the dash between years.
its only function is to separate
the beginning from the end.
the middle is just the
waiting room of meaningless
magazines and children's tables.

there is no name, is there, for
waiting-room toys:
wooden beads on a twisting
and never-over path.
it's a short span of wire;
how does it never end.

while the child is waiting
he learns that the game is to
get all the beads from point a
to point b. they follow the wire
path and inevitably one or
two get left behind.
where gravity stops them,
that is their new end.

the first few times, he'll go back
for them.
     smooth wood gliding.
then the doctor will call him back;
his own story, getting in the way
of things again.

his first check-up, her first
loose tooth.
his last loose tooth.
                                                    wisdom­ teeth, snatched from him.
firsts and lasts,
those are the only things
he'll remember of the middle.
and in the end,
only the first first
and the last last

the rest

—

A student of mine wrote me a note
on the blank side of a 3x5
index card
and she hugged me goodbye.
Another went home and built a telescope,
and he sent me pictures
of the pieces along the way,
apart and together like an array
of Martian images coming in
from the Opportunity in a
pixelated panoramic display.
I told him about lenses
and the human eye,
about why stars will always look
pointed unless we get close enough
to really see them and he said-
I’ll try.

the sun is setting in slant
through the window, outlining
everyone in gold thread

there’s loud music and
laughter and RESERVED
tables full of people eating and
laughing like they’re at any tables
at all

at the end the music is still
playing
and the sun is still slanting its way
down but the rainbow flag is draped
over the dusty piano to free up her hands
so she can clean other things. everything
is tidied up, things gathered, minimizing
space taken

the stickers, the flags
of all combinations of colored stripes,
pink and blue and purple sunsets,
prism rainbows, the black table cloth
stretched out below the window
as two people fold the sunlight into it,
packing it away. name tags
are peeled off shirts. In the end,

they leave with a whole
foods canvas bag full of things
that could be anything,
ready to blend back
into everything else.

the sun ducks behind a mountain
on the horizon and the sky purples,
bruised by indifference. the sun ducks
behind a mountain on the horizon and
no one is outlined anymore.

I am melting.
There is me and us and the air between us.
The falling is the best part.
Will I ever start again?
See me crystalline, and marvel
at all of us different but packed, whispering across space.
The best thing I ever did was grow
into the shape I am.
I slicked the roads.
I slicked the roads
but in the morning I refract the light.
I am for growing, then falling, then rising.
For children not knowing how I came to be.
For curiosity.

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

But don't you get tired
of being the kite?
whipped around on high,
to be sixteen again, to look
down and see nothing
but still be waiting
for the fall, to lean in
familiar for a human kiss
and step back to see
a glass eye.
If you killed me,
I would die.

a mantra: I can do
things that hurt, I can
do things that hurt,
three miles in, feet
in the dirt, trying
breathe in, cold numb
swim, trying goodbye,
hello, subvert,
feet in the river,
feet in the dirt,
I can do things
that hurt,
I can do things that hurt.

You say again that you would rather
move from the tabletop over to the couch
but I think this is right:
us sitting on the edge,
your feet planted on the chair while mine
dangle in the air like a child’s,
which is the way it is.
You think of fingers interlocked like locking
us in a cell, or an embrace,
I think of children holding hands and
running through a fairytale.
So I think this is right,
us sitting on the edge here
with comfort over there
and I won’t say it’s me not you
because I am not confused,
not an amoeba or just easily bruised,
I am not broken or scared.
I just want to sit here
instead of there.

holding everybody in arms
of a bowl to catch
what we cry.
Turning the saltwater into oceans,
mirrors still enough that we
can see, watch ourselves try.
And for those who like waves she
pulls at the tides,
rough hands smoothing the sand,
and when she thinks she can't
get it right she consults the moon,
watching and learning till she's
ready to teach.
And for those of us who don't
like the beach,
she holds her hands out to us
with palms up, lifting the salt
away and the water up,
sending our tears
purified
to the sky to rain down on us,
fresh and quiet
every one.

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.

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.

If I’d told you anything I would have told you
how I smiled through my tears
when the nurse thought it was the needle
I was afraid of,

how I took enough anesthetic to keep still
a two hundred pound man
but be still my heart, they don’t go by weight,
they feed it right through
to your heartbeat

and how much I wanted consciousness,
to lose the teeth but not the wisdom,
how much I wanted control over my person
that I don’t have over my people.

