The young Earth sleeps a fitful sleep.
Her oceans, rivers, dreams grow deep.
Her people shout and she can’t wake
Until her fitful fever breaks.

Like a glacier must flow,
I need you to know some things you can’t see.

It’s going to be different for me.
I had to fight so hard to be happy,
to be proud. And I did,
and now I can’t put it down.
So what I need you to know is this:
I’ll still be holding it.
I will hold your hand up to my eyes
and marvel at how it looks in mine,
and I will be happy, and I will be proud,
and I will do my best not to think
about what feelings one is allowed.
And I will hold on, but to do so
I will put no part of me down.

I kindly ask you to remember that
my arms will be a little full always already.

The side of my face
that was facing the sun
knows about being burned
slowly by a loved one.

The thing about doves
is that they’re pigeons.
The thing about grass
is that it itches.
The thing about love
is that it is made of glass
and not religion. Anyway,
I’ll see you after class

How he holds his hands
in front of him, palms out,
speaking softly as if to a
spooked wild creature,
reassuring it he won't
approach too quickly.
That he is safe.
How I've waited to be
approached in good faith.
How I've sat at the window,
mind far above the room,
breath catching with the shadow
of every passing bird.
How I've willed it to be
one of us, swooping in,
tapping the glass with the
holding end of her broom.
She'd raise her hands
like I was a wild songbird
she didn't want to fly away,
and softly say,
I haven't said a word.
And I'd say, I know.
I recognize you, too.

The rusted chests of robins
are bobbing in the breeze.
Their little feet above
their heads, isn't it odd to see?
And just as I’m about to dare
this bird a bat to be,
I blink and see instead
the clinging of the leaves,
all dead.

The duck with the voice of a smile,
The finger that follows the thread,
The dance with the air of beguile,
The tree with the flowers in red.

The dirt on the back of the shovel,
The sigh at the foot of the bed,
The bird with the flight of remembered,
The life that still lives in the dead.

The mouse in my brain who controls all the switches
Sits back on its haunches to wait for its pill.
It swallows it down and then blinks as it misses
Whatever it was that had first made it ill.

Each day I wake up younger
than I was the day before,
Look around with open eyes,
knowing less and learning more.
I tilt my head to understand
the tide that eats the shore,
And at night I sleep well knowing
that I don't know the score.

An avalanche kills a deer
that feeds a mountain lion.
If it all came crashing down
who would I become?
So badly do I need to know
that I push the first stone.

When I open my eyes
I see the dream has been watching
me sleep. I blink
and she is crossing her legs
on her perch in the window,
fingers tracing my heart rate
in the frost on a glass
of orange juice.
She clatters the blinds
as she unfurls her wings.
Before she goes,
she hands me the glass
and I linger in the moment
we both hold the same thing.

Oh, people.
Always saying something
different than they mean.
Always covering themselves
and then rolling up the sleeves--
that happens, I believe.

Yellow and blue,
yellow and blue,
one sleeve rolled to the wrist
while the other falls loose.

Smile in the eye,
tear in the heart,
yellow and blue stand
in envy apart.

The sun in the sky,
the light on the water,
dancing at surface
and down it gets darker.

Yellow and blue,
yellow and blue,
I've treasured them both,
the have and the lose.

Instead of seeing what you see,
try to see what’s there: here
lies snow blanketing
the home above Jupiter’s
storm. The south-facing
windows have Saturnlight
much of the year, and if
you sit kindly on the porch,
the eighty moons will sing
to you. Observe the shed
in the front garden where your
rover can charge after its
Europa digs. You’ll find the
privacy astounds you,
but you won’t be lonely--
Elara will sing to you.
The snow will hug you,
the space will shun you,
but this you know is true
of any neighborhood.
Now step inside, have a look
at your new view. You are
alone but awestruck.
There is no cul-de-sac, nor
nearby school, but remember
that Elara will sing to you.
Aren’t you interested, then,
in your alone home with
the green eyes? Very well,
but on your way out don’t
forget to turn back--
I did tell you that here lies.

And then one day you spoke
and I had nothing to say.
Free, just like that.
Oh how the lightness
starts to weigh.

