There's this boy
who can make me smile
without even knowing it.

A companion to spend
the cold, windy night with.
Whispering our dreams
of a better life.

A life filled with sunshine
and smiles, sweet serenades;
of music and dancing.

A sweet note to say hello and
a promise that we will escape.
Escape this life for a better one

California sounds amazing!

The chime of the doorbell rings.
The music pumps inside.
B.Y.O.B on the minds of the young, not so innocent.
There's not a sober being in the place.

Slurred shouting in the air;
booming laughter grabs attention.
Spilled Budweiser pools
in **** carpet and across acid wash jeans.
Burnt popcorn faces rejection.

The outside air smells of drugs,
useless banter and humorless jokes.
The smoke from the bonfire and filtered cigarettes
rises in plumes and hangs in a cloud
above the drugged out faces
after the Friday night football game.

The crushing silence of the ocean.
The harsh screeches of the gulls.
Long beaches stretched wide and open;
shells taken with the heavy pull of each wave.

The morning tide brings new treasures and leave
empty conk shells abandoned in the sand.
A quiet morning stroll yields promise of
a new day begun and a new beginning found.

Sunrises bring new songs to the skies and
the waves carry with them folk tales from distant shores.
There are new stories to be told and old stories to be found.

A message in a bottle brings a secret note to a lost love.
“To my dearest…” it begins
“Please forgive me…” is how it ends.

The television is on with the football game  
blaring from the speakers with people crowded around
screaming out plays, and insults. Jumping up and down until
the popcorn and beer a spilled and it's time for refills.

The kitchen is a mess. Packed full of chips and dip, pizza and coke.
It’s become a free-for-all. An all-you-can eat buffet.

Candles scent the air and lamps light the way
When you come, you won’t want to leave
Because it feels right. Because it fits.

It begins with a meltdown
Talk me down. Let me cry it out.
A kind word. The inquisition.

It ends with bubbles.
Spin me in circles. Make me laugh.
Thank you for caring.

Her tiny fingers wrapped in his big, dark palm and
the beginnings of dark curls and jade green eyes show
she's peaceful, content and at 47 minutes, 6 seconds,
with puckered lips she is already daddy's little girl.

Sandcastles, snow cones, olive skin and long legs come alive in
bodies full of belly laughs and funny faces.
It's summertime on the ocean for daddy and daughter.


She's sixteen with a stubborn streak, blue raspberry hair and tattoos.
Neither her first boyfriend or her first car last long because
she's a rebel, dances to the beat of her own drum and
she's just like him.

Red roses and a white dress on the beach at sunset welcome
family and close friends who come to watch a wedding,
and a dance. She'll always be daddy's little girl.

They call each other ‘J.’ John picks
red, red roses in Mansfield Park and brings
them to Jane. She explains instant karma to him.

In heaven Jane wears her hair short, sports
fringed bellbottoms and teashades.
John has meat on his bones now; prefers black slacks

and button ups, a trucker hat from Abbey Road.
They take long drives and often sing songs.
He says they’ll remain lovers. Until the end.

Jane’s novels now contain leather, VW buses,
electricity, space shuttles, computers, Madonna and Marilyn
Monroe. The rock’n’roll makes her sway her hips in the rain.

John likes himself with peace. This morning
he will play guitar and sing ‘For He Was Rich, and
She Was Handsome to the tune of ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun.’

Jane will two-step and whistle. Alone
by the fireplace later, they’ll listen to the raindrops
and doze. They will not think of Mr. Darcy

or Yoko Ono. They know why God made them
roommates. It’s because the world
was their playground. It’s because

an artist cannot do anything
slovenly. It’s because
all you need is love.

Metal contraption, I dutifully climb into you each day as the sun rises
and drive your clunky frame through the hills of a crowded campus
to face the questions and stares of the kindhearted and heartless.

I prefer you in short increments and, on weekdays only please
but I’m strapped into your metal ways at almost all times
and jostle along with each bump and crack in the sidewalk.

I hold tight to your rubber arms as we travel down the steep hills
and plow you through old man winters blinding white ways
for long stretches, in between short, fitful summers

I’m not pretending that I never curse you, because I do,
for sticking in gravel, grass and grout, breaking down
every Monday, or your front wheel falling off again

and yet you carry me faithfully to and from school and home
where I jump to the floor and embrace freedom and movement
until I climb again from bed and into mobility and its adventurous ways.