If I’d told you anything I’d have told you
how your people and mine are at war
like ginger ale and jello,
like the syringe in the drawer and
I bought you a small leather-bound
copy of our favorite play,
the skull will pass between our hands
without a sound,

how I woke up faster than they expected,
everything was worth awake,
they added motrin to my vicodin
and when I finally let myself be swallowed
it was by a too-large army t-shirt.

I’d have said,
my eyes have darkened to the defensive green
they’re wearing over there,
and Arabic is such a pretty language
but mine is bolded blocks,
a defense force defending a country
and a country’s defense of itself,
which is more than I give me.

And you’d have said, I’m sure,
what a waste it is that such a high drug tolerance
is wasted
on the cowardly

even in sleep you are aggressively alive,
recklessly optimistic.
you twitch and twist against me
and I don't know how your arm
hasn't fallen asleep beneath the back
of my neck like that.
your short-winded lungs slow down,
your breathing gets rough,
even in sleep you are fighting
for air

and you are getting it.

Dead flowers are brittle, break
easy.
Dust covers the things you gave me,
mutes them, claims them, overtakes
them, squeezing the pages of books
together until they choke,
clouding the glass jar that you use
as a vase for the dead flowers.

Dead flowers do not need water, live
easy.
You made
the bed this morning
so if memory failed me
I would have no way of seeing today
that you were here last night.
And when I blink my eyes,
for that moment they're closed
I cringe with the sudden goodbye,
every instant turned away from your face
filled with the graceless empty
of having just finished a book.
No longer able to live in its eyes,
burrow into its spine, nestle
into the crook
of its neck.

dead flowers are brittle, break easy,
please, please be careful
with this–

once we were close.
once our heads would rest on
each other's as we laughed
and you would absentmindedly
reach out and push my hair out
of my eyes.

we would sit on the floor and I
would hug my legs to my chest and
you would absentmindedly drape
your arm over my knees and I
would cross my ankles over yours
and our fingers would lock
like children's, in a fairy tale.

we had a fairytale friendship.

you used to believe in fairies.

every once in a while you would
look me in the eye and I could tell
by the sparkle of depth, the richness of
brown, that you were going to say
something serious
'I'm glad we met
me too, friend. I'm glad I met you, too.
mm. what if I had never said that.
you'd regret it.
that's why I'm glad you're you
because I wouldn't have.
but I wanted to.
repeating after you
might not have been enough.

but every once in a while even you
would surprise me and you would
glance me over and hug me close
I'm glad you exist
I'm glad you exist too,
I'm glad for you.
like a child in a fairytale
stuttering over words, fumbling,
blind kitten

echoing you

with the hope
that you will hear the echo
in everything you say
so that when I am
forgotten you can catch
my voice on the breeze,
the echo, and you can remember
to pull down our dusty
fairytale storybook
from the shelf.

forgetting is the worst part

i.
unable to see over the big box of memories in your arms,
you walk down the stairs into the dark slowly,
waiting until you feel your toes curl around the edge
of a step before moving the rest of your foot.

ii.
you hold the book carefully,
propped open against the carton of milk on the table,
trying to balance the pages in each hand
so that the two sides of the book match up
where the binding is split.
it’s been read many times.

iii.
you hold up a little doll with brown pigtails,
look under
 the yarn-knit dress

for the little felt red heart on the left of her chest,

stuck there with glue,

messy but impossible now

to remove.
its eyes are black and incidentally,
her eyes were the color that forms the
backdrop of your dreams.

iv.
when the box collects dust
and the binding breaks clean in half like earth’s crust
and your mind quakes and a wave
of new comes washing over,
your dreams will be set in the eyes
of a different ‘her,’ one who’s still kicking,
with quiet hands that know the spot on your wrist
where your pulse is its strongest,
so I hope you've been writing all this down.

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.

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.

Hubble saw stars between stars and
there is more space all the time. Sometimes
things go in fine and come out far.
But what about us is getting more apart?
What about Einstein seeing the same
signature of space expansion as you?
What about couples who smell different
though they use the same shampoo?  
What about black boxes—does
the butterfly remember its cocoon?
Does a firefly see its own light? What about
dressing babies in clumsy shoes?
Do bare feet mean nothing to you?

So I tied the string
you gave me
around my ankle, and
I left it there
forever

which was foolish of me
because nothing is forever.

I hope the pieces did
not end up in the shower
drain. I hope they're still
in Town Square being
blown in the wind
and driven over and
kicked by shoes.

I hope a bird picks
up the tattered remains
and adds them to his nest
so that they give the
faded familiarity you gave me
to another life form.

That would be nice.

Now there is only
the sensation of nothing
where there was, for so long,
something

and when I wake up the next
morning the sensation
is gone and bare ankles
are the norm again.