Here’s something about watching birds:
you become them.
You become the heron slim and silent,
walking on her toes.
You become the crow who just for fun
slides down a pitched roof after snow.
You become the seagull who can’t lift
her wings for the weight of the oil.
You become the robin looking over her shoulder,
hopping lightly, not taking off
until she knows you’re coming closer.
You become the hawk’s focused soar,
the vulture’s misshapen roar, the finch’s stutter,
the kestrel’s hover, the hummingbird’s all of a flutter.
When I cannot speak, you ask me what is wrong.
I am full of birds, I mutter.

I never imagined the job
atom for atom, breakthroughs
and item lists.
I imagined sitting on a
lab floor, tossing a ball
against the wall, catching flashes
of something in the periphery
but trying not to scare it,
humming back at machinery,
averting my eyes and then looking,
hearing you and being heard
until I've lost my footing.
I imagined that the knowing
would be burning.
We'd go right up to the edge
of the cliff and instead
of going over, learning.

Why are you trying to stay here?
At the bottom of my eyes is just
retina, muscle, gore.
Have you never seen the sky before?

What am I tethered to?
Anger? Distrust?
The tree will die
if you dig out the roots
but I’ll close my eyes
while you do
what you must.

In a moment of stress
I count the many ways to dream:
one, flying on a dragon’s back;
two, parent having heart attack;
three, dog chasing squirrel;
four, sun swallowing world;
five, duck in a witch hat;
six, her hair falls in curls.

The peaceful transition of power and I
needed a walk. We sat on the edge
of the moon with our legs dangling over,
and we looked at the Earth.
We waited in unrest, her head
on my shoulder, my hand running
up and down her arm for warmth,
waited for sun to set in the west,
for the planet to turn,
for our home to come into view.
It looked blue.

In you grows the fig tree, lush and green
and bold against the sky. The skin
around the fruit is half-hearted; open
it breaks and out spill the stars fully charted,
and there you are pointing, did you see that
falling star? And the leaves rustle as you nudge
everyone and whisper: make a wish.
And everyone does.

What was it about you? It was the moon.
It was how the night was suddenly not
black but purple with light swirling through
like snow, the whole thing glowing all
the yellows and blues Van Gogh ever dreamed of.

It was the sharp intake of air after running
up the tower but just before looking down,
when you feel the space between you
and the ground but have yet to discover it.
It was the confidence of music when you know
which note comes next but are still thrilled to hear it.

It was sitting on the floor with a breakfast pie,
running through a field with a fluttering kite,
being always at the apex of the arc of the swing,
living the aerial view but looking forward
to the wind on the way down.

It was potential energy. Let us take hands
as we run in circles like children in the grass,
me the earth and you the moon, and we pull
each other in as the spinning pushes out
and we balance that way, suspended in space,
gravity’s most natural motion machine,
orbiting instead of falling.

I didn’t need you to look
at someone like me and see
a rattlesnake where your
pillow should be. I didn’t
need to see disgust thrown
down at the feet of one of us,
or to imagine me as something
I’m afraid of, or to slink around
with my belly in the dust.

You cannot take the coal mine
out of the canary.
But with time watch closely
and I will teach you
how to spell sanctuary.

It’s possible to love someone
beyond their demons. The devil
was an angel and all that. It’s
possible to stay inside and still
be free men. Please just put
down the monster-- that’s
not your hat.

Falling in love?
Falling into the well that is love?
Falling free through space until you hit
the bottom of love?
Gasping for air and rubbing your neck
from the weight of the drop?
Climbing the perimeter of the pit
of love, eyeing the top?
And in a place like that,
what is there to do but try
to climb out, see what you’re made of?

And yet I don’t seem to remember
that anyone wished for District Five
not to have exploded the dam
that lit the Capitol’s lights.
I don’t seem to recall people
buying the tale that the police
were keeping any peace.
We were not given the mirror
to look at ourselves and say
"no, that’s not me."

There is taking off
and there is jumping.
One for up and one
for down.
There is sitting in
a garage and there
is waiting, in its air,
to drown.
There is falling for love
and falling for gravity.
There is the clatter of
your fallen crown.

A drop in the bucket,
a nail in the wall,
the wind lilts east
and an acorn falls.
A grain in the sand,
a change in the weather,
the wind shifts and
we are not together.