Life comes in increments of sixteen weeks where each week she composes list after list.
Wastes away inside with textbooks and tests instead of spending the day in the sunshine.
Her mind wanders, up and away, into her dreams where she lives a different sort of life.
As others are falling into soft slumber in the night’s silence she is kept awake by thoughts
that make her weary of war and weather both. She prays nightly for dear Mother Earth
to take her people and bring them alive with singing in the streets in the dead of night

and to rock them to sleep with sweet lullabies as stars step away and day breaks night.
The girl looks at this life of hers and after some time in deep thought composes another list
to keep organized and to help her find a steady place to plant her feet on this big, big earth.
As she struggles each day with textbooks and tests and longs for the warmth of sunshine
work, school and a sad excuse for a social circle overwhelm her mind, spirit and thoughts.
Each day her mind grows heavier and she continues to wish for a different kind of life.

Somewhere where the sunset lasts a little bit longer. A sort of sweeter, simple life
where the streets are filled with the sound of music all day and through into the night
and where children can be children longer so that when they come upon the thoughts
that fill the heads of adults they won’t do as the woman living in a child’s world has and list
ways to escape to a place where she can do the dreamer’s dance and live in the sunshine
on the streets where music fills the air and smiling faces take up all the space on earth.

She desires to recycle her trash and plant trees in the salty spring air that occupies her earth
and to better herself, the lists say so, because there has to more than what’s seen in this life
that comes in sixteen week intervals filled with textbooks and tests. It seems the sunshine
would do all of us some good. Maybe the moon will allow her time to dance away the night
but it isn’t meant to be tonight. The halfway point shows eight weeks crossed off using lists
and eight more until she can run into the sunshine and not be consumed by her thoughts

because she’s no great philosopher. She would rather spend time in play than in thought.
Nobody wants to be lost in thought when they’ve yet to explore this mighty, mighty earth
with her blasted basalts, blue skies, and bubblegum scented paper on which she makes lists
after which the businessmen will be able to continue on with their polished, plush lives
in this white world where all that matters is green. But she, she’d rather dance the night
away where there’s music in the air and people walk the streets with pockets of sunshine.

In a land where there are no bad days and everyone carries a pocket full of sunshine
Is where she wants to exist. Trapped in a world where she escapes into her thoughts
Because nobody knows how silent and still the streets become when day turns to night
How many children go hungry and how many people don’t know their place on this earth
They want another chance at redemptions, a new beginning in a place to start a new life
And yet when everything else is over, she finds herself with nothing but crossed off lists

Here she stands at a crossroads left with nothing, only her beloved lists
She’ll have to tear a new path and find herself in this life
So she can make it to where they sing in the streets and dance away the night

I was three years out of high school and finally getting
the chance to grow up. I’d been ready since before
graduation day. Everybody in the world was certain
that I would fail. I couldn’t succeed. Thanks for the vote
of confidence. I am proving them wrong. I’m succeeding,
maybe not thriving, but succeeding right before their very eyes.

Success is living on my own. Being able to do every household
chore on my own. Success is getting myself to and from where
I need to be in my broken down, beat up wheelchair. Success
is budgeting my money each month. Success is not getting killed
and ***** on my walk home from work in the dark. Success is
living up to their standards and way of life. Success is faking a smile.

I’ve learned more about life in the last eight months than ever before.
I’ve made mistakes, just like they said I would. What they didn’t count
on was me learning from those mistakes and picking up the pieces.
They told me I wouldn’t last more than a month, six weeks at the most.
I would ***** up, fail miserably, get hurt and hospitalized. Thank you
for the boost of self-esteem. It’s made me tougher than steel.

I may not be the perfect student, skinny blonde *****, award winning
page designer or most eloquent writer. I may not speak Spanish fluently,
have loads of extra cash lying around or a motorized, state of the art
wheelchair. Stop telling me what I need. I don’t need or want any of them.

Success is living how I want to live. Success is a productive day when I want
nothing but hot tea and soft music. Success is having the confidence to ask
for help when I’ve been told I shouldn’t. Success is making friends who can
read through my masquerade. Success is facing the consequences. Success is
found through red ink marks and piles of papers. Success is not letting those
who don’t believe in me get the best of me. Success is sunshine on a cloudy day

The fire for learning Plato’s philosophies and the history hidden
behind the Iron Curtain had burned us out. We were restless, sleepy
and thirsty. Mischievous by nature, we were sick of going nowhere.

