Rain on the night highway
Like constellations  
Guiding me at sea
Agitated sleep in a field of asphalt  
Fluorescent ribs on the grey car interior

Crossing state borders,
Into purple 6am skies
The sunlight starts the engine,  
Warming me from sleeping town cafes

The state park is empty this early
As light tilts from under the bridge
Empty roads and seagulls  
I start walking to keep the image untouched
10 miles later, I’ve seen redemption
In turquoise water
And concrete caverns  

I spread a blanket on the grass under a willow tree.
This is a scene I will paint---






I open my book, regarding the glass surface of the water.
Century-old footsteps listen to the shoreline,
The ancient murmurs connecting  
freedom from servitude  

I feel the cool water surround their feet
As they leave all they’ve ever known
Into a new country,
Sending a love letter to their family.

As I look up from my book,
Where they once stood,
Strangers smoke under the trees.

endless tirades of drunken tea, 100% cotton or cashmere.  mahogany polished, spiraling printed hallways and open rafters, dry summer heat and white gravel driveways.  the love for the deafening, harrowing silent divide.  not a single measuring utensil in the kitchen.  write a letter, seal it, see it off.  the leader and only follower.  holding someone’s hand that isn’t a lover.  sleep in the same **** bed, thin and worn but the softest feathery pink threads.  earth’s pulse slows, a meditative house.  pluck haloed moon threads to braid ritual belief.  art is observing closely, within, slowly, away.  it is fast, fire, air.  it is every sacral deranged golden filament scattering in sun-caught beams and rays of listening acutely to ecological love songs. awake from dreaming, downstairs on the wooden stool before the early sunlight, the days and days for her and her.  brushing one head of hair became two, became the sisters she longed for.  the rituals we seek.

There is a ladder in the woods,
A tall V pointing up, four trees connected  
Unwound DNA of our bodies  
dreams of intertwining above the sun.

Two sisters climb down either side,
Metal feet spear painted leaves.

There is a forest between the ladder,
And beyond, a glassless window of autumn.
Fallen leaves like angels’ slender bodies
Reading in the dirt; old wine and stale memories rinsing their mouths.

I wrote your words on porcelain leaves
Petrified in lucid air
Shimmering like wounds
In true light, I paint  
Illusory rendered responses

Who’s to say the scene is not real – she speaks, breathes, walks in light?  My hands?  Her soul between the leaves?  
Belief in what?  
A reflective gospel.

Palette altars scatter the earth.  
Habituative, neurotic wildflowers  
Crawl from mirrored pools inverted in innocence,
Inviolate rhythms, hymns of absence.

Les fleurs suivent avec tous les pas que tu prends
et tout ce qu'ils fleurissent
Elle m’aime un peu, beaucoup, passionnément, a la folie, pas de tout /

The leaves are falling, they shatter form syllables of your voice.
















It is in itself,

[As I look at her ghost]

Love, I am already in the ground.

The sun is setting and I’m not alone—
We hiked to the middle of the Appalachian trail,
I don’t know who I am  
But the colors are moving
Nothing has felt so pristine.

On top of white rocks,
This is not a dream.  
A ridgeline where we lay our coats on the diagonal granite
Hands lightly touch on cold stone
Over pristine valleys of moving trees
Stretching from the blue ridge mountains.

My heart is not falling—it is ascending  
Like the summit,
Like the valley below
Floating in space
On the spirit of boulders, we scramble up with open hands.
Covered in delicate bonsai roots
Connecting the longest trail in the world,
Two thousand miles between us but we’ve never been closer
   In a warm car, floral turtlenecks, squares of paper
  I close my eyes because it’s too much
And the sun is gone.

Small video collages of opening eyes
Neurons firing and  
Right times in right places.
Homes painted after hospital beds.

What else?

Every minute of the dream was the brightest orange sunrise
We were camping in the middle of the field
I looked at you inverted,
Accepting what we already knew.



