my friend Jill cut off most her hair
and when I saw her
I thought:
this is it
we're all growing up

Stop fogging up my lenses
and stealing all my first impressions

you have lost all validity
and stolen all tranquility

let me see people
without your veil of lies

don't worry,
I can come to my own conclusions

We need the tonic of wilderness
the land and sea. Indefinitely wild.
Unsurveyed and unfathomed.
A taste of beautiful cultivated outdoors

I wanted to live deep
and **** the marrow out of life
but we loiter in the winter
while it is already spring

The surface of the Earth
soft and impressable
carving deep
ruts of tradition and conformity

I’d rather go before the mast
on deck of the world.
Mysterious and explorable
amid the moonlight and mountains.

It’s the thorn to a rose
the taste of vanilla
or an unripe apple

It’s a perfectly sharp pencil
crumbling
in the middle of a test

It’s the first jump into a cold lake
and the goosebumps
from the icy wind

The clear winter skies leave room
for the bright shine of a full moon

It lights up the road before her eyes
so that she does not have to drive blind

The moon makes up for the lack of street lights
on this abandoned country dirt road

and just like the street lights do on the city alleys at night
gives her the feeling that she is not alone

with the passenger seat empty she’s feeling grim
because she can no longer sit next to him

But she keeps on driving and follows the moon
in hope that she will be home soon

That night I told you to find your own ride home
because I had better plans.
Plans that didn’t involve driving you back
after the high school dance

I wish I had taken you home.
We would’ve slipped off our shoes and laid across the bed.
When you opened your phone
to read the texts that burned your eyes,
I would’ve held your hand.

Even though you slide on a pretty dress,
and squeeze into a pair of heels,
bad news still slides it’s way down cheeks
carrying dark lines of mascara.

Tears don’t mean anything,
it’s the silence that stings.
The same silence that wrapped around
her neck ropes under your bedroom door,
slipping through pink glossed lips,
until you can’t breathe anymore.

Earlier that night we danced together
when your feet were still light as air.
Later on you found your own way home,
and lay wide awake, different from before.

when my grandma cut my hair
she told me sometimes
she gets the urge to run
outside and
tape all the leaves back on the trees

Lathered in Varnish
and coated in stain
the fades are all gone
without any blame

Thirst quenched with
the deep red wine
and stomach filled
with the taste of rye

I'll go through wear
and tear as I walk this Earth
until the next date
of my soul's rebirth

Because the world is sandpaper
stripping away
and my soul needs varnishing
to cover my shame

I can’t help but smile
as the crowd goes wild
the buzzer sounds
no rebound
nothing but net
dripping in sweat
wrist flicks back
time to attack
toes behind the 3 point line
the moment is all mine
my hands anxiously receive the ball
time slows down to a crawl
the pass seems to teleport
she dribbles the ball up the court
ten seconds to go
two points down

I think it's so cliche
that you assume we disagree

So many people enter and leave your life!
Hundreds of thousands of people!
You have to keep the door open so they can come in!
But it also means you have to let them go!

My life story is the story of everyone I've ever met.
But I still couldn't figure out what it all meant.
The more I found out, the less I understood.

Why I'm Not Where You Are?
Because I missed you even when I was with you.
That’s been my problem. I miss what I already have,
and I surround myself with things that are missing.

I hope you never think about anything as much as I think about you.

I tried the key in all the doors.
At the end of my search I wanted to be able to say:
I don't know how I could have tried harder.
All I could do was put my hand on the doorknob
maybe her hand was on the doorknob on the other side

Just because you're an atheist
that doesn't mean you wouldn't love
for things to have reasons for why they are.

I remember when feathers filled the small room.
Our laughter kept the feathers in the air.
I thought about birds.
Could they fly is there wasn't someone, somewhere, laughing?

I remember how she laughed enough to migrate an entire flock of birds.
That was how she said yes.
We talked about nothing in particular,
but it felt like we were talking about the most important things.