The blooms of the red schizanthus and yellow calla lilly’s against the sun
blazened sky bid us farewell as we traveled west toward the city of emerald raindrops.
After all, freedom was only one tank of gasoline, two Red Bulls, a bag of bugles,
a handful of mixed CD’s and four hours away. We were going to lose ourselves.

Plummeted forward by the up down, up down rollercoaster
of the seaside landscape our faces shine brighter than ever
because we find ourselves in rainy day adventures

Pike’s Place Market found us braving the stench of tuna, bass, salmon and sushi
for crepes and chai. Strawberry, vanilla and salmon crepes made by the man
with skin the color of milky chocolate and a foreign accent that we lusted after
because we’d never heard it before. We weren’t running away from home but instead
were living in African slums where the skin comes smooth like milk and
the music has a character, full of power and pride, of its own.

Wandering the drenched streets where downpours don’t stop the salesmen. The sax
player and the bread maker still ask us if we’d like a sample. Rain is no matter. Coveting
warmth from the storm we find a steel slab of a parking garage downtown where
mirrors on elevator ceilings occupy our time and attention until  security shooed us.
Shiny objects attract the shadows on the walls who proceed to make funny faces.

Watching America’s sport in cheap seats with over-priced beer and nachos
helps us remember our roots and value tradition a little more. It draws us closer to home
where any storm can be weathered. The drive home after a surprising win and
spirited riot is quiet. The crisp night air and booming bass free our minds of the
mischief caused as we chatter ourselves voiceless away from the emerald raindrops.

Where midnight is bright as day and time never does slow down
I find myself alone for the first time ever, walking along where
nobody knows who I am and they wouldn’t really care if they did.
Because they’ve got their own stories to fabricate and skeletons
to bury beneath onionskin layers. Two in the morning with my head
stretched to the sky and I find myself falling in love with a stranger.

Central Park is a castle with horse-drawn carriages and suddenly
I’m a scarlet-cheeked princess waiting for my naked cowboy to rescue
Me so we can run away and live in a quaint Brooklyn townhouse where
the children play ghetto games. I don’t want to live the lifestyle of the rich
and famous. Leave me to myself so I can wander the splendid city streets.

The man with wrinkles covering his ebony face and his ragged, dusty clothes
too big for his slender body sneaks a glance and sly grin at me before he picks
up his golden saxophone and serenades the subway passengers, bringing
sunshine and sultry smiles to their dark faces. He’s had a painful, wretched life
and the pain of losing a son, his first baby, to a grenade in a Middle Eastern desert
where the sun burns the soldiers’ skin as they spend hour after hour, looking for weapons they’ll never find.
The look in his eyes is clear. Making others smile, in the middle of the city subway is his heart’s content.
I drop a bill into his beaten up case and move along,
but that sweet sound overwhelming the hot, ***** air I’ll never forget.

I swear I can almost touch Pluto from where I sit, at the Top of the Rock, and the stars
are an arm’s stretch away. I can see past the Manhattan skyline and into Jersey.
I’ve seen the whole world tonight. How I wish I may, how I wish I might stay. Give me the crowded
streets and boutiques for keepsakes. I’ll pack them tightly into tissue paper and each
night when I’m ready to fly away from the small town girl living in a lonely world sort
of life I’ll make a wish and fall in love all over again in a city where nobody knows my name.

My grandfather was born in this one-stoplight town
and so was his Marilyn Monroe-esque mother.
They traveled west when he, with his club foot,
and his brother were small boys; wanna-be cowboys.

More than fifty years later my own father and I travel
down the same dirt road to say our farewell to our last piece
of family history. My great grandmother has finally found
her way home. We’ll spread her ashes in the nearby river.

The color in the wooden picket fence is washed out. The house
and big wrap-around porch lie back further. The current owners
aren’t home so instead of a tour each of us takes a peek inside
the dusty windows. Instantly, we’re taken back to the 1930’s
when putting bread and butter on the table what mattered
for a man with a young wife and two small sons.

My cousins and I spend most of our time getting lost. We usually
end up in the Super 1 Foods or sneaking into the hotel’s casino.
There’s a convenience store too. Montana leaves us both confused
and amazed. To us, this trip is just another excuse to miss school
and that big chemistry test we weren’t hadn’t yet studied for.

Our parents, aunts, uncles and grandmother weren’t just losing
the old, white-haired lady who lived in the basement. To them
she was ‘Nana’ and ‘Mom.’ They spent their days wrapped in memories
of their wedding day or birthday parties. “It can’t be. Tell me it’s not true,”
my own grandmother, wearing all black and too much make up cries.