My heart is split in different places.

crystal ball

I thank the moon
sensuality and scrying in black clear pool
what veils keep
full disk brightens sheer membrane
lilies open
snowdrops retrace delicate steps
pull back fresh white sheets
morning arrival stretching growing resonating closing
departure shrinking suffocating apology
taken off in navy blue clouds
outline rainbow hallows
midnight clouds lift
sunset pollen constellations scatter
golden handmade paper
cut and torn seams
repurposed cloth covering
calm enough to fall asleep with
curled against her sweet face
I’ve never dreamt until a deer
casts a shadow on my shadow in dim blue light

I thank the moon

a small kitten with one eye... sitting on the floor of a bookstore for hours.... a sunny day on an empty street in Baltimore... quiet gardens in glass boxes... warm desert bodies strung on the walls... in your hands... a ripe orange balanced delicately in slow light... shallow dark water with koi... a wall of orchids extending with ferns... we smell them on our tippy toes... the light was honeyed, indelible, embroidering our gaze...

pajamas in a museum... mirror mosaics on a wall outside the train station... frigid air removed our breaths... hot cider with cinnamon under colored lights... our fingers were close to thawing... her beige wool scarf... reminding me of my mother...

Soft brown bedsheets... canvases dripping with color... a memorial on the fifth... across the water, a skyline glitters as he holds the intimate illusion in his eye... without damage or harm... satisfied without seeing... we ran through tunnels of spiraling light like following the pen of a child’s drawing... an art that is faithful to yourself, not others, not the narrative...

gently **** this mind
with the sweetest summer’s kiss
empty garden trails
riverbed buried with sun
in warm dirt we dug our toes

breathe the blades of grass
drink sweet constellation dew
wandering sleepless
capitulate to the night’s
pristine underground

X

Some days in crowded streets,
Loud restaurants,
Drunk wedding receptions,
Laying on the grass,

   I look at my hands.
   They move in light and shadow
   Trompe l’oeil religion.
    
If I see them,
Believe in them,
Or trust them?

The canvas,  
The beach,  
The borderline,
The liminal space where my body is  

[mine]

asserting sleepless wounds cut like a knife
indenting and pulling splinters from tables
it tastes of forest paths
fungi returning sky to syllables
acres of where
veils descend upon twirled twine
fraying between fingers
frantic
numbing
november rains writing cursive letters
fastening the earth
slanting struck match
l’épée of cedar within smoke
upon incense glow
they assemble reeds
in dying light, retreat, stories upon dreams upon memories within our never-ending

the wall fell away: sun evaporates landscape, the cars, the ever present concrete, orchids resurrect inside, clawing fern wallpaper flowering baby’s breath doused in illustrious orange light thick as down blankets
graphite illuminates curves of bodies, a womb and a heart, 1063 degrees of interconnected

living in a greenhouse, northern frosted January feathers wood paneled, southern carpeted floor
salt covered opaque film
musty smell of ancestral altars
pianos tuned in the last century sing Austrian lullabies, purple wood peeled back, smiling gaps of teeth veneer cinnamon hues
the spirits of those we never met
but share cupids bow, brown eyes, high cheekbones,
the hunt for the perfect wine cap

the daughter will have a daughter, the sun crests over the mortar, up delicate tendrils of transpiring verdant circumnavigators
it’s midnight and the sun hasn’t moved an inch —// it spreads between webs of fingers, behind my teeth.  pulsing red clay with fingerprints, rabbit tracks, deer paths carving the canyon as spirits float by ‘’’
attune to them, sulfur in the dark

winter threads needle’s eye
turning wheels again and daughter knows
what grandmother thought
of sumac and dogbane, oxeye daisy and lemon balm
crescent moons imbedded in palms,
striped shells from freshwater creek click against teeth
trusted within sand, ever-present spine, joining figments and childhood never-ending
sand spills through fingers, breath before the ocean, terracotta speckling periphery of view

I can imagine, now, what she sounds like

I write letters,
Painted during golden hour.  Dimmer in the trees.  I must remind myself of it.
Walking up the fire escape and looking at the stars, I knock on the window, he looks gentler.
The most beautiful day here yet; the colors break down from pixels to prayers.
In person, virtual, ambivalent depths of shadow.
Peaceful and sincere, I need the essence of it.



I hope you’re having peaceful dreams,  
Smoke from burning mint,
Shakey & slow
Push energy back in me
What speaks colors in you

An oil spill underneath the ceiling light,
When you close your eyes, I am sunlight on water.
The reflection of my tears were colors
Gentle reminders to love.

