Some days I feel like I’ve spent a quarter of my life waiting for the wrong train.

But I don’t mind the time in between

sometimes i mistake my shadow for my light

but i don’t mind the grey spots in between

i fell asleep where you slept

and dreamt that i fell asleep under the ocean

i knew i’d drown if i didn’t wake up

but i kept telling myself, just a little longer

i wondered if my sister was laughing above the surface

we were at the pool and i dove under

and there were bubbles everywhere

and i realized i couldn’t find my way up

so it turned into the ocean

and i fell asleep

and it reminded me of that time when i was ten and i jumped into the river

and i didn’t think id ever find my way out again

Sometimes I’d just like to get out of my head and get out of my ribbon ribcage and my roadmap wrists.

And I’d like to break the glass of your eyes into the thousand and six pieces of that pickle jar I broke last week in the middle of the street. Your voice sounds the way an old book feels when I first pick it up out of the cardboard box while the sidewalk scolds me for thinking too much. I bet you taste like New Years.

All my favorite people have too much to hold onto.

my mother was born a gardener

and my father became one

through patient snap peas and

angry red tomatoes

he seeded and watered and waited

while my mother grew hibiscus in the mountains

and plums in the shade

i was born a painter

but its tank me years to pick up a paintbrush

and my brother was born a poet

but i sincerely doubt that he’ll ever show it

i mix my paints on my palette of flowers

and my brother goes to meetings at banks

My other attended the only Agricultural High School available to her within a 40 mile radius of her South Philadelphia home. This was not a coincidence.

My father attended the best athletic conference in his affluent suburban community. This was.

She started out watering plants in fast food joints, arranging flowers for junior proms in the poorest neighborhoods of the city. When my father met her, she only ate lettuce and seeds because that was all she could manage to put in her body.

My father kneeled to the ground, saw the soil beneath her fingernails, and fell in love.

I can only love men who garden. I can only be a daughter of the earth because of them.

I don’t like terrariums because they frustrate me. Life trapped behind glass, that I cannot touch, or feel, or smell. I cannot water, I cannot fathom to even slightly disturb their existence, no matter how desperately I want to.

I’m getting my hands ***** touching old soil. I wipe it on my skirt before I touch the sweat on the back of my neck. I’m planting forget-me-nots and basil. I don’t even know if those go together. But I am putting them deep in the ground and it occurs to me that in a few weeks, I might not even remember them. They might die and become some stupid memory, a part of my dinner party story vernacular, Or maybe waiting for them will change me, will allow me to commit as a meditation on earthen peace.

gummy bears and cigarettes

apologies for the time that i’ve spent

falling down your satis to your pit of empathy

because boy, you care far too much for me

far more than i deserve

to temper your acoustic nerve

what if my favorite color was the bruise under your eye?

what if my favorite number was the pace of your smile?

oh oh blank slate boy

the floorboards are cracking and i’m going crazy

your ropes are straining while girls are mistaking

you for anything but a blank slate boy

you’re sewing sleep while i’m sewing valentines

how many hours do you spend chasing he siblime?

oh oh blank slate boy

The snow falls around me

in the peacock window light

the trees wave hello to me

while I find a candle to fight

Just let me catch my breath

we spend time wandering through the towns that our father chose

and we spend days looking for the perfect garden rose

because i’ve seen men who stand behind their father’s grave while they hand a gun to the hand they shake and they wait and they wait and they wait

a woman walks into the street with a gun and a boy walks to school wishing he had one

and we hate and we hate and we hate

I’ve stood at the wall and I chased down the hall your sister ran towards the light

we danced in the morning while my brother was snoring and we held each other tight

I’m learning to travel light. A backpack, a mandolin case, and a water bottle. That’s enough. A black skirt, an extra pair of wool tights, and a teeshirt big enough to sleep in. Headphones.

my sister asks me when and where and why I’m coming and going and leaving and staying

I’m packing up

I’m always packing up

but my suitcases are getting smaller, more efficient, less attached.

I can’t keep track myself

Speaking of the kids in my hometown

we used to walk the traintracks obsessively

like they’d lead us somewhere

like they’d show us something

like the end of the summer was just a bookend parallel line with the river by the library card that promised if i only read enough books i could get out of there and over the moon.

just parallel lines, but they made as much sense as any other way out.

And the gazebo where the high school band played

and I swung on my first date