I know when to cover your ears,
where to tread lightly,
how hot you'll want
your tea on a scale
of lukewarm to bitter
to scalding,
when to cry with you versus
when to distract--
     I bet I can make you laugh--
and when you smile I think
I'd work time and a half
every day just to come home
to that smiling eye,
and when you turn away
for a minute
I am become
a purposeless thing on the ground,
just breathing,
wondering when the
paralysis hit,
sure my arms worked a minute
ago when you needed a hug,
now they can't even reach
my shoulders,
let alone the bottle on the shelf.
why don't they work
for myself

They say opposites attract.
Negative and positive
atomic bits,
the south pole of the magnet
and the north pole of the earth.
They say the church knows best
when it swarms the local high
school,
ravens of hate,
they say the children need G-d,
blind baby chicklings that can’t see,
they say protest is free speech
and death is free will,
free as a bird,
say the ravens.

Birds are not free.

There are songs
and there are alarm calls,
they say help me,
I look like flying
but I feel like barely surviving,
they say you can only hold back
the river for so long,
crying dying pulled-dead
into the ground
of the magnetic meadow.

They say don't you know,
your creator doesn’t love you

and the students,
they say
I create myself.

the numbers are introduced
to me
as imaginary,
gloves shaking my hand
and glowing figures
slipping through woods
with mossy sounds,
overgrown silence,
spells, keys, magic crowns,

until the fog stumbles in
and smokes us out
and hooded figures step through
the mist of does not exist
and into the sunlight of the other
side
that singes their edges
and shakes me awake
in the complex plane

of the linear mindset,
in which they're
parsing the problem
back to spells and keys
that don't open doors anymore
because the hooded figures
know all kinds of code,

see what I see,
see the root of hoodedness
enter our imaginary,
and as the only way out
the figures and i
shake a deal--

everything i imagine
now must real

Wild woods, moss-green gowns,
secret keys and magic crowns
are lit by the sun until
this forest is so bright with hope
that you shrink away, blinking,
still learning to cope
with your right to stand
among beautiful things.

What if I told you the fairy dust
was just bits of dry skin,
nomadic in a sunbeam through a window,
forest of perpetual Sunday afternoon,
slowing the light down
to the quaint speed of sound

would that make you feel better
about lying on the ground?
Your shoulder blades are not cutting
at the grass like you say.

You are a resident of this light,
citizen of the liquid state it’s in,
of every grain of sand in this clearing,

you are so alive,
and every cell of you that dies
is a particle in the current in the sky
that gives buoyancy to fairy flight

so please, come sit back down
with me.

There is a child in you that still believes
in fairies,
and I would like her
to see how green the ground is today,
how sure
it is that her feet belong,
that this ground is hers
to walk upon.

The bridge between us
stands in the wind stoic
with indifferent strength,
resigned strength.

Static trusses of steel
withstand without a sound
as forces crack through it
and propagate to the ground,
like how the lightning through your
mess of veins
is grounded in the rubber soles
of your sneakers.

We are stalling, looking for veins
in everything to prove our alive—
a dragonfly’s wing on the floor,
a leaf’s venation,
the Arabic graffiti lost in translation
on the railing
and the rivers creeping
outside their contours.

Your lips are turning blue in the storm.

The bridge is strong.
Nothing can go wrong but
every bar is under stress,
yours in tension and mine all compressed
and the bars don’t move but
underneath is a storm of forces
pushing and pulling us at once
with the cold magnets
of the poles of the earth.

If we jump off this bridge
instead of across
we will not fall

The bridge between us
stands in the wind stoic
with indifferent strength,
resigned strength.
Static trusses of steel
bear the load without a sound
as forces crack through it
and propagate to the ground,
like how the lightning through your
mess of veins
is grounded in the rubber soles
of your sneakers.

We are stalling, looking for veins
in everything to prove our alive.
You see a dragonfly’s wing
on the floor
and I see anything I want
in the stars in a patch of sky,
and then we each take one
step forward and I wonder why
I’m the one who trips.

The bridge is strong.
Nothing can go wrong but
every bar is under stress,
yours in tension and mine all compressed
and the bars don’t move but
underneath is a storm of forces
pushing and pulling,
tugging heartstrings,
plucking them apart like you
pluck the dead wings off the dragonfly.

We each stand on our ends looking in.
Bits of dry skin drift around,
form fairy dust in the street lamps,
slowing light down until it spills along
at the quaint speed of sound.

you used to believe in fairies

I don’t see how you stopped,
not while every cell of yours that dies
is swept into a particle current
that gives buoyancy to fairy flight

If we jump off this bridge
instead of across
we will not fall

Your picture comes up
while he and I are in the kitchen
making salad
and he takes one look at you,
all strong eyes and tattoos,
and of all things to focus on
in this world of unbreathable beauty,
of you,
he picks as his focal point
your haircut.
Which is made of hair that is all yours
but somehow is just six inches short
of girl.

Well yeah, but not a real girl.
What does that even mean

She’s not made of plastic, I scream, she’s real.
She’s real, I scream.
He does not flinch, does not here.
I throw the phone on the ground
and it shatters like one of his corral plates
but I didn’t mean to break any window
from me to your face.
And with shattered-glass hands
and shattered-glass breaths shuddering,
I keep chopping.
I whisk in some mint and some pepper and salt.
I chop up parsley as calmly
as my shaking hands can manage.
He still does not hear the shaking;
compliments my steady hand,
praises my knife skills until I have to set the knife aside
so I am not tempted to stab at the chill
running down my own back and away
from this heated kitchen.
I mix the dressing.
I chop the parsley.
And there is chlorophyll left on the cutting board
so I wash it off.
It swirls down the drain.
She’s real, she’s real,
I scream.
She’s realer than me.