today i am feeling the stains
of my mother's memories thrash in my blood stream.
moments shadowed from my ears
lay their vicious consequences upon my chest.
ancient itches poke out at me
from the unraveling seams of inherited sweaters.
vintage fears passed down through
generations of women since the first reflection
was ever seen, garish and distorted in a rippling lake.
i wonder at the smudged details.
i wonder if these vanishing phantoms that appear to me
loud and visceral and jumbled
are just apparitions of my murky underbelly
or elusive clues being unearthed slowly.
each step I feel the weight steepen,
my features molding into ancestral craters -
variations on a theme i've been aching to destroy.
my thoughts are betraying me
yet the eyes staring back in the mirror tell me differently,
they pour back the razored gaze of jaded history.
i try to remind myself that i am a sculptor,
but this truth gets warped towards dreams of
shaving away
rather than building.

i'd love to tell you that i don't mind sleeping alone,
that i have tough skin, that i don't sink into my pesky thoughts
and let them marinade me as raw meat to be devoured
down a ravenous cavern burnt to the point of
tasting only its own fiery scabs and blisters.
i'd love to tell you that i never whisper obscenities
to my chest about itself, that i am in love with the way
my hips bulge uneven and wavy, that i don't pinch at my
skin and curse it to dissolve, that i have explored each
inch of my earthly terrain and found it magical
and full of life and wonder, instead of finding
unfortunate mountains bubbling forth where they should not be
and unwelcome things i want to scour from its surface.
i'd love to tell you that i am full of humbled pride,
that i don't question every move i make,
that i am bursting with more of myself that i know
what to do with, but the more i live the more
i discover i am not my own, not an inspired
or unique soul, but i am piece-meal plastered,
shafted together from cherry picked muses
and i find my form unraveling as i wade through
these foreign seas.
trust me, i have long since
woken from the illusion of my permanence, but
i still long to feel true, honest, unmistakably myself,
and each morning i grow more and more and more
aware of my subtle shifting and morphing and reconfiguration
and i find that my environment is constantly reshaping me
with my hands helping.
and i don't know when i signed that permission slip,
but i find myself barreling forward out of my self-conception
my past, my roots, my image,
and it feels terrifying and terrific, trying to listen to
things i have ignored and shhhed for decades, but as i
attempt to reclaim my ground, my existence, i
find it disappears as soon as i think i have a grasp on it,
like chasing ghosts and playing with jello in zero gravity,
it keeps me reaching, fumbling forward,
and at night i wonder when i will be standing still again
and i wonder if i will even like it anymore.

a spindly girl scrawls narratives
upon her walls in red ink,
candle flames splash shadow and light
flickering across the window pane as rudimentary morse code
to Venus who hangs heavy in the night.

the howling of invisible wolves
ricochets round alleyways and up crumbling telephone wire,
crawls inside the ears of a hypnotized veteran
"remember the bodies of crooked mountains,
remember the barrel of steaming guns,
remember praying to a god you never knew
crouched into submission."

big brother's hands don't rest in the dark,
every silent minute the masses slide into their coffins
cushioned by LCD screens and soundbite slogans.
an endless barrage of information lullabies people
numb into their heaving dreams, and they don't question
when they wake shaking and empty.

this morning's fog paints the sky a bleary white,
a blank canvas for streaking black birds and
deep green oaks to dance upon.
a forgotten cold wind sweeps in
over the blue blanketed mountains
dragging the new season along
with a caravan of burnt sienna nostalgia.
the smell of leaves dreaming of
their fall to come crinkles on the earth below,
and they rattle with anticipation
in their wooden beds.
steaming coffee trickles down throats
****** open with yawning
and swaddled in knit scarves
from the crisp, saturated air.
the thickness of the day is delivered
again, and again, in a thousand
cardboard packages
and comes with a knowing feeling
of endings and renewal.

it's okay to let confusion drown you, pour over you like the wind sweeps the Great Plains clean.
it's okay to mistake up for down, and have to wear a compass rigged with alarm bells as an amulet.
it's okay to forget your name and make up a new one.
there will be days when you can't see out the window past the dust and sun-charred veneer,
and they will serve as reminders of the universe in the bathroom mirror and it's impossible reality.
it's okay to feel like mundane chaos, or a deflating balloon in the dessert sun.
it's okay to save secrets for yourself and to wear your mistakes as medals on your chest.
it's okay to doubt all that you've ever been told.
there will be days when no amount of coffee will cure the weariness compiled in your bones and you will have to set a timer for breathing.
it's okay to squeal in ecstasy and in fury and in despair.
it's okay to miss people who do not think of you and wish that they would.
it's okay to wonder if you have every truly loved anything.
there might not ever come a day when it all makes sense, and that is okay too.

red-eyed pigeon pecking for scraps in the sand
staggering through white-washed ripples of land, and
separating cigarette butts from orphaned leaves.
the sea is heaving her depths
ever toward the static shore,
sure that sore feet will willingly greet her
refuge from the blistering sun.
sons of fisherman
scuttling about on waves no bigger than your thumb,
humming drum beats
to the wind and romancing the sky.
the clouds dome over the earth,
mountainous and whispering wisps upon the water.
my hair is bleached, painted by the daylight
and I am gradually washing, washing away
into the sea.
the world tinted cerulean
my tongue rolls out mysteries, doubts, prophecies
trying to envelop contradicting truths
in a shrinking shoreline.
disillusioned, hands fall slack
from the choke hold at my throat
and salted air rasps into lungs
grappling with the gravity of  tides.