The envelope was red, white and blue just like the flag
Betsy Ross spent days with bleeding fingers over so many
years ago. It was addressed to me from an unknown sender.
I was giggly, jumpy. Who would write to me? I wasn’t important.
Just a seventh grade nobody stuck in a sparkly purple wheelchair.

Mom said I could join. She secretly wanted her outcast
of a daughter to have a sense of normalcy during her
last fading moments of childhood. I just wanted to have
fun. I wasn’t ready to accept that I was different. I knew
that I was. The stares told me so but I didn’t want to be.

The letter said that I could represent my fine country
as America’s National Teenager. Me? All I had to do was show
my ability by competing in a scholarship pageant. You know,
a beauty pageant except it wasn’t being called so because adults
are trying to be sensitive to teenager’s feelings because we’re
more likely to be sensitive, emotional and prone to disruptive
and potentially harmful outbursts. The perks of being a wallflower.

Teenagers, we know this. We’re also not stupid. I and every
other girl who would participate knew this pageant
was nothing more than a beauty pageant; a popularity
contest. That didn’t keep us from dreaming of becoming
rich and famous, stop the crying fits, hormones from raging
or acting like drama wasn’t our life’s goal and college major.

Four days in Southern Idaho and an eight-hour drive
to and from gave me plenty of time to practice my talent,
an essay. Even then, I knew I had no real physical attributes.
Instead, I shoved my fears aside and wrote, rewrote and polished
my essay on America until my parents, teachers, and friends
repeatedly had to tell me “that’s enough already. You’ll do great.”

I made friends, told stories, laughed until snot came out my nose
and answered the ever cautious “What happened to make you look
that way?” I had the time of my life. I knew I wasn’t going to win
because let’s face it, I’m not pretty enough. And just as predicted,
I left with “Most Inspirational” and cried ugly tears when I
didn’t come home as America’s National Teenager. Looking back,
I was a real American teenager. I don't need a pageant to tell me so.

School’s out. All that’s required of me is to write.
I can do that from anywhere. I’m ready to run.
As soon as we round a corner and travel from
unadulterated, innocent open road to the meshed
together stop-go, stop-go, of Northwest Boulevard
I know that it’s not much longer until I’m home.

I start each morning with a Bowl of Soul, Mexican mocha,
extra sweet, with homemade whip and a gaggle of giggly
girls before we spend our days splashing in the waves
and frolicking downtown, in and out of shops. There’s no place
in the world we’d rather be. There’s no place like home.

A summer class, math is my worst enemy, can’t even
dampen my spirits. Four days a week of fast cars and
freedom. The air, the people, the atmosphere is contagious
because there’s never a dull moment. I can’t get enough.

There’s no battles to overcome, gargantuan hills or
otherwise because I’ve got an easy feeling and my
camera. Loud music, hippies, and cute barista boy
with the dark curls and ocean-colored eyes.

She’s curled up in bed with pint-sized
preschool princesses and their pageants
on the television. Wednesday’s don’t hold
much excitement for the new kid in town.

The music coming from her phone tells her
to hold out hope. The night’s not over yet.
‘Be awake in an hour.’ Four little words
turn her into a maniac. The dishes are done
and the laundry put away in record time. She slides
out of pajamas and into casual chic clothing.

Headlights flicker into the window. As quick as
the lights appear, they’re gone again. John, Paul, George
and Ringo tell her to open the door. The smell of Taco
Bell on his skin and the moonlight in his eyes greet her.

Making small talk as if that’s the way they’ve always done things
tells her that he’s found his very own princess, a queen really,
who dances to the beat of the same restless dream and that being the new
kid in town makes stuffing newspapers into envelopes on a sweltering
Thursday afternoon makes her feel useful. Making small talk like they do
a sad attempt at filling an appetite that should no longer be there.

‘I should go now’ breaks her every time. He stays a few minutes longer
anyway. The warmth that between their skin and the soft whispers
into ears remind them of the past. With a kiss on the forehead and arms
lingering around her waist a touch too long, he walks out the door.

Folding newspapers and stuffing envelopes keeps her mind busy until
the phone rings. His name on the caller ID takes her back but she answers
anyway. She probably always will. Making small talk won’t change anything.
Is she okay? He already knows she’s not but he still asks. They say goodbye
and go on with their lives. Him, with the girl of his dreams and the ability to
let the past be and her left to pick up the pieces. Until next time.