.

can you save him?

Can you save him?

A few short weeks before he’d
tattooed Isaiah 40:31 on the
back of his tricep

I  missed all the signs—
his little sister is getting married in a week.

It’s been five years and
It’s been five years and—

It’s been five years


And.

I don’t think you understand —

Of course I  want to travel—

But I want to do it in Moab
where the mountains crumble and
Rebuild in a day, and the red dust is
Alive with the spirit of a child
leading me here and there
the land marked by ornate tree lizards who
praise the lord

And when I lay down for the night
in the streets of Pakistan, the birds
singing softly in Punjabi, the crisp white of
snowdrops sprouting between my fingers
Not a soul will seek to harm me—
Nor the sun to scorch me,

When I drink from the Atlantic and am sustained—
When its waters take me in,
down to the den of leviathan
where the seabed gave up its dead long ago
And I breathe in the deep green algae,
Anglers like stars in the night

My fingers in the mouth of a lion
pulling nesting stellulas from their jaws—
I want to travel then—

In a world that knows me.

A world that knows me.

I am still the forget-me-not on the far wall
A marigold in the back row
A single sunflower in the corner of the yard

I have not yet become all
the flowers I want but

Rest assured I still am one.

on the hammock this evening
the west pasture filled with thick
mulberry clouds, framed by sheathes of
apricot mist in drapes

I am watching the leaves of The Cottonwood
shimmer, flip their golden underbellies up
like schools of danios

And I’m talking to God about being alone—
I send a couple videos to Alyssa

Somewhere on Central some young boys
rip down the backroads up Fields on
their little bikes, setting every dog off in
the copse mobile home park

it’s not that I’m not grateful

No messages. Just wind, late evening.
Sunday with the Lord.

you said bad guy
like it was inevitable
as if the amount of
things said against
you
made an awful lie
true, as if a town with
zero know-how had
gotten inside,
you
said you had to stick
around to show it didn't phase
you, didn't want to be held
because maybe that's not what
good guys do.

maybe you're right. good men
have run further,
and if you're still falling then
wait for the ground,
but you'd be silly to
think you're
anything but a man
who wants to best
or deserves the best
and if you have to
hide it then hide it,
fake it if you have to
fake it but you're
too warm to
talk like that
there's no ice
in you yet
just a breeze
just a season

Beneath the corymbia citriodora
somewhere in time, an eternally lilac
womb—
the lord knit our ribs together
and blessed the future laid out
above us like a canopy
Every moment strung across
a cotton string, dried orange slices
in the evening sun, twisting to and fro
soft and crystalline, faintly venous—

We weren’t left without the knowledge of
time or the length at which it would stretch
how I might Look for you every day—
have you been looking for me?

Please look for me.



Please look for me

I’m made of lists
Knocking on doors, I’m unprepared
half my mother,

I’ve been praying the Lord unmake me
Strip me bare, smelt me to my core

I’m hastening to be someone you could love
Could you?

Could you.

And we meet outside the gate—

In the balmy evening with
the sonance of happy voices in the distance,
a dusky star softly gleaming through
The ever-open portcullis
casting damask
patterns upon us;

We there, barefoot, breathing.

A simple life, in cream linen
beneath the foliate ivy
in the brisk morning I am
out In The Garden—
Lying in the dewy grass
Perennial hymns on my lips
reaching into bee hives

Calling lord,

Lord.

And how do I become known by God?
how do I find solace in Him traversing
the plains of my heart?
how does that become a lullaby ?
I am still
figuring it out in the golden highways
of my spirit, whispering into the
abandoned rooms while I
sink—

Groanings too deep for words
Too deep for
Anything.

Somewhere in another life—

I have a family. All together under one roof,
not a single thing is discernible in the jovial
chatter, all amongst the other like
water skeeters, stones on a clear, glass pond
Rivulets of honey slipping betwixt to become a laugh on another’s lips

In adjacent rooms, we whisper gleefully,
someone is finger combing through my
hair absently, past the casement windows
there is an ochre radiance that
the morning glories vine around
and the deer in the fields observe
inquisitively, drawn to us in the powder blue evening

Like licorice, slippery elm and dates
Long socks and linen, hands caked in
flour—

Effervescent, a little salt, a dream


Somewhere.

the RATF in Sandusky, Ohio
Is perhaps the loudest place
in the world according to Guinness—

Highly reflective,
with sound levels tremendous enough
To perforate an eardrum and shake
the vocal chords so viciously one might
feel like they’re choking.

