Posts for June 1, 2025 (page 15)

In the Prather days I had a cheek kiss 
on call. My whole body was slightly 
greyed out as I bit my own hand, not 
drawing blood, but watercolor thinning. 
Trying to get White the wrong way. 

I loved to be a pet and I’d stopped waxing. 
Prather took the pages of my paint 
and fanned herself, looking deep at me: 
“You are writing yourself over 
and over again. Why are you afraid?” 

I sat by the window, a conch often.
How can you look at a young girl 
for that long without something scraping 
up inside you? I don’t blame her. 

A year after she left she wanted me 
and kiss to hear Ada Limon read with her 
but we were going with her replacement 
that week. Still, a strong winter gust 
makes me want to novel it out, pay up 
two hundred pages, some cash, 
cinnamon cookies. Some, even
with encouragement, fail to lie.

When I think I’ve had enough

You always give me a grin

A little bit further

One more minute

In these moments we find the best of everything

A waterfall around the bend

Turns out

I always love the last band

I promised myself

I’d open my heart once again

There you were, ready to take my hand

With you I’ll take one more anything

One more drink

One more song

One more last dance

somewhere in my notes is a poem
I started to remind myself
when today came, a little jog
for the big memory but when I search
it’s all grocery lists, things to tell
other people, plans I am meaning
to make, and explanations for the K I
wrote on my arm yesterday when the note
didn’t work because I forgot to look at
(or maybe couldn’t find) it, like today,
and I wonder who, upon my demise, 
will find this mess and wonder too
if they will be better at managing it
than I am and really how 
could they be any worse 

Your                        compass          
      is    the       
     vastness of
                              place
    which                
      means
                 imagination,
         silence,
                       a     border
                    you    read
to     tell      stories       that
               thrash    the well
    of
love,                       a  
garment   time     collapses  
like a moth in sleep.    

~ An erasure of Rebecca Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby, page 3

Words are not always meant to be spoken
like all feelings are created to be felt.

If a solution was beyond the path for you
would you wander, stray

onto the path of least resistance
because your comfort bored you?

Would it be as black and white or
would your clouds form to gray?

Would you stagger back, whole
with the choices made?

Does your path you had never abandon
formed with cracks and gaps?

Are your weeds eroding, potholes
tripping on the map of your path? Or

is it made of gravel, overgrown grass,
swallowing you from the journey’s pave?

Did you stop to rest or trudge on by—
as if time wasn’t a figment to our imagination.

It’s a lovely business this patch of earth
to grow tomatoes in, one proofed for light,
the sun rises above my home and hearth,
all afternoon the angled window’s bright.
I’ve chosen to spend these remaining days
of spring and all through summer’s blast furnace
watering, amending this vein of clay,
picking off hornworms, treating for aphids.
Sunday morning church bells call faithful in,
find me gloved and pruning, weeding, searching
clear sky for literate clouds inked with rain,
scattering food, tying yearning limbs
to the skeleton of a tomato cage,
tossing shovels of dirt on winter’s grave.

We’re watching this show
where people fall in love in pods
and wondering if we’d choose each other.

Let me put it this way:
The first time you say hello
I want your mischief.

Tell me about your plans,
spreadsheets, savings accounts.
I like a man who thinks ahead.

You’re a teacher?
Author? Athlete? Father?
Is there anything you can’t do?

You have a lot of energy.
You deep clean on occasion.
You lie you’ll learn to love the dogs.

I make you laugh and swear
I’ll try to do it again.
You make me laugh and I need you.

Let’s talk about snacks,
baby. You like a boxed brownie
and I like to eat the edges.

Say my name. Ask the question.
Watch it back later and know
for me, it was always you.

I listened to his song ‘Ocean’ every day when I loved you,

because I loved you. 

I thought of posting it.

but the only outcome I could see was you double tapping

and me tapping back, our fingers mimicking 

the wordless staccato, hammering on then 

pulling away.   

I type out the message, “did you know?”’

but I hit the back button thirteen times.

My heart crescendos when I hover over the ‘send’

and falls flat as I decide not to.

I’m not sure which would be sadder;

knowing maybe we could’ve been in love

before you walked down the aisle to the

rest of your life,

or knowing you never would have loved me

no matter what I did, 

even if I bore everything to you.

At night I revel in my memories of you,

all arms and curly brown hair,

teaching me to play guitar in my father’s basement

and I am reminded that I have never really been in love,

not before you and certainly not after. 

I listened to ‘Ocean’ for twelve minutes today

and I pretended to love you for every aching second of it.