Relief I did not notice
from pain I did not feel
and now the pain is gone

it's not pain if you don't feel it.

That which we call a rose
by any other name
and so on
and so on

I don't know my name
What I know is what people
call me sometimes
A discord, the wrong
chords,
the blaring lights of a
fire alarm if the fire were
me pulling on a long-sleeved
sweater and putting
up my hair and
molding myself into
their day

What I knew was the euphony
when you said a particular
order of sounds,
vowels and notes
that you picked out special
like the warmest combination
of colors
all threaded into yarn
all woven into patches
all sewn into a quilt
that you draped over our heads
Your eyes glinting in the dim
glow of soft sound

That which we call a rose
in any other way
is something else,
but that which you say
with the same cadence
over and over again
and so on
is what will stay

Listen—sometimes I forget
where to put the x's on checks.
I still pat my empty pocket
with the hand not holding
the keys.
I am still relieved
to see the butter knife
                             cantilevered
on the edge of the sink
when I get home.
Somehow I thought
in the depths of my day
that the crows
would have gotten
to it by now.

I am still practicing personhood.
I am still finding my own way
to pack a suitcase:
roll the t-shirts,
stacked close-packed
like lumber, then folded
flat the sweaters
alternating like bricks
in the most efficient
way to maximize permutations.
Why aren't clothes ever
just clothes? The problem
is the answer: people grow.

I can count to thirty to nudge
my breath back onto the tracks
but I still can't yet know that
falling in love is not falling asleep—
you don't get there by pretending.

Think of the moment
you realize you'll miss
someone when she leaves.
Imagine stacking packages
onto the conveyor belt
at the store when you tap
your pocket and feel
the memory of your
wallet waiting on the counter.
Do you refill your cart
and shuffle retrograde
through the aisles,
watching your feet,
putting everything back?
Do you look up at
the cashier and just ask?
I am still learning
what to do with you.
I am still laying down the track.
I am gripping
the edge with my toes
                     while leaning over—

Carbon is carbon is carbon-

the skeleton key, vitally

important and wholly ununique.

And I am she is me,

diamond so tough that only it

can scar itself,

graphite that is written and 

crumbled and erased.

In the air you breathe out,

pleasant for trees but otherwise

deadly, and

trees are trees are trees,

rooted to the spot without me,

taking in the byproduct of our

existence and using it to outlive

us all, to change and fall

and grow again. 

Count to ten and then

reach for the sky to the place

where trees climb people,

and remind themselves not 
to die

while the people’s hands 
stretch and
close around carbon,

tethered by
ineraseable existence,

trying to breathe.

I am a dandelion in the hand of a child.
I haven’t the heart to tell her
that I’m a **** and not a wildflower.
So I don’t.

The stars are always aligned but I can’t always see
them properly. When the light is low and the moon is new
I can show you what Orion’s arm is pointing to,
a little cluster like us that hardly exists.

My mother used to tell me that my hands would be
too clammy to be held by anyone else
but she wasn’t counting on you.

Our fingers are woven tight enough that I feel safe
looking up-
we can take the constellations in turns, you first,
so that if the toe of your boot catches
a crack in the asphalt where moss is growing through
I can steady you.

And you would do the same for me.

The earth is so young. There will be
time enough for me to take you to the observatory,
to see properly how Orion stands ready
to catch the Pleiades.
We can watch it till sunrise, fingers intertwined,
blinking sleep from our eyes as the sun blinks the stars
from its skies, thinking:
that is you and I

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 scare myself with bitterness:
Mersault found within him
an invincible summer in the midst of winter
but I do not want even to pretend
that that is what I am looking for.
I am numb beyond existentialism.
But not numb with cold.

In my youth, my favorite colour was green
because of spring and trees and turtles and frogs
and when the weather turned
and the leaves grew back
I would whittle the time away outside
barefoot, on the grass,
loving the warmth of sun-kissed skin
and the breeze on my dry cheeks.

Today the leaves grow back
and the green resurfaces
and the warmth has the world walking
with an optimistic spring it its step
but today I think that maybe I do not like green
that maybe my favorite colour is orange.
Dark but bright? Or yellow,
because it can be cheer to some
but the moment you place it beside white
suddenly yellow is impurity
and for all the pure innocence of spring,
everything is, is it not, washed over in a
translucent coat of yellow, stifling sunlight.

So I yearn for winter
and for cold
for numb fingers
just before they are thawed by yellow fires
for sweaters and scarves and hot cocoa
for bare trees outlined with snow
and for the world blanketed, from
green grass coated with frost
to yellow sun obliterated by clouds,
by the sparkling snow,
white in all its gloomy glory.

