the sky
is not quite black but i
can’t see a single star.

hoots and hollers and
boom-beating music, distant
like neptune’s sun.

and my own shadow shows
every hair on her head but
never, ever her face.

I appreciate your concern, and yes,
   I'm still very much alive.

I'm just a father with a full-time job,
   and an allergy to social media

I used to work on this in the wee hours
   and now I use those hours for....
   sleep

Your donations got the app started
   - and I'm so grateful -
But the app isn't ready to share yet.

I will get an app finished.
   I will.
      I will.
         I will.
            "But when?!"

I won't promise anything yet
    but I won't forget either

Sending you all love from
    the real world

that summer my cousin came
way down from goshen, utah for four whole weeks
and when she had to leave i
cried.

dust billowing up behind horse hooves
in the sticky heat or bitter cold
in breeze or rain or shine,
the feeling of flying.

i’d never, ever forget it, for
when a bird knows Freedom she
will not settle for cages.

my first copy of Falling Up, off
the shelves of the school library and
never returned, pages folded and flipped
and worn like a favorite sweater.
thirty times or more, i read in corners
at my sister’s dance studio and cars and
chairs on the porch, me and shel sitting,
sipping lemonade and apple juice.

i still feel it in the way the
leaves look greener in the rain.

some nights my heart is filled to the brim
so i take the sharpened tip of my pencil and
pierce
the quivering flesh and pour out
line after line after line on the page, but
when i look down all i see are the lines
of my mother’s face etched into the paper.

and when the night is dark and the air is still,
off the letters comes the sound of galloping.

four-thousand feet in the air
looking over the edge of the basket,
the feeling of wind in your hair
like a pipe has burst and you’re the gasket.

the feeling we’d feel if the world spun slowly,
if the poor were rich and the rich were lowly,
if the strong were weak and the weak were strong—
when Words are art and art is song.

my cup runneth over, it is filled with ink
and doubts and depths and doublethink
the wool is spun, this mess of thread
is the sunlight, the shadow, the sea in my head,
and i untangle it the one way i know how—
i pick up the pen and i write it all out.

I am from a loneliness
That I no longer claim.
I am from a gift of God—
Call it luck if you want, the kind
Of luck that saves, and ever since that
Ripe-old age of one I say
I am from Colorado.

I am from a father that couldn’t stay.
I am from a mother who couldn’t.
But they are not important.
To miss them, they’d have to be real to me,
Not Goldilocks, not Cinderella, not Little Red Riding Hood—
Not a fairy tale.

No, the important part is this:
I am from two parents who went through hell and
Prayed to God that they could do better, and did.
I am from two parents who did their best,
But their best was not always good enough.
I am from two parents with worn-down, stomped-on hearts
And still they kept on beating.
And still they kept on beating.

Everything came down to this—
Everything came down to me.
But I am not a Lego flower built of blocks,
Generations of too-bright, too-wide, too-tight smiles
Meanwhile both hands in a bear trap.
No, I am a flower grown up from the dirt.
I am the blood rushing through me every time I put
Pen to paper.
I am stubborn softness, smart and stupid, everything and nothing.
I am what I longed to be and what I feared becoming.
I am an ocean, the deep blue fading to dark.
I am an open book written in code.

But I hope one day, dear God, I hope
That one day I’ll be brave.
One day I’ll stand on solid ground
And find a hill worth dying on.
I want a home with a willow tree,
A house built in the branches.
I want two kids to chase around, walls
Filled with laughter and messes and warmth.
And God, I want to hear my footsteps
On the floor of a courthouse, briefcase in hand.
I want to be something, I want to be someone
And heaven knows that is what I will be.

A mind like a mess, just a tangle of thoughts,
I am everything that I ever loved, lived, and lost.

her voice shivered on the precipice.
everything sounded like begging.
i felt it rise like bile but i
swallowed it whole and became a
good little soldier in the line of
fire. left-right-left-left
left-right-left right out that door
and pulled in all directions, feeling the
beginnings
of unraveling.

it feels like sinking.

it feels like the way wet paper
disintegrates
under the weight of
your touch, rends itself more
with each attempt to hold it
together. no, no glue
can fix this, nothing
can fix this now.

but i am a good soldier.

left-right-left-left
left-right-left-left
left-right-le­ft-left
left-right—
screeching, screeching,
jagged and ******
across the chalkboard.

suddenly sprinting, screaming—the kind
that rips out of the hole forming
inside you, landslides and avalanches, the
shriek of stone to rock to dirt.

roadside, arms flailing, trying
so hard to be seen.

𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘺—

suddenly, the sound of sirens.

I.
Box fans and mowers drone below,
distant traffic murmurs through summer’s heat.
Memory presses: teeth and old thunder.
Regret. Punishment. Hope. Repeat.

My ears ring with histories,
sometimes cicadas, sometimes sermons,
sometimes her humming, barefoot by the creek,
sometimes the sting of my father’s belt.

Sunlight slants through bloated magnolia leaves,
thick as tongues,
slick with old rain.
It stains the walls with a color like yolk,
like aging joy.

II.
I wake in moonlight,
before the rumble.
Step barefoot onto concrete
still warm from the last sun.

The sky is full of stubborn stars,
hung from the last funeral.
I watch. I wait.
No birds yet. No breeze.
I stay.

I tell myself this is peace.
But the silence knows better.