please remember the rain-sweet smell of almost-ripened heath,
slashing at our ankles and tangling our words.
a slurry of language—
tumbling down the blue ***** like rocks kicked loose from the earth,
gathering speed, and crashing around in the hollows
down from the ridges where you sat, back against the air
as we plucked at the scrub pines and marveled at their twisted needles
because it felt like there were several forevers between us and tomorrow.

I remember when you were a dime a dozen--available economy sized.
I remember when I could not touch the ceiling of my debts to you.
I remember when we were not of waning worth.

Sometimes I think my
expectations of being
human are too high.

I am seeking an unspeakable beacon--
that which defies not solely the misty discontents of mine own
but the time-wrought err of man:
a taut reminder to cross the burgeoned  blur of millennia
up and down the current and the tides
of an ocean to quench such fiery dispositions,
inspiring a shanty not for sanctuary
but for the cleansing of such tarnished deposits
clinging steadfast to the side of aching vessels
harboring, hidden, a virtue free of salted regard
and an anchor to an oft ennobled canon.

Because you are wonder-bread-woman--
bearer of two and a half children,
five feet and four point six inches
of dapper domestication.
soaring, you are at the peak of the bell curve, and when you slip
it's on spilled milk, never cried for.
wistful, you stand on the edge of the bed and reach,
manicure  outstretched towards plastic glow in the dark stars
upwards of your eight-foot-walls,
because after all,
ceiling's the limit.

because
maybe it's

not such




a small world
















afterall.

When these summer squalls have subsided,
I will reap the kernels of my discontent.
bushel by bushel,
I will harvest my wistful fields
until they are barren of want, and come fall,
I will take my troubles to the mill.
lined-up and counted,
I will bake them in the sun,
and when they are dry,
I will grind them with a stone salvation.
under a December sky,
I will bleach them with a mild amnesia
so they are as white and soft as springtime snow.

Then, baker befriended these kneaded woes will rise--and this time,
I will feast on the bread of my shortcomings.