maybe I wanted to write a poem
before the calendar told me to

maybe the stanzas were going to flow
like a mall fountain onto the penny wishes
of poets passing by

maybe in another timeline
my body doesn’t feel so strongly about consent

and maybe in that version this draft is beautiful 

The sound began many conversations 

as they walked the creamy ocean shore, cool, sandy, windy 

the roar, the waves slightly throwing them off balance 

the wind in her hair always in tangles.

Why do they call different places the sound?

The smell of salt in the air 

how it clouded her glasses 

& the feel of gritty between her toes each night. 

Perhaps each ocean has its own rhapsody beat.

The 3 of them 

on the porch, around the table, the walk to town, 

catching his trip, retrieving his phone

the marsh, the hike

good photos & the bad photo, taken by a passerby 

offering to help, cutting the top of the lighthouse off. 

Deleted. 

Back at the beach house, 

the quiet sound of her writing upstairs in the orchid room  

Can I say I love you, her poem began. 

the sizzle of fish frying in the kitchen 

the click of his typing.

driving the long road home

funky music, jazz & Chopin

an occasional Allman Brothers. Eat a Peach

as the sunset turned dusk at an empty truck stop 

home by midnight 

7 days, 3 old people 85, 75, 65.

“This is the type of burnout that will take months to recover from,” I say, on my way to my third function of the day. I’m taking back my life, putting my mask on first and taking up my space. So yes, I took two naps today. I tended to my garden, and by that I mean my beets, my laundry, and quite frankly my bush. This is what slow Sundays are for.

At a port city below sea level,
where we’ve wrested control from nature
with canals, culverts, and levees

Where the ground is made of shells and
the cars move with ghosts made of ancient bones
There the plight of the fireflies forewarn
insecticide in the swamp.

The oaks have sat hosting moss and beetles here for eons
but now wear beads of purple, green, and yellow.

Each year, new quirks
reveal themselves as I drop
cloaks of expectations painted

onto me in layers so thin,
I thought they were who I am
instead of imposed

notions of womanhood.
I find delight in shedding them like
old skins trailing behind me making

a map of who I was until I learned
I could discard the weight of other
people’s fears, free to be me.

Loved or hated for my attributes,
they are mine, and
I celebrate without apology.

A short list of phrases that have been said to me in the past 38 years:

You have such a pretty face.*

You’re so funny.*

You have an amazing personality.*

You’re so well-spoken.*

You have so much poise.*

*For a fat girl

You leave so much red pen over the things I say when I’m trying to get a word in, the gaps when I hear the storm wash the earth outside your window, the quirk of my eyebrow when my eye twitches, all a secret face of mine, a message kept from you, a weapon wielded to hurt.

I could stay by your side
speak the worst things I never meant
or lay out in your backyard
let the lichen lay over me
till I am not a collection of wrong things
but a part of something so natural
it could never be wrong

Walk in the back door — no one uses the front.
Welcome to the kitchen; 70s appliances, wooden paneled
everything; the children who are now adults sit around the round table, 

Watch your step into the living room,
a fireplace full of wood my uncle’s chopped up,
the baby grand piano sits on carpeted floors.

Winding up the stairs, all the bedrooms
including the infamous Red Room –
named when we snuck off to explore a few years past diapers, 

a watchful clock that ticked only loud enough to be heard in the room,
multiple clown memorabilia (or perhaps that’s just how I remember it),
the overhead light always out.

Warm meals aplenty; supper included cheese grit casserole, 
green beans in a crockpot, roast beef, and mud pie for dessert.
When we stayed the night as kids,

breakfast ranged from goetta and biscuits to 
doughnuts from the shop down the street.
This white house on Hwy 44 in Shepherdsville

has stood for more than a century;
grandma’s been offered plenty of money to sell it
to bulldoze the lot to make way for more Walgreens or Walmarts.

While grandma’s become a permanent snowbird
living with my aunt and uncle in Florida, 
the house still stands —
and is always there when we need it.

sleet pounding car windows
umber earth caked beneath fingernails
marriage of roots and dead soil
maybe this year the snapdragons will survive the rabbits and the deer
every day last week it rained but i think i see
rays breaking through gray