But it may actually be inside my head—
The loudest place, I mean.
The words are all gathering up there;
shrill, in the corners,
vibrating against the concrete.

They say Krakatoa could be heard 3000
miles away but that’s simply child’s play—

It’s all neither here nor there, though.
It’s all hypothetical.
It’s all just a room at Plum Brook Station.

Keep calling for me
in the hills when I go astray—
I know I do

When I have lodged myself
somewhere dark and deep
and the forest around me bends in
when I am stricken and tangled
in the bramble
Call for me

I will come home,
I want to come home.

I will come,
I want to come home.

I take the long way home after Lydia’s wedding
down 67 into the cemetery off the highway
I stop at your grave where I’m surprised to find
you finally have a headstone—
They’ve moved all of the porcelain angel figurines into a heap, I gingerly peel them out of
the weeds and find the grass yellowing beneath their tiny wings

Lydia got married today, she looked beautiful. Your mom—you know her, she said you were here. a beat, thunder, like carillon bells, rumbles in the south. The bottom of an incus cloud, thick and flinty, rolls over the Wet Mountains
I looked beautiful too
The sprinklers turn on across the service walk,
long jets of white water


I’m not angry, Thomas. It’s okay.


I love you.


.

After the rodeo they held a
dance in the 4-H building behind the stands—
They haven’t done that since 2017

I still walked back to my car in silence,
the din of a crowd behind me, freshly plowed dirt and pine, warm beer

I’m in this red summer dress, little yellow flowers all the way down to my ankles,
this is the kind of dress you’re supposed to find me in, in the cornflower blue evening, wisps of peach stratus clouds stretched behind the glaring rodeo lights

Deep Wreck and some kid from Wyoming
arced against the masses, wild hair flying
Red checkered pearl snap

You’re supposed to find me here, You.
You’re supposed to fall in love with me.

Turn it Loose by the Judds plays in the little
red alcove, a bandstand in the foreground;

I get in the car and go home.

.

mom tells me that the reason dad
doesn’t tell me he loves me as often
Is because I don’t need it as much
as zak

.

I still wonder, all these years later,
if I am bound to the same rules, the
same divine dream my mother had all
those years ago—
Will I  also be tied into a loveless marriage?
A business proposition ? A contract
in shreds, lining the walls
another reverie I’ve shifted into
the floor planks swollen with stale bath water
a decrepit house falling apart
Around me, asleep in
a place where the lights don’t come on


mom tells me

It’s because I  don’t need it as much

.

Back in the summer of ‘99 when
My mom and adoptive father got married
I remember the cream white carpet of the pastors house and the table with a gaudy white cake, my mother’s hair in black ringlets around her face and the white t-strap dress shoes, scalloped around the edges.
I remember the staunch silence of my
soon-to-be-brothers probably wondering why he didn’t stick with their respective moms but being altogether curious anyway, of them looking on with their sad blue eyes.

Years later when they’d tell the story of how they met, I’d romanticize this divine encounter only to
realize in my early 20’s that it was more of a business arrangement, really. And in 2018 when my late boyfriend Thomas asked during a boots and bling gala why your parents don’t touch or dance with one another I defensively respond that they don’t have to do that to love one other but

That was all wrong, really.

In another life;

There is rest to be had beneath the ajisai
Amidst the misty cliffs of takachiho
Asleep in the river, barefoot in the tides
posting camp against Verona Rupes
in nothing but linens and marble berry dust

I know this place, I’ve always known this place
I  dreamt about it once in my youth
wandered there in a briny fantasy
wrapped in ribbon ****, presented
within the sun glitter

I know this place.

I’ve been here.




I’ve been here.

Kentucky strawberry moon, 17th year cicada
Puya raimondii blooming twice
The Dead Sea Scrolls fanned out on the table
Midday, a mouthful of star anise and cardamom
The Lord’s Prayer in the hallway, lingering in the heavy sunlight, Jack-a-dandies shifting gently
across the ceiling—

I am lost in this barley malt reverie, ****** in vanilla. Deep brown and tenderhearted
Plaited with marigolds
Preserved in marmalade
I reach,
I reach



I reach.

I’ve been getting up at 5am to
lay in the yard out back and
listen to the birds

The early morning is blue and
Still, the old aspen to the west
Stretches dry white fingers against the complexes

I  tell the Lord I am lonely,

that I am plagued by my past

I fill my house

I yearn

I tell God to invite me out on the water.