Better to lay your spirit low.
Don't upset the ones who like you quiet.
And when your spirit freezes on the window screen,
The birds will watch the frost softly fall off into the snow.

My first cigarette was with you,
taken from the sewing kit where your mom hid them.
She was sneaky, and you were sneaky too.
We were 11, riding bikes in tube tops and lip gloss.

Lip gloss red,
lipstick
tight-lipped,
Cheap trick.

Cheerleader in the front yard.
We touched every inch of dirt with cartwheels,
chanting calls until we felt powerful.
There was a game being played—
but you had already lost.

Trying hard,
watch and whirl.
Look at her,
foolish girl.

Nights spent at your house,
watching your mom never smile,
your brother with his mean friends.
Pillows on the rough floor.
I knew some dads climbed in sleeping bags.

Sleeping bags,
full of sass.
"Close your legs,
you have no class."

When school was done, you were done.
There must have been a plan to pawn you off—
because you were gone.
No one but me was shocked.

Shock, dear.
Tock, dear.
I see the way
you disappear.

I asked.
It wasn’t even a conversation after dinner.
Lips closed, eyes averted.
You left with the first man.
Nobody watched from the trees
as each bite of you was swallowed away.

"Let me go.
You are fine."
Smile slap.
"You are mine."

I went on. I had resources.
I waited. I wanted babies
and placed an order. Planned. One. Two.
Conscious, different.
No prom pregnancy for me.

Broken pieces,
birth control.
Had no master,
kept me whole.

I kept moving, moving, moving.
You didn’t come home when your father died.
Your mother got ashy and old.
She didn’t plan well.
Your brother sells the family house.

Goodbye house.
A yard of graves.
You are the ghost,
too gone to save.

A "For Sale" sign poking up from the family plot.
Your desires waited quietly
until the flecks settled—
down, down, buried in the dirt,
only occasionally glinting in the sun.

Only me,
to the end.
Goodnight, girl.
Goodbye, my friend.

The fish are frozen in their mirror.
I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to.
I dreamed them into the world.

Were you looking for someone to love?
Somewhere to sink your teeth?
Little strangles of baby's breath,
excited in the shadows.
An epiphany to undo?
Was I so easy?

Where I come from the dead watch over us;
we sing our names until they're one.
The women hunt with dogs and carry guns,
and the stars shimmer at night.
I forgot all this power inside me.

A shock of flatteries—
the peacock feathers of psychopaths.
Poisonous things are colorful,
flowers full of hooks, hot pearls around the neck;
love bombs of mass destruction.
We danced and danced around the shiny red button,
high on the dark, afraid to see the light.

Remember the pink rabbits,
throwing them at my feet,
their veiny little ears?
Killed what you could to frighten me!
And the honey *** of promises?
Using the bees against me.
My own ***, really?
You couldn't get the honey;
the honey was a lie.

Just because you want it doesn't make it so.
Did no one ever tell you no?
You think you hold the power
when you take the queen—
you wish... chess is a man's game.
Infinity can shift in a moment.
I have become bored of bee stings,
and violent kisses on the mouth.

Clarity is harder than denial.
I admit, it took me a while.
Fixation, denigration, isolation,
then utter destruction.
War is a breathtaking art.
I stand in awe of your strategy.
I gave you my sweet little head on a platter.
Perversions burned away the sugar and spice.

But I am not made of everything nice.
When I am myself,
I do not lie down with predators.
I'm made of mountain lions who turn and turn in circles,
churning to butter at my feet.
Where is the cream?
You're the spoiled milk, spoiled brain.
What made you so insane?

I fell for the uninvited vampire,
the blood-******* thief.
How dare you terrify me with your dogs?
I feed them honey—a gift from the bees.
Allegiances change, Shadow Man.
You can't come to my window anymore.
Now your dogs will **** for me.

Am I still pretty?

I call on my grandmothers, collecting the pooled power.
I am back, a dripping goddess with guard dogs,
not safe to touch or get too close.
A weapon of mass destruction,
I control my own atoms, a nuclear flinch.
Your cold war turns and turns, in circles at my feet.
I lick the butter from my fingers.
Do you still like me?
Am I still easy?

You are the epiphany.

Through the world's eyes, there can't be enough loving.
But have I loved enough?
When do I become done?

The moon doesn't care what I will regret.
The rain won't remember my stories.
The desert already knows all about illusion.

That I could control the rat babies being born and eaten by the cat,
Their tiny heads leftover in the grass.

That I could undo the night on the mountain,
The coyote that ran under my car, too dark to stop its body.

That I could prevent the roadrunner from picking off my hummingbirds,
One by one, like beetles on a cactus.

That I could keep the hawk and owl apart,
Afraid for the hawk, because the owl always wins.

That I could force the snow, or the winks from strangers on the trail,
Or the beating of my own heart.

That I could halt death at my door, my lovely door,
Set close by the rosemary and hummingbirds.
How could I leave the feeders empty?

I am not in control, but I am made of hope.
The over-feeling fool in the deck.
Heart-struck and blind to the dangers of the cliff.
I stand right on the craggy edge.
Oh—how stunning the view!
Destined to die for beauty once again.
This time under the big sky, stooping to kiss the rocks.
To lie down with the deer a million times.

The shooting star shot across the black sky, but I missed it.
Is that what sin is?

We fly too close to the hot sun.
Because nothing is more natural than burning up in the sands of the desert,
After a long fall.

But I cannot leave my hummingbirds.
But I cannot leave my deer.
But I cannot leave my mountain.

Who will give the hummingbirds their sugar water?
Who will mourn the packrats when I am out of sight?

But I must go when I go.
To be golden like the cottonwoods in fall.
The cottonwoods chase the waterways and that makes them holy.

Dying is the letting go of the deep breath.
Dying is falling asleep in the fog, when the cold front moves on the mountain.
Slipping into that courseless moment of oblivion and the long exhale.

And then there is a new star.
It streaks and shoots, lighting up the black sky.

I see it now.

All the stories fold into me.

I am finally full enough and I am done in the desert.

My mother handed me power with a crown,
regal and beautiful.
She birthed me—
breech, rounded head.
I became unstuck and in the world all at once.

She slid me courage with my grandmother's pearl-handled revolver,
slapping me conscious,
a stark look at the world men built.
Deliberate moves, eye contact,
teeth bared.

Memories passed through a bleeding heart.
The women before us cut off their right ******* like Amazons—
gashes of emotion she couldn't stop.
I stopped.

I cannot be shook or unmade,
fired with clay and star metals.
Steady, steady stayed.
I bend with the wind.

The queens in my blood are at home in me.
I swoop down, landing with both feet.
There is fire in my ground.