June 16th, 2004.
I am not yet talking
and my brother never stops.
He babbles on and on,
telling me stories and teaching me.
I listen to every word.
The clock has started ticking
but neither of us hears it.

June 16th, 2009.
My brother and I
play in the backyard–
the swing set and the trampoline
become our castles.
Gateways to a world
where only we can go.
The clock still ticks,
but not in our world.

June 16th, 2014.
Summer break has begun
and we both sleep in late,
wasting time we’ll wish 
we had cherished one day.
We skip breakfast and go 
straight to lunch.
He makes us PB&J
(That’s all he can make)
and it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted.
I know of the clock now,
and wonder if he does too.

June 16th, 2019.
We do our own things.
I go to a party.
He works on a project.
That night we stay up talking
about anything that’s not the clock.
We’ve both heard it 
for a while now.

June 16th, 2020.
The world shuts down
and sticks us together.
We bicker and tire of each other
and I am secretly thankful
for the little bit of time
that has been added to the clock.

June 16th, 2022.
We don’t see each other much anymore,
except on holiday breaks that don’t quite align
and through meaningless texts 
exchanged every other week.
The clock’s ticking faster
and I understand why.

June 16th, 2023.
I don’t remember what we did.
I don’t remember what we said.
I don’t know if we even spent it together.
I think we would have
if we had known it was our last one.

June 16th, 2024.
My brother packs up the minvan
our Mom drove when we were kids.
The seats where we sat and fought
are now occupied by moving boxes
and memories.
He gives me a loose hug
and I toss him a casual goodbye
and we both pretend things are normal.
He drives away and I don’t wave.
Twenty June 16ths together have passed
and the clock has hit zero.

June 17th, 2024.
The world’s much quieter
in many ways.
I’ll see him next week
but never quite the same.
We’ve used up our late nights,
our family dinners and car rides,
our bickering, our banter.
Our nights under one roof
have run out
and I can’t believe 
we ever thought
that we had time. 

The clock stands silent and still,
but remains.
A constant reminder
of what’s run out. 

I don’t think most people realize
what it means to stiffly walk away.   

But many people
are forced out by society,
ostracized by families,
threatened by small towns
b/c they aren’t normal.
They aren’t like the living.  

Thanksgiving is the reminder
that you don’t belong, or,
If you’re like me, you just think,
fuck Kenny. I don’t wanna sit
across from Kenny again.
I don’t need to hear Stevie
opine about faggotry.
I do not need to sit by my Dad
again, silently, in omission.  

And so I refused. I walked
away from them. Stiff-jointed
as if I’d been stabbed
between the shoulder blades
b/c I was transformed by the world
they made. I rose up. Ambled on,
refusing to belong.  

Being a zombie is about being
human, and also about leaving
humanity altogether.  

To belong by being the abject
other, departing while remaining
an object of fascination.  

For me it was liberating and terrible
to stumble away. And simply refuse.

I share this with Bri and he is silent. 
I imagine him taking all of this in for the first time.
That he wil be profound, profess a deep love I have 
never known. 
Then a fiew minutes later he says 
“Do we have any cheese?”

What if this is just how it ends—

What to say about a man who stopped the train, moving turtle from track?

Spring rains close to blue

quiet as lightning, falling;

summer opens eyes

Yet unseen, you bloom

in a garden of crystals

amethyst & quartz

Dusty roses press

pierced by silver & distance

between now and then

Peonies blushing

delicious afternoon sheen

awash in these words

Us, underwater

unexpectedly, we grow

these aquatic roots

Nectar & stamen

sharing hidden beds & sheets

of slow rain dancing

Summer smiles on us;

we are more than the flowers

opening to drink.

Cramped in the back of a Chrysler Pacifica.
Plastic interior to my right elbow,
Guitar case to my left. 
What remains of this life I’ve lived,
all fits inside a mini-van.
Life’s not about what you have,
Until it is. 

This waiting game,
I feel it as I sweat into my pillows. 
I feel it as I cry alone,
Struggling to forgive myself of my shame.
Money never grows fast enough. 
People hope the best for you when you’re low, 
But they keep a distance. 
You are always on your own. 
No beautiful smile owes you a next time.

If you’re not in their brain,
You never truly know what they think. 

I know because it put me here. 

As far as people go, 
I expect to come second, always. 
Second to their hurt and pain, 
Not good enough to work for. 
I guess I bought in at a young age, 
Long before I slept in a van
outside my employer.

Hope feels a lot like a knife. 

In search of a poem
on Father’s Day
she found a hand-
written letter in her
journal instead

She knew it existed never
forgot how the pen felt
between her thoughts
and the page

She never forgot how anger
thrives when captured in ink
and spilled onto paper
line after line

She held the letter in her hands
read every sentence each word
mined for emotion and yet
there was none

It was Father’s Day and she
found a 20-year-old letter 
filled with the rage of an
abandoned girl 

There should be warnings 
about old grievances 
rediscovered when searching
for poetry on
Father’s Day

Heaven without honeysuckles—soft,
golden light—is no kind of place for angels.
Such a flat-fragranced land, a dusty, dry
tumbleweed of a neighborhood seems
more fit for graceless devils. Give me
humid mountains cloaked in kudzu
ribbons, the rattled swell-hush of jar flies
big as blue collar fingers. Give me
lightning bugs hovering their cosmos
just above grass blades at dusk, and a long,
wide road with no signs save a cross and silk
chrysanthemums gripping its guardrail
with rusted wire. If heaven is the last stop
in forever, it had better be Kentucky
caught in the promise of June and July—
its vines heavy with sweet blackberry heads
and eternal honey sips of sunshine.

Honey, you go on ahead
and you have that June wedding.
I don’t care if it’s the second or third one!
Buy the floofiest, whitest, tackiest
dress you can find.
Cut it so low your cleavage
might make the minister backslide. 
Hell, if it’s the fourth jaunt down the aisle
it ought to be the fanciest one yet,
in my humble, single, opinion!
Tempt fate and invite all y’all’s exes
and get you some real tall shoes.
I wonder how many women
are lying awake tonight,
dreaming of that magical day
and a romantic getaway to Gatlinburg
I wonder about romance and the bonds created
and flower arrangements and expectations 

as I lie pensively in bed munching on Doritos
and eating a Goober grape sandwich
and watching trash teevee
at eleven thirty at night.
Never a bridesmaid, never a bride.
Y’all have fun, don’t worry about me. 
Never a regret, neither. 
‘Cept maybe a few crummy sheets. 

why do I feel so empty?
is it lifeless or lightness?
how do I crack down now that I’m cracked open
vulnerable and open
newness passing through me
faint new connections squirming
oddly
like newborn voles.
how will i control them
when they start scuttling about
with minds of their own
in a dangerous world?
they need help.
i’m not a mother/i’m a new mother
i don’t know what to do.

it’s innate.

it’s not, i’m dying.

I’m free? falling I’m flailing and failing,
old rules structures and limits
scratch my “new” body,
the delicacy of who I always was
expresses contradiction: the oldest part of me
has the least practice of freely being.

yolk still wet on my wings,
I’m too early.

you are right where you need to be.

yolk strings between my feathers as I stretch and shake.
I’m sticky and clunky
glossy, and viscous expectations suffocate me.
my throat, my throat,
my eyes,
i can’t swallow,
i can’t see.
i can’t see.

you are free. You are open.

I can’t.

I won’t push you out of the nest. But you are free to go anytime.

I’ll wait/I’ll wait