The Dumbarton Bridge begins with fetid life and ends in Zuckerburg's hollowed-out castle--
the sharp lines and primary colors of a tantrum.
The San Mateo Bridge begins with a ramp into the heavens,
welcoming all motor vehicles to the same celestial kingdom,
then proceeds to descend into the bay, leaving passengers eye-level with the sea birds collecting on floating lampposts--
funneling traffic through the waves back to the baffled freeway.
On the weekends we followed the road from our apartment until it stopped-- dead-ended at a nature reserve.
The salt marshes were littered with the worn posts of wooden structures,
caked in white,
offered with penance to the birds whose long beaks needled the shoreline...
The remains of pools in candy-colored reds and pinks,
the rust-colored scrub that looked like coral springing from the corners of the pathways
that lined cracking beds of arid, once-was, soupy water.
Sep 14, 2021
Sep 14, 2021 at 4:20 PM UTC
We have something that works.
It's such a small thing,
but like a tiny music box that still plays a tune you can recognize,
It's just my palm pressing into yours.
I'll keep doing it as long as it cranks out those same notes.
Feb 21, 2021
Feb 21, 2021 at 3:37 AM UTC
In my dreams, I drive right off the St. Thomas Bridge into the ocean
All the twinkly lights tell me I shouldn't have
Oh how I 'shouldn't have'
and a song plays in my head that says "Oh how you've grown."
Feb 21, 2021
Feb 21, 2021 at 3:27 AM UTC
I can't sleep because everything is on fire. I look outside, and there it is- the fire. I turn on the TV, fire. It's in my lungs and clinging to my clothing. It's stinging my eyes and giving me a headache.
It's been dark tonight but now the light has started creeping through the windows to remind me, everything has to continue. I have to go to school. My husband has to go to work.
I want to get in my car and drive somewhere that the smoke hasn't touched yet. But it's everywhere. It's to my left and right, it's up and down, closeup and at a distance.
I want to yell "Fire!" but no one will let me. I want to escape but no one will show me the exits. I'm tired of watching everything burn away and smolder and ache and choke and wheeze.
Feb 21, 2021
Feb 21, 2021 at 3:15 AM UTC
Vitamin D. Prenatal vitamins. Gauze. Paper-tape. Pregnancy tests. Ghirardelli square wrappers. Anti-septic. Band-aids. Small strips of paper towels. Anti-biotic wound care. Disposable masks.
My nerves are showing up in the cracking of my skin, in my eyebrows, between my eyes, and down my nose.
My hair's growth is stunted by my sporadic picking at the ends.
Now is not a good time. Now is the only time. Now is the worst time. Now is the best time.
Feb 5, 2021
Feb 5, 2021 at 10:50 PM UTC
I have never seen vultures before, until now. There they were, seven of them. One low circling and the other six huddled around a raccoon on the side of the off-ramp. It was just like a cartoon, I thought.
Vultures aren't really dangerous, I told myself as I weaved the car around the gang. Technically, they are nature's garbagemen.
Still, there is something unsettling about them all the same. Their turkey necks. Their large bodies. The pulling of sinew from carrion.
But most of all the concept that they lie in wait for death, inevitable, with terrifying patience.
Feb 5, 2021
Feb 5, 2021 at 10:49 PM UTC
She looked at me in a skeptical way and talked about what it means to be a vessel.
She offered some next steps, some sage advice.
But maybe I'm just the soil in champagne France, I thought, all chalk-full of clay.
Maybe the best most renowned bubbly celebrations come from this scraggly old vine.
What do you know? As I pawed at my stomach and breast.
Things still grow in the desert, they just aren't the things you like.
"So fruits and vegetables then?"
"Less fruit than you would think actually."
I blinked.
Feb 5, 2021
Feb 5, 2021 at 10:48 PM UTC
For me, beauty comes from things that are loosely held.
Looking at them too long alters them,
Sitting with them too long ruins them,
Better to show the rough stuff of life than to crush a dream by the weight of my closed fist.
Better to miss a comma or semicolon than a true feeling.
Better to mix metaphors than to lose them entirely.
When I was young, I caught what I thought were butterflies, probably moths, in the schoolyard.
I was told that if their dust rubbed off they would die.
So I held them in my sweating palm as gently as I could, feeling the flapping thing struggle against the walls of my fingers.
They all died anyway.
The pill bugs would die too.
Everything died, regardless of how gingerly I handled them because they had simply stayed in my hands too long
But before they died, I had accomplished something and it was beautiful.
If I could just let go, they could thrive, but I spent too long with them.
I've spent too long with my own thoughts and they're dying.
Jul 11, 2020
Jul 11, 2020 at 3:17 PM UTC
Some books are hard to read and cut you on the way down.
Some books make you wish to burn the inside of your ribcage out.
But those same books teach you some things you didn't know,
and those somethings make you change in ways you didn't think you could.
Some books break you into disparate pieces and put you back together in a new way.
Some books heal you in a way you didn't know you were injured.
But those same books are hard to pick up and easy to put down.
Some books have been calling out to you from other people's bookshelves their whole lives.
Some books have been given to you as an investment.
But those same books will live in silence if you never open them; too afraid of paper cuts to learn.
Jun 29, 2020
Jun 29, 2020 at 3:59 AM UTC
Make peace with never knowing,
make peace with never going,
to the places, you pledged your life to.
Dec 7, 2019
Dec 7, 2019 at 2:26 AM UTC