Sometimes I can hear my bones straining
under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.
I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.
Why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time.
My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.

In the back kitchen you'll find
two boys scrubbing dishes.
One loud mouthed and lanky;
the other stout with broken English.

Amongst soap suds and grime,
clothed in long black aprons,
these two teens share a bond
stronger than mugs of ceramic.

Though the mason jars may chip
and hot dinner plates burn their fingers,
minimum wage is the thing
that keeps this quirky pair together.

And they dance around the kitchen
in those slip resistant sketchers
balancing bowls, pots, and pans.
Graceful as expert choreographers.

Spiders spin in my sleep
webs wrapping wishes
into secure spheres.
I'll throw them across time.
Maybe mayhem
can carry cravings
far from fantasy.

She slides in her headphones.
The cart is filled of freshly read books,
the lucky ones with their pages recently turned,
gently pushed to the upstairs stacks.

Beyond the glass door lies
the world of words. Walls
encase countless characters,
stories that needed to be told.

And now the room belongs to the girl
with the music that lifts her from shelf to shelf
bringing each book back to where it belongs
from her tiptoes to her knees.
Her eyes erode the call numbers
while lyrics and numbers fill her head.

On the bright days a little hip hop has her
dancing down strings of shelves.
Other times she selects slow songs
and imagines the books are a part of her:
the early memories, destined dreams, the everyday thoughts.

Thoughts that thread through the stacks.
She tries to tuck them away before they’re lost
and wishes they could also be
placed so particularly in her mind.

You said it felt like someone stabbed your throat with a knife.
Your tongue was the knife that stabbed mine.

The bus driver sits alert
as he steers down the streets.
The clock tics,
the city shifts,
and he knows every storefront,
and he doesn't miss a stop--
although he's always slightly late
for the schedule that has bound
this college town.

The blue-speckled seat cradles me,
forehead against a grimy window.
I radiate heat against cold glass
and wipe away the fog.
Squinting I read the names of foreign signs
but my heavy eyelids flutter.

The bus driver sits stiff in his chair
but I am melting in my seat
which is now made of green leather-
and I am 11 years old.
The other kids are gone now,
for it's almost the end
of an hour and a half long route.
It's just me left, on the seat,
my legs extended across the aisle.
My eyes may be closed,
but I know every turn.

The crackle of the loudspeaker
challenges the traffic noise
that has become my silence.
"Anybody still on the bus?"
I sit upright and wave my hands
so that Bob can turn the bus on 16th street
to take me home.

Aluminum foil squeezes a treat whose heat
warms my back through the knapsack.
My friends and I, we climb, hoping we’ll find
a place to fill our stomachs and rest our minds

When we see it we know.
A patch of rock entirely exposed
overlooking the canyon where our voices echo.
Once our feet are suspended over the edge
high above the trees, I unzip my pack.
And the beauty deserves all my attention,
but my eyes are lost in another dimension,
distracted by a perfect breakfast burrito
one slip away, from unraveling in the chasm below.

It is purple sunrise mornings
the fog so thick it slithers
through the net mesh of our tent
and fills my cotton sweater
which still smells like the bonfire
that flickered between us last night
like the stars that wished me goodnight.

If only that fire could warm me every night
and I could always see the stars before
those purple sunrise mornings

could we eat oatmeal
in my dorm room again
waiting for it to cool
so the green apple doesn't
burn our tongues

we don’t always fill the silence
but i’m okay with
awkward chewing and sipping
of slow coffee mornings
as long as your words
fill the air not my screen

Today we noticed a dripping in the library.

We covered up the shelves with a plastic covering but drops from the ceiling hit the tile, splashing over the ground level books.
We did our best to carry those ones away.
But there we were: 2 college students, hopeless in the face of a plumbing disaster;
As the art history books soaked on the shelves

you caught me mid-sip
with a smile and a wave.
As the corners of my mouths rose,
a dribble of coffee escaped.

I brought my sleeve to my lips
thinking no one had seen
but looked over and there was
another, smirking at me