand
two
hundred
ninety-ish days since my last               (but who’s counting?)  
                                                      dance

and I still go to bed worried in the morning I’ll have sore feet

Listen. Labour is 

I dyed my hair red to match my heart,
to match your heart, to match your hair.
You are the childhood best friend. I am still
the one left waiting. You vanished for a year,
slipped from my presence one gilded summer. 
I vanished for a year too, emptied out eyes,
watching the dye run down the sink everyday,
red swirling into a black hole, draining me.
You went on living your life. Mine corroded
by my own hands. Does the gravity of loss
even touch you. You loved me. You love me.
This is a given. We will never mean nothing
to each other, the past always stains the present,
and it lives on in the haunt of what once was.
But you will never fully see me how I am now,
burning the tread of my shoes off walking circles.
My tongue, too, never lets anything die without
memorializing, without a thousand iterations
of sorry, and I wish it was different. You bleed
into every page, invite yourself to my dedications.
You stopped writing poetry, I let it consume me.
that was the first thing I thought of in the hospital:
my poems and the things I would leave to you,
how they would find you to pass on my relics,
how I’d let you edit every line, eclipse me wholly.
You are the only person I’d trust with my words.
You once shared them, finished my sentences.
Now I do and become everything alone. Now I give
myself to memories yet sometimes I do not think
of you when pacing the halls, driving home, dark.
But often I do. I press silver-white eyeshadow
to the inner corner of my eyes how you used to.
I cover my roots. With the fake freckles I might’ve
looked like your sister. I was your sister once.
You’re coming back, but not as everything you were,
still you are something lastingly beautiful, even if 
we have disconnected from our orbit. I am begging,
let me be yours again, finish this poem for me.

Relish raw power
at rest in your soul

Be like the river
that roars over rocks

Unstoppable force
joins forces with tides

Romps with pure evil
to power it down

No one will compliment me on them
but I think I have nice collarbones.
They stick out like a bird perch
on an otherwise flabby body,
the leylines hidden from the map
of my skin.  Even if
I were to render the fat away,
I would still be considered stocky,
a category away from thin
or attractive, but my collarbones,
at least they are perfect as they are.

Before dawn
I walk to Lettuce Lake
to the observation deck
above the Hillsboro River
and hang my hammock
between two perfectly placed
top posts.
In the cool stillness
before mid-morning’s scorch
I rest in a composition of closed eyes
and ears open
to the great seabirds of Tampa Bay.
Their clacks and chitterings and gutturals
fill the belly of my mind
and cause it finally to sleep
a sleep of the rarest kind
a sleep of weightlessness and light,
one that allows the hidden to be heard
one that allows my body to catch
the manifold nimbleness of being

I awake to a consciousness so thin
I think that it’s at its very end
and this circling cry of osprey
is the sound of my oblivion
the sound of my vacant vast surrender

Waves roaring thousands of decibels. Rays of
sunshine piercing through general store 
sunscreen. Watching her eyes trace the shore
slowly. Sandcastles in the distance. Beginning
to chat about nonsense: the news, the tourist
attractions, the local weather. A new decibel
reaching my ears, unknown to me. She turns
to me, face redder than a stop sign. Blushing
from talking casually? I nod back at her. The
newest wave hits my face: “YOU actually
FORGOT to close the GARAGE?!”

“Thy soul shall find itself alone…” – Edgar Allan Poe “Spirits of the Dead”

On cloudy days,
it feels like maybe haints
are set loose to roam around.

Finding their way into the crannies and hollers
all along these hills, looking for whatever
it is they need or lost or long for,

the missing pieces to restore peace
and allow them to lay down one final time,
let go and be free from ties to structures

built in this realm of woe.
Their spirits passing right through
us unnoticed in our hurry off to work,

our worry over money and time,
but sticking on in our lethargic yawns and
pondering of, “Why am I so tired?”

What if the last thing we saw was the sunshine filtering between the curtains of a bay window

The little flurries of dust that sparkle in the warm rays onto the wood floor

Like the darkness behind our eyes in our first kiss

Heart quickened before softening to a painful thud

Of knowing this is the first, while also the last

The beginning of everything

The end of our momentary joy

A forever fleeting desire

To hold each solitary happiness 

To know all the desirable joys

Of sunshine kissing skin

Of raindrops sliding off eyelashes

The sweetness of cake, gritty against teeth

The warmth of a lover’s embrace

Those moments

Like photographic flashes behind dazzling sparks in our eyes

The flicker of our flames

That kindling only warm for so long

That spark of life

How it seems forever and ever changing

A beautiful blip in the universe