Apple seeds
Twirling between my teeth
I reach out
And dig my brittle nails into
Tender skin
You feel as thin as a ghost, I say
The flesh of the apple green
Stuck between my teeth

I don’t remember you hating me
I don’t remember you loving me
We live like a shadow
Grey elastic stretching to mold into
Crisp cool sheets on the bed

I cut my hair
Long locks floating
To the floor
I waved down at them as
They fell
Fall
Falling
Away

Hitting the honeycomb hexagon tile
Look the past is swimming around me
Buzzing past my ears
Bees resting in the honeycomb on the floor

*buzzzzz, buzzzz
buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The stars look like the
Blooming irises in eyes
The moon has become my favorite entity in the sky

Memories of how I enjoyed walking
Under the ageless evergreens
All tall, emerald majesty your
Pine needles crunching under my feet

Take a breath in the open air of spring
Buds on the trees show change fragrant in the air
They hold the promise of fresh new things

My mind buzzing in a kaleidoscope of hexagonal memories.
I am reminded of when I was a child
My mother and I would drive for a hour deep into the
Evergreen woods to a small cabin,
Where an old man lived.

He harvested honey.
The beekeeper man.
I never went inside with her when she would go to buy
A jar.
The car riding idle, shaking while I wait,
I hear the hum of a thousand bees in the distance.

I imagine the hexagonal honeycomb
Home to hundreds of bees
All working simultaneously to bring me
But a single drop of paradise.

When my mother returned to the car she would hand me a Ball mason jar
Full of the stickiness of my desires.
The label slightly gluey from the beekeeper’s hands closing the jar.
I can feel the warmness of the honey seeping onto my lap.

The inkiness of honey dripping
Down my wrist.
Sweet, savory,
The flavor thick in my mouth
Each drop of amber seeping into each
Taste bud.

I always noticed the picture of this face,
An older man smiling.
A full grey beard and mustache.
There on the label he became alive to me,
A picture of the bee keeper’s head attached to the body of a bee.

Thistle of a flower
I will put your skin in my mouth
Your skin, soft and smooth
Silky like a spider web.
I will eat the flower before you bloom
Your skin, soft petals that feel like
The skin behind a lover’s ear and down their neck

Your rose bud manner,
Splotchy, matching the violet color of your veins
That run down my mother’s legs
More vibrant and noticeable with age.

The greener parts of you,
Soft and strong like fresh leather,
Are harder
But can be pulled open.
You’re earthy, the smell
Of dirt on my fingers makes me long for fresh
Moving air in my lungs.

The pores of your skin almost instantly
Browning once air brushes your skin.

You’re softer deep down at your yellowed heart.

I don’t want to be the only wildflower growing
in the concrete, that simple lonesome white flower.
Loneliness runs fragile fingertips through my hair,
stroking my scalp gently,
caressing me into something I did not know I wanted.

my child hands enveloping themselves as lightly as I could
white petals fell into my open hand,
crushed,
they wither, browned, decayed.
They age, tainted by inevitability of getting older.

Learning how desire works,
I watched candles with short wicks burn out and not down,
the wax a painful reminder on my fingertips.
Sometimes relationships,
sometimes intimacy scorches and doesn’t slowly burn.

I remember now, that before I learned to love,
My childlike innocence watched the morning glories
grow over and twist around the chain link fence that separated
my yard and our neighbors.
Its rust almost too rough to cut through the fragile petals.
Trumpets of glory flowering in the early light of day
spiraling, growing on our trash cans.
They just longed to be touched,
to be admired for all that they were.

1
Mommy and Daddy and their friends have been drinking wine again
Their breath now sweet to smell
So I don’t mind as much.
Kevin and I take turns being pushed in the giant yellow swing.
My little legs dangle out the bottom
I am five years old.

2
The swing rests on an ancient looking tree
It stretches its strong oak arms up until I can no longer see
I am pushed in the swing, higher and higher
My laughing, loud, booming
Innocent

3
The cold air sweeps through my little lungs
I am hurled up into the moon
Finger tips not nearly long enough to reach her
she kisses me on each cheek
With her soft, glowing lips.

4
I am riding in the car with you now
Sunroof open, the autumn air whipping through my hair
As we ride with all windows down
And the sunroof open.
Go up into the sky you say to me
Let the stars hold you, and the night be a friend
I push myself up onto the dashboard with that same strength that I pushed with
In that yellow swing some fifteen years ago
The cold air wraps all around me
I am flying back into the moon and she greets me with a crooked smile
This is refreshing as the air belts through my lungs
Stinging every inch of me until I am numb.

5
When did I lose my innocence?