Posts for June 11, 2026

I was trying to sleep when my blue-grey
anxiety decided it was time
to analyze every word you had, and hadn’t,
said in the last week:

I said ‘I love you,’ one time, you didn’t say it back
and you asked me to not call you
because you didn’t feel well. 
I know you love me. Why is this so damn hard? 

Your replies to texts were succinct,
but not unkind.
Pulling conversation out of you
felt like climbing Everest without a guide. 

And while I won enough to not call you (because you 
asked me not to) when it wasn’t quite last night, 
but not quite this morning either, I haven’t slept. 
And we know what happens when I don’t sleep.

We know what happens when I don’t sleep.

tongue kept hush in this dark box

my knees cramp and lock, mid-turn

fear kept chest deep, beating shame

play the twisted games, wrists burned

from ropes woven long ago

I know you know, know you do

knife scrapes the blades in my back

festering and black, it grew

a body wound, controlled bleed

regret eating, creeping rust

why didn’t I fight the grip

let it kill me in one crush

If men closely read
Louis L’Amour’s characters
For morality
They might find humanity,
Not violence, heroic.

If men closely read
Larry McMurtry’s stories
For unspoken words
And the harms they manifest
Those wounds might scar, not fester.

If men closely read
James Wade’s western characters
For redemption lost
To thirst for retribution
Peace not pain might be the brand.

The wind has blown my plaid away,
my heart too hoar to hear.
You mouthed my name the way a lure
calls merlins to appear.

Mine broke its breast against the pane

two months before the frost;

I knew a thing was on its way

and knew it would be lost.

I wished you, not in innocence,
but practice, slow and earned.
We train ourselves only to want
what cannot be returned.

You came as fae things always do,
too early, much too late —
a glow of sap and elf-light cast,
too green a bough to break.

“If you would have me, then,” you said,
“you’ll prove you can be taught.
I’ll set the labors. Finish them.
Fail and you’ll have me not.

Bring me a field with neither edge
nor owner nor design.
Bring me a ballad breathing still
after you break the line.

Bring me a question asked so close
its asking stains the air.
Bring me a wanting you can hold
without a hand laid there.”

I moved the board between us, said,
“Then hearken carefully:
I’ll do your work if you do mine
with like fidelity.

You’ll teach me youth without the lie
that power makes it pure.
You’ll want me knowing every rule
that says you must endure.

You’ll reckon with yourself by day
and stay when dusk begins.
You’ll finish what you start with me
and never call it sin.”

Your eyes agreed. Your body did
what bodies like yours do:
it learned the exits, memorized
the ways to vanish through.

I did your work. I brought the field
where nothing could take root.
I wrote the ballad, broke its line,
and still it panted, mute.

I asked the question near enough
to feel it whisper back.
I held the wanting like a blade
pressed flat against my back.

When next I came to keep our tryst,
the room had lost your shape;
a rhyme scratched on the borrowed chair,
a lesson in escape.

All season at the tower’s foot

they left my bird to lie.

I marked it daily coming loose –

quill, down, and amber eye.

Then, late, up from the hollow chest

a chequered wing did rise

and wore its inch of borrowed plaid

and flew to otherwise.

The wind has blown my plaid away.
The hawk long decomposed 
still cries in tasks I can’t refuse
nor teach myself to close.

“I’ll take care of it.”

Said with a smile and a nod

Meant to hide the resentment growing in my belly

But it’s true.

I’ll take care of it.

I always do.

I always have.

I probably always will.

I will bear the weight of our mother’s carelessness

And the heat of our father’s rage.

I will play piggy bank when it makes sense

Just to be forgotten when I lack cents.

I’ll sprawl my name across your “list of people that owe me something.”

It’ll be written in blood.

I’ve been spotted.

Screaming,
I run for my life.
They chase me down.
I cower and cry
like a child.

Damn seagulls.

Like torpedoes,
they took my hot dog,
a victim
of unfriendly fire.

Help me pray in a way to help
you listen. For all the people
I want to help and the good
I want done. There’s nothing more
I want than for you to see
how much I love my neighbor and
all that. Find all the noble qualities
you can and magnify them in me.
Give me a bleeding for others.

Help me pray in a way that doesn’t
question your judgment.

fragrance of roses
colors of sunset and sunrise
cactus spines, thin and thick, hurt
sound of rain, pounding on the roof
start and end days by thanking the universe
    for _________ (can be one or many things)
vinegar has many uses
(cleans, deodorizes, disinfects, pickles, alleviates sunburn sting)
choose reading and/or writing over cleaning
(always, always, always)
controlling your breath controls your body and emotions
(shoulders back, fill your lungs, and COUNT)
baby steps take you further than sweeping resolutions
(babies fall, get back up, start again, on repeat)
keep an aloe plant alive and nearby
(for emergencies)

Something happened when we fled to the cities 
piling into skyscrapers 
plugged into screens 
ushered asleep by the staccato street sounds 
bathed in the blue light ambiance 
we fell into a collective slumber 

something, again, happens when we return 
a wildflower revivial brought back to awareness
by the buzz of honey bees

somehow I can hear God again 
when at the top of a grassy mountain bald 
like promixity to the sky boosts the signal 

I simply needed a creek comunion 
and a golden pollen baptism 
to be lured back to life by nature’s catechism 
a sacred scripture 
of earthen sounds, smells, and sensations 
that seep in and settle in your bones 
home again