my father told me
with his hat pushed back
cigarette hanging from his lip
green leaves and orange sky 
serving as a backdrop
he sat at a picnic table
he built 
with his own hands 
that a man
will work himself to death

he didn’t tell me 
that if that man 
knew how to say how he felt
he wouldn’t have had an aneurysm 
shingling a roof
or that he might have 
caught the cancer 
before it ate up his brain

though they weren’t the last words
my father ever said 
they serve as a warning
that those aching muscles 
torn skin 
stained clothes 
won’t fix anything 
that’s broke

On the hellish days 
when this damned disease 
feels as though it might take me
feels like I might give in…
You will me back to life somehow
with a simple cup of tea 
put on a tune, and ever so slowly 
whirl me around the kitchen 
impressing me with the best scuffled waltz
my aching legs can muster 
all while taking my temperature 
tonight I’ll push through 
another exhausting episode 
if it means I’ll wake up next to you. 

I don’t want to write a poem today
I want to go to sleep
and think about the boy I like
good night

1. Smash the pot onto the concrete, hard.

2. Collect as many pieces as you can, it’s alright if you miss a few, right?

3. Use expired Elmer’s Glue to paste it back together.  It’s sticky enough

4. Put it very carefully on your shelf (which you also didn’t construct very well)

5. After repeating steps 2-4 far too many times move it to a better shelf.

6. Act surprised when you drop it and it breaks.

When you’re lying in bed,
And you’re in that sweet spot
Where you’re not completely awake,
And not completely asleep 
Do you think of me?
Of how my eyes looks like the forest
Of my voice, how it’s just a little rapsy
Do you hear my laugh?
You always made me laugh
Do you think about how much I loved you?
Or lie there and regret all of the times you left 
How we’d stay up late talking
Never running out of subjects, 
Or how well I knew you?
Do you think of the times you yelled?
How pretty I looked when I cried
What I would give to just read your mind 

How strong you are—sinking
into the plush room of your resolve,
a cozy boudoir—to love while on fire,
in the face of rearranging all your remains
into ash letters. How can you
walk on coals and swallow embers
without remembering you are
summer’s child—a heat seeker,
a sun drinker, now melting in a cold
embrace. How like water—the fluidity
to freeze, boil, evaporate into
whispers patient as wallpaper.
What a ghost you are—observing,
listening close for the chance to throw
your voice against hope, as a flame
knowing it dies with the candle.

“I’m sensitive to light,” she writes,
and says she loves the way the plants
hold the light, a jungle glowing
and I think of my mama and daddy
and how I hopped rows of plants
at Clegg’s Nursery on Sunday afternoons,
when they liked to look and name
and dream and I liked to jump, and how
all these years later, I have heirloom
plants, richly green, a “plant room,”
she says, she doesn’t know what else
to call it, and a rocking chair,
and good light for writers.

At the art museum today,
my daughter and I sat at tables with red
paper and an array of colored pencils in
front of mirrors and drew self-portraits.

When we finished, we added them to a
wall where others had hung theirs.
Faces of people who visited this space
before us we have likely never met and

will likely never meet, but these
imprints of who we are hang
together on the wall, a tapestry of smiles
and braids and earrings, overalls, dresses,

and eyes a spectrum of colors welcoming
other visitors to add a square to this
patchwork picture portraying the power
of those who paused to play for a while.

That erotic
yearning
deep
inside
isn’t for a lover;
it’s you.