Other kids think I love
you too much, and adults
tell us children, behave
because we aren't playing right,
arm in arm climbing up slides
or otherwise hiding with hands
where our feet should be.

When I was scared of other kids
and monkey bars
I would have been relieved
to see police tape
surround Fireman's Park.
Now again I look such
surfaces in the eye
and think: if you killed me
I would die

We used to play.
Climb rocks of dirt
and red clay and you would tolerate
my singing
and help me with my math.

And shout when I said "minus"
while you said "no, negative"
and I, your double
negative reckless
optimist, couldn't possibly wire up
that light switch
that you installed wrong,
couldn't read a diagram of circuits,
couldn't take a tour
of the machine shop
because just looking at the gadgets
in wonder might get my
fragile fingers
cut off.

You said trust no one,
not even someone who smiles,
not even the janitor who whistled
when he mopped the school halls.
Never get in a van, sure,
but what if that man at the airport
was just trying to get home, dad?
What if he had a daughter to see?

What if you could see me?

I bet you're glad I never learned
how to fix your cars.
Glad I left my bike at the house
so the grease doesn't get on my calves.

'I'm just trying to keep you safe.'
'Why.'

No one is ever safe,
no birds are ever free.
I have learned so much about circuitry

but even back then,
I could have gotten that switch working
if you'd just let me play.

You’ve taught me to be more
fragile than I’d like but
I could have done it because
despite what you say about trust and luck
and when a girl should give up
I will always try,
always go to the ends of the earth
to find light.

And I will show you
that you don't need to be made
of stone
to love a girl.

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.

you're taking your
glasses off and living
in the blur.
you're punching the ice
of them, breaking
the rearview
while you miss your connecting
flight. why was seven afraid
of nine?

A duck flutters onto the path
and we are at an impasse;
we wait in the dark until the
sun comes back,
but the thing doesn't move.
I can see in your
stubborn shoes, laces never loose,
the unwillingness to let
this creature be afraid of you.

On the way back there are
other ducks that don't notice us,
and that is enough.

Gossamers of drywall
speckle the lips
of the trout lily leaves
beneath the boarded windows
like sprinkles of dew
rainbow on a boy’s ice cream.

At the edge of the lily
patch crouches the crane,
the treads of its tires
wilting in the heat, out of air,
having awakened on the wrong
side of the flowerbed.

The planks of wood
are just planks of wood.
The boy lays them across
the ground, building a bridge
through the leaves
to get to the other side
of the leaves.

His arms are out at his sides
like a bird about to take flight
cone in hand but he falls.
Well at least
trout lilies are not lava.
In fact, and he remembers
this with edges that *****
the backs of his eyes
and stick to the sides of his mind,
he can tell they aren’t toxic
because she showed him how
to notice the speckled pattern
on their leaves.
Totally edible. See?
But today alone they taste dry.

The sun melts
the boy’s ice cream
into the soil
and, on fingers that boil,
offers him molten gold
as compensation
for the world.

A theorem:

any map of the world
contained on a plane
of contiguous regions

needs only four colors
to prevent the bleeding
of borders.

No matter the shape,
nor how many times
a nation state

splits itself up
with all the fight
of man splitting the atom,

nor how many splinter
groups stick themselves
into the skin

of the innocent. Any four
colors, take blue for the oceans
or black for the bruise,

it’s not the borders bleeding
but the insides,
you seeking refuge

in worlds that blame you
for the men that hold the atoms
that split you.

Odds are you’ve never
seen an atlas of only four colors
because Atlas picks more,

how else to contain it all,
to keep from shouting fine
and letting the whole globe

fall.

Oh, poor atlas.

Salaam, shalom,
what we want
is all the same,
but paix,
it sounds so different.

I leave my nails unpainted
and cover them with pulled-down sleeves
and put on my glasses
so I can count all the leaves

because all the nights I couldn’t sleep
your best advice
was either to count
or to pretend

the daughter of Apollo
whistles back at birds
reminding them to stay close,
she knows that Icarus
was a dense
bloke so it goes, they circle
in the overexposed
sky and come back just
shy of the shine, and the cicadas
always know when it's time.
then she says, "come along,"
and they all know to go,
following the whistle
of the daughter of Apollo.

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.

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

The lightning goddess taps her
finger against the glass of us
And flinches back as it shatters
and if the very sky can break,
surely hardwood floors were a mistake?
It’s not safe to fall.

The tornado will teach
of the relief of waking up
again outside your arms.

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

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.

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.

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.