If you ever miss me remember I didn’t walk away,  
I laid on the grass in the sun & watched the clouds,
Building cairns in the stream.


I was painting on the floor in your room,
It was raining in the basement hallway outside.
The walls were mirrors,
Trees and vines grew up your white walls
A foggy night and a stream formed outside your window
Where I snow fall for the first time.

A few days before summer break,
We went cliff jumping and it was warm again.

It is always lightly raining with open windows when we sleep together
There will always be more growing and learning
In your absence.

Small movements lift white sheer curtains,
As I sit at kitchen tables in silence,

Rain touches the window like a morning kiss,
Pulling me from a dream, or a seance by a string.
The breeze navigates the house like a breath or a flood:
Silk falling from silk,  
Words falling from bridges,
This air is a pleasant dream.

Choose what is real or not,
Resurrect lingering memories like  
Transparent negatives overlaid in your hands:
There is a light and dark,
But an inverse of each.
Sewn together in a warm mess,
Liquid and melting light in time
Habitually, it drips from your fingers
Like rituals of burying artifacts
Far beneath the sun.








Before the leaves fell and the frost protected thoughts in a numb glaze,
I fell into the steam of chamomile tea,  
Pervasive yellow sweetened air
Swimming through medicated words like a needle before surgery,
A silence that amputates and eradicates
Hauntings of resurrection.

Two candles on a mirror.
Lighter clicks, sparks, reflects.
Dual realities.
Two sisters, burning from
Separated souls.


A gold coin widens slowly with heat,  
the room bathes in energy, clear and warm.  


Heartbeats flicker over white canvas sonograms.  
Evening light spills from the horizon,
An overturned glass of iridescent breath.  
Clouds hover like a ghost, a new melody of space.  

I blow candles out.  
Their love remains.





Under the mirror, the memory of light unfolds, a mitosis of energy.  I regard the extinguished flame, tranquil smoke running through the room like a prayer.  Under the wooden table, a carving with the initials of his name.


The love wanders to your open hands.  They move and smear with oil paint, mixing the sage green tablecloth, kinetic orange heats a canvas.


Nothing is the same
Relaxing, water replaces air
Everything is different now.
Nothing is the same.

Sunlight still leaks from the window like  
Dripping faucets against a clogged drain.  Her hair was turning blonde again, like when they were younger.
Humming, she was
Remembering his hands



















An emotional limbo where forgiveness waits
Intermediate neglect in oblivion
Lapsing into another’s life,
What’s inside you is not like anyone else
Every instant, a new reflection

More than sinking, less than swimming

Float on,  float on,  float on,  float away

A small area of wooded shelter,
Hammocks in the sun, a warm fire with toasted sandwiches and beer,
It was where the rabbits chose to laze this evening.

The sky reflects in the muddy pools of our sticky footprints:  
The last mark of my being.
The air will diffuse into my body like a vaccine,
A warm bath,
Falling asleep.

Its quiet and her cuts have been cleaned.

Painted leaves sway above us like cathedral glass

They categorize memories of light
Illuminating ripe windfall on forest floor

She walks South from the setting sun,
Blonde hair bathed in colors of heaven
A boy follows her path with an orange cat

Where is the wilderness of childhood?  
The time spent where you and I were together,  
trapped, open yet closed?

The canvas glows fervently  
Wandering between blind contours of trees
Arms outstretched; feet bare
Toes drift on warm earth.

What did I say to him?

daylight diminishes with each passing day, golden sunlight bathes the early evenings with a subtle scent of warmth.  I trust that you are well.

snow begins to fall; it collects over the garden like antique film.  memories reorganize like the seasons.  i watch the garden through a gap in white curtains and become buried in the hibernation of ferns.  my mind can be sleeping and seeing.  withering velvet, muffled songs underground.  december light reclaims resonant summer heat, it echoes in blank pastel sky like a church bell.  

of all the many things in the little garden, i regard the ferns the most.  planted in my youth, we watch each other grow.  like an old friend, i talk to the darling ferns in my head about your memory.

coiled in fractal spirals, scenes gradually unfurl across the garden expanse in antediluvian ecologic masterpieces.  whispering buds relax their clenched fists in sunken earth and seek to taste light.  they capitulate when exposed to touch, bowing in my thoughts.

your green eyes captivate me; leaves that glow from within.  the colors stretch and soak in the sun, clairvoyant crystal gaze.  i see him in them, prophetic underclothing.  the garden expands and hooks to the fabric of the curtains, flickering from winter to spring.  

i have not seen another person in months.  i am not in the garden, the garden is me.  him.  leaves swell with my breath, growing and shrinking like the stars.