Next door the king who’d ****
a sorcerer on sight,
Merlin is living plain.
He nods at me on the street;
we know what secrets
can do to the sane.

The bigger the tree in the front
yards I pass, the more my eyes
narrow, focused on the hunt.
If I’m quiet and choose my
moment just right, I can catch
the future I want. Don’t look
at me that way, like I’m all
the songs I haven’t sung.
I have only ever been young.

Gnats are just a nuisance,
Mosquitoes are a threat,
Fireflies are a fleeting try
At remember instead of forget.

Space all fills up with futures
that flow between the cracks
of everything like water:

everything is murky thick
with what we could have had,
bay windows and granddaughters.

I swim through the parallel universe
in which you and I hold up
your father’s old desk between us,

tilting it to follow the bend
of the stairs and leaning it to rest
against the wall of our new place,

aching with the weight of it
and with the possibilities for how
we’ll organize ourselves together
in this new space.

An apartment that is empty
but not hollow.

Eating takeout on the floor
and imagining the bookshelves
we’ll build tomorrow.

Hit me with that difference
between nodes and cores
and processors, between
being me and being sure.
Tell me again how to
calculate it, I missed the
first time, don’t shout--

remind me the difference
between comets and asteroids
and meteors, and how computers
and space are not the same
because to me it’s all voids--
the Perseids could be anything
as long as I get to watch
something else burn as it falls.

The future used to be tomorrow.
Remember that?
Lying on our backs with our eyes
lit by the fire's glow, our hands
to the stars, our plans hurtling
towards us, raining from the sky.

The future used to be tomorrow.
Remember that?
Floating on our backs and if we
didn't have a sunrise, we'd borrow.

Water and wind build the air
up thick and the siren slices it
clean across the middle.

Across the suburbs and towns
people gather their books and
their computers and hunker down

in bathtubs and basements, tucked
into hallways with their feet splayed
amongst their families' shoes,

listening to dark skies and music
and other sounds, working by flashlight
while the fireflies drown.

I am the boat as it fills
with water and drops
like stone, and I am
the crane that pulls
it up to the surface, and I am
the knot that comes undone
and the boat that falls
again in earnest.

In the morning before work
I sit on the floor and pretend
that it’s dirt. I look out the window
and pretend that it’s church.
That gods of the earth and sky
and space all did their research
in collaboration to be sure
that today is worth it.

I need a little something
to remind me I should start.
A little piece to click in place,
then no more broken heart.

The sunlight filtered
through feathers splayed
hits different when
the wing is stayed

The bolt on the door must be thrown,
so out of bed shrug my shaking bones.
We are a pile of tired connections
and joints creaking over the floorboards.
Shadows and wind hit the window and
every stir jostles all these pieces.
We ask the streetlights for help to shine
and the trees for help to stand and even
the stars for help to fall but those things
are outside, and we are in here.

The book was soaking on a bench
in the park.
It was dripping from my hands the
whole way home.
It was drying on the sill when first
it sparked.
It was warm and dry again when
out it roamed.

Eleven years ago I am a vulture
picking at a rabbit on the side of the road.
I am just doing what I must to stay alive,
and the casual observer passes by
to observe, rapt, disgusted but unable
to look away. Then a wind blows and I
am Victor in the motel hallway, knees
enclosed in my elbows, head tipped back
against the wall and eyes on the ceiling
in dismay. Then the train hits the tracks
and I am cracked and reassembled
in the present day, carrying all these
ways that we’ve been gay. Feeling our
burns of each degree, how we are
learning family.

A foot slips on moss
from rock into water.
Like the phantom final
step at the top of the stairs,
the ground that’s not there
is my final monster.

I’m collecting keys,
weighed with opportunities
that stretch my pocket

Between the sun of my eyes
and the canvas of my eyelids
is the silhouette of you
which I must always look upon.
There is only dead.
There is no gone.

As adventurers prefer
hot air balloons to trains,

death is convenient
but I've found something better.

This time, please,
can we take it?

Just sit still. Look
out the window and wait
for the wind to change,
and the tornado will teach you
to feel relief when waking up
held by no one.

My bones remind me
to love what can be broken
every time I stand

My heart reminds me
not everything that falls breaks
so I'll shake your hand