And my dad wanted us to hurry.
He worked the night shift.
Sweat on his forehead evidenced his
displeasure with rising sun.
35 mm in his hands. Steel-toed boots on pavers.
My mother stuffed another box of Kleenex in my
backpack. Gritted the metal teeth. Ready?

Ready. Her hands on my shoulders.

Take another one. Josh wasn't smiling.
Dad winded the film.

I don't want to smile.

My mother stuck her fingers into my mouth
pulling opposite and up.
And her fingers tasted like
the musty pages in the books without pictures.

I don't move,
I orbit.

I hopscotch the squares where love can be.
Where it has already been.
So,

I don't move [forward],
I orbit [to where I may belong]

I am homesick for everyone
I've ever met.

Most major decisions are based
on the statistic probability of a kiss,
because to be loved
is to be corporeal.

My heart doesn't guide me,
theirs do.

I follow my bloodlines
and shake the tree
for fruit.

This is how it goes:
With each breath I draw,
one for me
one for you.

These gasps of light
are the gaps in tonight
these downward globes
of ivory snow.

The world didn't end.
The world
didn't.

My bones lie aching here
writing for love
in this borrowed new year.

I know not whom
I hold most dear
How do I face
The world didn't end...
*another new year?

The bite and the breath*
These you do not forget.
Like a grade school crush,
the rush of the Atlantic in December
Embedded within the most physical parts of memory
like a rock in your knee.

I'm silenced by the quiet here,
the space between buildings
and the white gossip of the salt stains
Upon the sidewalk.
Spreading tales that only this dolly township could know,
Burning curious holes in the black ice
and talking to the snow.

In a year, a few new babies,
A shop or cafe proudly erected looking
Suspiciously new, admitting big dreams
To the peeling peeling paint corner stores
That will never ever ever go out of business.
These are the blocks that could never be
recreated in a movie set.

This is the willow where I told two boys I loved them,
once as a girl, once as a woman.
This weathered with the seasons.

This is the candy shop,
Whose floor once knew
my toddlish ire and snot.

This is the bay
that I explored for decades
throwing rocks into the clay
First to seek
Second to escape
Third to return
And fourth to stay.

This is the town where I was knit,
In the quiet of the valley
and the roll of the sea,
This is my body's kindred fit-

Trapped inside this sleeping town,
this is where I am free.
I'll stick around.

I resolve to achieve health
Physically.
I resolve to not lose weight,
to celebrate my strong woman-ness,
to go to bed earlier,
and never forget sunscreen.

I resolve to achieve health
Psychologically.
To have courage against the stigma
of needing someone to talk to,
to cry when appropriate
and to take every opportunity to laugh.

I resolve to love you
Deeply.
To honour you with my
thoughts and movements,
to compromise and support,
to adore you with all my heart.

I resolve to find my resolution
Not at the end, but rather in the turning of things,
I resolve to move.
I resolve to give.
Within every struggle
I resolve to live.