A Monday Night

Laughter in my heart is you
Pain in my laughter is you
Dead in dried leaves chasing the breeze, is you.
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Where one year goes, another comes.
You played music and sang along, folding warm clothes from the dryer.

I hit my head on the shelf and cried, chopping carrots for your soup.

Did You Hear Something?

I dreamt it wasn’t a dream

i shouted your name

but you were dancing

she swung in your arms

her sugar lips glistened

where yours had been

screw you

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Rain, the forest, and random thoughts:

Seasons drift past. Winter was hell, then spring struggled to break it. Daylight lingered. Warmth at last.

I listened last night to early summer’s faint rain and watched the dogs sleep. It’s true, that she swung in your arms once, and I turned around and poured myself a shot, right there on the edge of jumping into a dark hole where I would forget your name.

Wednesday night’s rain tapped away and again I remember waking, wondering what was real. Coral quince blooms and honeysuckle soaking the air — I believe in these ephemeral things. Like vernal pools and I love yous and puddles caught by the sun, they linger and are lost.

From the crooked horizon rose a hawk, solitary and free. That’s the way things should be. Wild things were rearranging themselves after the timid rainfall. Wood frogs bustled beneath damp leaves.

I thought about an old forgotten cottage boarded up on the forest’s fringes, aching for sunlight. It’s coming. Almost. Soon I’ll tear those boards free. And soon I’ll stop being a bare-minimum girl. I'll throw away these overused clothes in which I stew, growing so sick of myself. For a large part of the last decade I’ve sat at night gorging on books and red wine, getting nowhere but hungover. There is so much more than that.

 

Hello?

My friend
What you have is not whole

Sunrise is blinding and long
Days grow strange without sleep

Winter's ice coats a Christmas tree
Love me?

Life is just a pebble
Throw it

I awake wondering...

Four Dogs On A Free Afternoon

Lemonade light washed over stones

we hiked through a burst of dry falling leaves 

from shadows in a shallow valley i pushed higher

autumn colors played tricks on me

old field stones sat waiting uphill

a home without walls 

just remnants now -- a cast iron stove, old ceramic utensils, and no one anywhere that remembers

the pug stumbles toward me and sits where mossy ground is warm

i tell him, if you want the sun, go up…

and we were up

a high point with horizon all around

wrapped in forest walls where the breeze steals my voice

I have not liked my words much lately, but I remember reading that even bad poetry , for example, is something.

What is creativity? Every day is a story. I remembered the way sunlight rippled on Lily's fur. The other dogs found comfort on soft moss or heat soaked earth where they stretched and sniffed autumn's breeze. Calling to Hershey, my voice vanished in the wind.

Solace on a simple day.

Going to hand out candy later and serve a few beers. 

Closing time -- a gentle neon low light, background blues and a glass of wine.

Solace on a simple night.

Cyan Pales 

The day's sapphire died in a cranberry sunset

you're just another heartache

you'll fade too

Autumn's lavender and cinnamon day

was quick to give her light away

i saved a photo of you

a tide that won't come back

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I want to say a thousand things. I want words in an avalanche, but my thoughts are quiet. My lips silent.

Maybe I should just push my fingers along the keys.

Halloween is close. Maybe I can get outside myself awhile...

Just Keeping The Thoughts Moving

I was falling 

my heart

your beat

your breath

my less

i am no good at this

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I have been keeping these words quiet for days, thinking more might be coming. Apparently they are a worm, not a caterpillar….

So much on my mind. Happy Friday. Happy 13.

thin sliced

I never knew you
or how you looked in mixed up shadows
choppy light through window shades

I never soaked you in --
just me watching you toss your shower towel to the floor

I never knew you
and the hundreds of girls you told me about

What kind of phantom did you make
stumbling at dawn a dancing drowsy shuffle back to bed
what kind of love is that?

You laughed and wondered what I would think
if I ever knew you
what kind of love is that?