Two white candles
I light each night for you
one matches your favorite scent
a lavender
the other, plastered with a photograph
of the three of us

It took three matches to light four candles
and when even that wasn't enough,
I took the red advent candle from our kitchen table,

It bled onto the white candles
passing along the flame
seeping into the wax
splashing onto my blanket
oozing into my journal

Now when I go to light the candles
they burn the wax now orange
and I drip
until I stream
and pour
longing
as these candles bleed

They say, the dying are greeted, by their mothers
She comes for them at the end
Her love reaching further than bookends
Loving before, when you’re but an idea
A single cluster of cells,
Pregnantly waiting,
For birth

You came into the world quickly,
Precariously, the way you moved in life
Your pace blazing—light speed  
A glow that burned from the beginning

You were likely, the first person I ever held,
Me being too little to hold onto anything much bigger
But of course I adored you right away,
Right from when I first held you,
You made more than a daughter

You left the world quickly too,
during the month the sun burns the hottest,
August sweeping you into the air.
So I wonder, who came for you?

What I like to imagine,
and most desperately hope,
Is that you were greeted by a softness
A loving net cast by our grandmothers
Rocking you slowly
Pulling you back into our linage

There’s construction on the way to therapy
I detour my own way
Ignoring the glaring orange signs
I know better I think

Swerving in and out of neighborhoods
Not paying close enough attention
I’m keenly aware of bikers, animals and children in yards
I fear being the driver

I don’t know where I’m going but I end up at the office anyway
Twisting and turning until I just
Arrive

I tell her
I’m sorry but my thoughts won’t be linear
My brain is no longer working
Or at least not working like it was
Before things were logical,
linear
Straight
Frustratingly narrow
Packed up into wooden boxes
Splintering my hands when I try to move around

Now things are split open
Wrecked into a circle of pulp,
strips
sharp edges
disconnected

My thoughts roll out in many directions
Following things that are folded
Slinking
Out forward and backwards
And ultimately ending up back
Inwards

I know there’s no signs I can follow
I’m under construction
It will be a long time until
I see a freshly paved road
With a street and no bumps

Today was pink
You’ve left me that colored message before,
Between hazy grey sleep and wake you whispered:
Look for the extra color

Dying hydrangeas left one branch vibrant
It was blush

A plane flying passed a blue cloud,
blinking electric pink flash in the sky
Pink goggles on a lawn in October
I wondered if it was you,
I whispered:
Show me the impossible, how about a pink leaf?

Three paces ahead the underbelly of a red leaf
I plucked it from the ground
It was pink.

On the phone we’d walk and talk in circles
Repeated conversations
Patterns on my rug worn from our talking
You taught me a life lived right will circle

Memories working out of order  
psychic dream senses in waking life,
stitching back together to make a web,  
Somethings have more than one context
But the synchronicity will only comes to those in rhythm

To seek out the motion, careful attention must be maintained:
A book will come back twice if it’s supposed to
One mention of it, you might let it slip your mind,
But then will come a coincidence so strong,
you’ll know it was supposed to be read

Without the dedication to trust a great doubt sets in,
the web so carefully spun begins unspooling
tangling into a knot wound so tight
It will leave in it's place a black hole
this is where I titer
between the point of falling in,
or dangling along the lines of the knot
trying to detangle whats left of the web we created
I am dancing around in different directions
hoping we’ll pass again in sync

The cloth tears
shredding
dust unfurling
circling towards the ground
glinting as the sun slices through the shades
burning on each fleek a final glow
a most mundane silent explosion

The universe tearing apart
scattering the stars at high speeds
rocks tearing through black
turning into space sand
things becoming smaller
So minuscule there’s no word for
what is more minuscule than quarks

It’s contrary then  
That quiet even exists
day after day certain things I feel I’m owed
a sense of guaranteed control over my destiny,
when all I am is the shrapnel of the stars
collected together in a precarious cluster
a mathematical anomaly of particles
that settled together
blindly believing they’ll never fall apart.

Save-a-Lot
gets wiped clean of grape jelly
in the springtime for orange beauties.

I obsess over the whimsy.
I repeat it like proverb.
I tell them,
so they can see in this little moment
that orange and purple fit together.

You wouldn't believe
that they are boomerangs
silhouetting by the late sun
it came to our minds easy

thinking about it often
stuck on orange and purple
and boomerang flight.

The thousands of cigarette butts are making me wonder
where all the charred lungs are now.
Maybe the same hands
attached to the arms

attached to the ribs
which encase the lungs
are flicking another **** out the window right now--
sparks sizzling and hopping across the concrete.

My heart frowns inside my chest.
But it’s a different sadness then when I see
the headless raccoon
or the dead deer with its head swung way back.

I shudder when I see a styrofoam box
propped up with an untrustworthy smile on its lid.
Like it’s not going to turn to dust anytime soon
but the greasy chinese takeout inside might.

You can also never trust
the side of the road fire hydrant wearing a pink robe.
My sister just broke up with a boy because he threw
a straw out the window.