remembering moments on hilltops, suspended in
the sky, we were the fibers in a weaving, close knit
in lingering patterns of threes and four.
do you wonder about this freshwater ocean that blossoms at my feet
I wonder of the appeal and the repeal of the oak
trees that always sang me to sleep, and carried me into the light

I've long had this obsession with windows alight,
when the air shimmers with floating pieces of lives in
technicolor, I have something to watch as I lie, wide-eyed and left to soak
through the evening; you see, no matter how tightly I knit
the people in my life to my chest, I am always left twenty feet
apart from them when I need them most for

keeping me in touch. four,
five, six, seven, eight. trapped in my own prison of increasing daylight,
I drink coffee after coffee and fret about the things I haven't done, and the feet
of clothing piling up on my floorboards. within
the scope of a week there are three solid days where I am unable to knit
myself properly, truly together. a half-sodden cloak

of apathy, drenched by rain-misted windows and thimbles of oak
pollen I've sewn to my heart to remind myself of the four
years I haven't talked to my father, of two closely knit
souls bitten apart by youth and distance. the days when I softened the slight
pulls at your shoulder blades, where I could see miles and miles of a life in
shades of red. I'm burying myself in the sludge of desperation, I am fifty feet

under the swirling surface of a frosted lake michigan, clutching my feet
in a position where no one can hear a word. I am left to croak
when I'm aching to scream, "**** it, *******, I knew of this mess I'm in,
blistering in the cold, one thousand one hundred thirty-nine point five miles, four
years I had to take and knew you wouldn't wait." light
creeping in on the horizon while I sip my twelfth coffee, carefully knit

between my comforter and the sheets. I've never had the patience to knit;
I'm a wanderer, a dreamer, a vagabond on feet
bound by restlessness and the ache of a lifetime spent catching the flight
of the wind on a clear autumn day. I notice the shaking of my body while I soak
in the trembling of treetops, the bursting of my seams for
things I can't have, the running of hands over fabric worn thin.

I had men I could have knit and purled, I had trees I might've loved like texas oak,
I had feet, I had solid friends in fifteens and four;
I had these in the light, but I caved to find you lost within