I was going South, walking on beige lake-wall
immensely focused on each pattern and grain
of every single rock at Belmont harbor.  My body
wanted to scream out of it's skin how deeply
I fell in love with their lives, endlessly content
with being beaten by Lake Michigan.  I counted
each wave, each blow as they slammed against
the boulders screaming Remember Me! before
returning back into themselves.

I was walking North.  On the white smooth gravel
heading home.  I had a moment in my own head
about how crazy it might seem to Strangers
if I told them the rocks had introduced themselves
to me and given me their names.  A man walked
his bike on those same rocks, an affair I didn't mind.
"I was just seeing if I had the courage
to ride my bike up here" he said to me.  He must've
seen me smile, and with that thought, I bloomed;
"Oh please do."  How silly we both were
to feel ashamed of our love for boulders.

into the elbows
of bamboo shoots,
slithering up them. I reach
fourteen purple spotted, green orchids
-- one reached her pink purse to me
and kissed me.  I peeled at her specs
like gumdrops on my tongue and tasted
like laughing amythesyst.  Laughing like toddlers
do.  "And how do toddlers laugh?"
like they know they are dying.
"I didn't know rocks could laugh,"
she said.  Well they do.  And praise them.
They are dying longer than us.
The orchid gasped, her golden tongue,
pink tipped dipped into the slippery mud
below us: loose cement.  She buried her tongue
and dropped, from her nest, two pearl seeds
embedded into the soil imprinted with my feet --
are my feet *****?  "I think I might die too."
What a shame -- She outstretched her petals
they dried, brown, odorless, deceased
whispering this and sweet nothings to me.
She cradled and cuddled me
to her dust.  What a shame
she only thought
and never knew.

People are no longer like swatted fruit flies
begging for apple seeds, and remind me
more of leaves riddling the lake
casting shadows on fish faces.

“You are too young to be afraid of death”
but I have already felt the wrinkle.

I never felt wrong but maybe
I had stepped in-between
the crossfire of oil and water
like daytime moon
who always shows
her face too soon.

Don’t let them keep my clothes.

Streetlights' orange glow
against smaller other-color lights
-- the buzzing background
of florescent light of a gym,

glowing bright blue tops
of emergency call buttons--
they overlap against my feet;
absurdly bare on sidewalk.

I wonder about sidewalk's
accidental mosaics
and compare them
to my instep pores.

I sit on the bush's bulwark
facing the few trees who've
gifted me ever-misplaced
and fallen honey locust,

fallen into the cracks, the split
of sidewalk of this one to the next;
I dig fingernails against their cement
to pull each yellow leaf individually

placing temporal halos around my arches
and crowning the tips of my toes.

I was born
of the swamp.
I felt foreign toes
come alive
as I stepped out
from salty marsh,
gasping between
the stretched mud
strings pulling
then breaking
on my lips
dripping onto
my thirsty tongue.
Grasping at cow-tails,
I've got a handful
of dragonfly wings
instead. And I returned
sacs of humus
from my elbows
plopped into the water.
I was so thirsty.
Thirsty like the gnats
who met their genocide
at golden-silk orbs--
oh, false sun.
I wander. I pray.
Slamming my knuckles
against the clay
of crocodile's teeth
then I return
to humility.

Her fingernails were square
and stretching for her cigarette;

Previously lost
next to papers, pens, magazines
and envelopes with short notes
she wrote herself
and never read.

She looked at Ro.
Her eyebrows pushed together
then pouted, sighed,
before lifting her fingers
pressed against
pearl pink lips
slipping Paul Mall in,
sipping it.

Between each clean breath
she’d say something idle to pass
the time it took to smoke.

Her thick grey hair peaked
from beneath yellow bleach
and she said something silly
about that too.
Her face was smooth and eyebrows thin
but she’d never mention it.

Burned down barely far
from her knuckles,
she pushed the ****
into an ashtray laying
on the arm of stained grey
loveseat.

Simultaneously as she was crossing
her feet she was sweeping
her focus on that chipped black tabled
looking for something…

Then got distracted.

He was unbothered
by conversation in the kitchen.
He sits tightly, legs up
on the lounge chair,
tossed to the side
facing away from words
between his mother and wife.

His spine sinking heavier beneath
the cross-patterned blanket
as he turns only his head sideways
at me.

His slouching, glassy eyes
spoke with his lips,
slowly separating,
“Please hold my hand”

I blinked.
Wedding band touched my skin--
those masculine diamonds embedded,
I glance.  His head drops;

One ear hugged by faux leather.
He ignores the trees seated
outside our bay window
or the seemingly distant
but not silent footsteps
of Julian piling up and pushing
those blocks.

His chest fires upward
and I listen to his exhale shake,
grasping his hand tighter.

“When I was a teenager
I used to think I could use memories
as a means to time travel…”
He’s shifting and sweating
but the house is cool.

Sweetly and softly, he sings,
“It was psychotic, really.”