The Salicaceae

Why do the willows weep?
Should they not sing instead?
A whistle wild in fierceness
for theirs is the haven of the beavers 
and the spring fawn 
and adult-children, with hair that mimics the branches 
returning to lay their burdens down.

Theirs is a harvest song 
a firelight liturgy
that in the wake of half-shade
and rainless summers
they have still become - 
5 – no, 10 taller by the year.

 
Theirs is the trembling 
creation of greatness becoming small
quiet humility laying itself down 
roots extending and branches sloping
5 – no, 10 longer by the year.

Theirs is the melancholy cry 
for a branch newly fallen 
is full of life unspent 
recalling to mind how it felt to be a tree and
a seedling appears 
5 – no, 10 more by the year.

Why do the willows weep?
Should they not sing instead?
No - instead they curl up around her, let their branches fall lower
whistle the long, sad dirge of the Quietly Strong
for the adult-child, 
with the hair that mimics its own, 
with burdens so heavy her body slopes. 

Jewel of the Sierra

 

The door opens, heavy into the licking darkness 

And a silvery nature slinks past 

my repeated steps in the empty hallway -

The metronome of my curses to his world.

I am cursing me. 

My eyes still glittered 

cell phone light pinpricks

A rousing tide of drunkenness  

that contained not his voice. 

My eyelid shuts out the ringing of 

his laugh towards that 

Other, slippery - “come home with me.”

This silver apparition, 

this before self has been here.

Different bedrooms, different times

She, bruised too - 

The bridge of her nose plum-purple, 

Her vertebrate weave, speckled with this dust.

She holds me upright, together 

when I lay myself down in the navy sheets

Not pulled tight, or starchy clean - a bundle

Cast aside.

I turn towards him, 

With silver fingerprints across the bridge of my nose, 

On the inner corner of each vertebrate,

Purple blooms across my sternum.

I am bruised here, and here.

His breath now fermato 

is so heavy in evening that the exhale would crackle 

ablaze if my lips held flame.

His arm grows heavy against my stomach. 

I am small atop that mountain.

So little in the careless navy sea,

Pressed to the bottom of his King Bed- 

My voice lost, lost 

To the howling of his Time.

origami storm cloud

I could fold myself to be small 

An origami bird on an open book 

But the sum of me would bear down on the home itself

folding fire into a whisper

to fall, heavily, into the blue-red core of center-earth.

In the passenger seat with my mother

I wrote it into my arms with white nail tips 

my voice at the dinner table, whispered its roar

under the table white half moons gracing me

like incisors against cheek

open and raw, red and fresh. 

my bones were so visible my mother wept at my back. 

my small arms were blooming violets in their knobby-ness, a fold of garden in the crook

so thin they said later— with lacy admiration but 

there was a gallbladder and a stomach and a stool sample and an enema and vials filled with me and a hospital visit and weight falling off of me like February snowfall, my thoughts staying put

As my mother pleads with me to just take 3 bites of the bacon lettuce and tomato.

limbs thin enough to slip between a sliver of light

and a mind stretching its seams to their breaking point 

not contained, no matter how small I become 

instead brutish and swollen somehow.

my father buys pistachios, and i eat while the hospital television crackles an image of a chimpanzee. 

I wanted to be an origami bird 

a paper weight on an open book 

Not the storm inside the halls

And the cold iron panic curling in my chest, pulling me 

To the molten core of it all. 

Peniel

my steps fumble and the

the words ruby red 

mirrors of before 

identity a reflection 

meaning: the curve of vision 

turned to apply all that i know to what i know

my days a catalog of agency-

a game, to see how alike i can become without

Him

i lift my pen up up up 

turn the bridge of my nose just so–

a dopamine hit every time i see them say

“yes and amen.”

my teeth in that apple 

into flesh unholy 

unholy communion with self 

I have done it - arriving 

grid-lines a pedestal to say despite my wounds 

I’m back together, a pen

my sword - I list the ways they have hurt me,

the ways I have risen again after falling.

the apple now just a core and I tire of tasting 

that i - by my hand - i am atop a Throne fit for a king 

of the Island, a King. 

a King.

I wrestle as the night turns over 

into dawn - into morning 

the river bank only a bedroom.

let me go, for it is daybreak.

the limp in my stride - apparent again.

i remember that i am dust. 

my pen laid down to welcome the onslaught of quiet, 

and my saltwater nose to the bulbous sky 

a rotunda of His Delights 

that contains this prodigal 

coming home, for the hundredth time that day. 

falling again. He lifts my face 

and again. 

and again.

again. 

film from these days - july-august 2021

Finalities:

in which fog settles on treetops and I watch my home from a place of temporality, and finality, noting the good, the decent, the lovely - this place of belonging.

this was a solo swim night.

so many new homes.

a dear friend & bread & brie.

brother sleeps.

the day of travel

a perfectly blue sky and home scenes passing by and a final squish of a little furry baby I love

my best friend.

the place that built me.

a new beginning

a new zip code, a full uhaul, lots of tears, lots of belly laughs, and so much wine

a lot of building. a lot.

the first morning back

this kind of happy happy

visitor + lydia

we painted and it hurt

yeah :') 

favorite thing

sunshine & wfh spot

6 gallons

a gooooood night w them


feeling pinch-myself-grateful to have these days, to know this time with these lovely humans.

mollusk

A clam, its pearl 

Ugly, messy thing

Hiding

All that it found precious

to the blossoming sea it turns in on itself.

Between a rock and a hard place 

my body curled up around grief. 

My eyes so blue from all of that salt.

 

A pillow never held my face 

The way my hands did when my body knelt again–

Again 

When midnight moved itself into a new unit of time

I was stuck there 

In the crumbling, the decay:

The front left corner of my car Into hers the elevated titer.

I receive another decline 

and set the surgery date 

allatonce ashes to

ashes. 

Dust. I am just 

dust.

When I am lifted from my place of belonging again 

And saltwater falls out of me 

The Advocate tends to my marled body on that bedroom floor, He does -

Salt life light dealt by his own scarred hands-

He unwinds the meticulously tied helixes against 

the lattice of the rug-

white ivory opens up to the Son 

Again.

Amidst lamentations and broken dreams 

the Will Be pushes itself through sand grit mire brine 

The flame the heat licks the uncouth edges of me -

the old passes away and the new comes 

Wedging itself between dueling cells - 

a clam lets go 

its pearl of greatest price falls to the sea floor.

Here to stay, here to begin again

He stays

This Advocate who does the holding, the steadying.

The hard places - held ones.

may-june / film rolls

a graduation

a magical night - 

nat & good company & chilled chardonnay & cards

a trip to nevada-

different than expected & beautiful. jaw-droppingly beautiful.

scenes from home