The morning air was cold in the forest.  
Sweeping black wisps in a microscope lens, her eyelashes outlined a delicately illuminated tapestry that reflected back.  When sunlight brushed them, a feathery frame changed; from crows flying to a gilded insect’s wing.  Laurel’s icy fingers fiddled the tubes, aquamarine humming with rusty umber.  In a warm mist of exhalation, dawn quietly unfolded into a cacophony of colors that flowed and collided in metamorphosis.  A self who is and is not - fluidly interconnected here nor there, alive nor dead.  Revelations echoed in the hall behind a closed door.  Falling asleep, the earth turned.  Waiting for wings, to remember or not.  Flutes echoed mournfully in the forest that day.

Late autumn leaves muddled under her boots as she stepped over dew-beaded clovers, eager for warmth.  Her canvas stretched across velvet pillowy mosses, crawling over pastel blue and pink linen rocks abundant with ancient fossils and lichen, phthalo and quinacridone.  Colors swam in waterfalls over the white noise.  Water wrapped each rounded stone like a gift, carrying the rains to elsewhere.  Tied together with root ladders of grandmother trees, who spoke quietly and whispered secrets.

She wondered who she would love, how many.  It was difficult to not be pulled back from here, now.  Now.  Now… Back then, soon.  It was difficult to think of anything else but this: the cells and molecules danced in the sun, exuberant, entirely animate.  They all called her name, over and under and in between.  Her limbs ached with longing and belonging.

The birds fell silent.  The hushing whoosh of water and wind lulled.  
Ornate filaments of starlight filtered through the last trails of fog.  Every inch of the forest was overflowing with love.  Colors moved independently of their origins.  She could stand here every day, chart all of the comets and meteors, earthworms and beetles.  The trees wrapped their boughs around her, reverent and wistful.  The art of existence is a radical, transcendental, immanent one.

Slowly, she became a tree.  To be regarded, to be kept.  Regarding, keeping.  Regardless of what happened in her story, she could lay down on the mosses and close her eyes.  Wild grasses would reclaim her heart.  Forest mice would build their nest in the cave of her ribs.  Love would go on.

She whispered her prayer to them, the mice.  Shadows slowly crawled.  The trees seemed to bend lower, listening, thinking.  She hummed a lullaby to the fog and the dew.  How she would see her friends again soon.  

Laurel recalled her first memory of dirt, gardening with her mother and overturning a stone.  Mesmerized, she drifted in thinking of her birth, her land, clover's grasses sprouting over her hands like clouds eclipsing the sun.  Something that didn’t hurt.  Maybe she would photosynthesize, warp the light around her body.  Become the light.  Heal.  Turn iridescent.  Make something new.

The thrush thrush thrushing of her brush on the cloth mirrored the contours, pushed the pigments into vibrant vibrations.

“Are you listening?” Laurel’s eyes drifted upwards, her painting half-finished.  The bristles clouded a glass of river water, clinking against the glass rim as sediment settled like smoke.  “Does this matter?”
We held your feet when you were born, bathed in us.  We remember.
Her irises stretched deep enough to swim in.  The forest held them in her hand like cool water.

A sunny patch of grass tilted into sunlight.  Sunlight tilted into a sunny patch of grass.  Laurel lifted her gaze, observed the highlight of each mountain and valley in her fingerprints.  The dirt from planting.  The body of earth.  She felt her own hands, twisting like gyroscopes.  Like parchment, she thought.  Scraped clean, hung, taught to dry.  Waiting for a divine word to be scrawled on them, charmed lilies proliferating the margins.  An illumination, an unveiling, an apocalypse?  The word of a god, punctuated by freckles and scars.  Unspoken, eyes closed under dirt.  There may not have been twice as many stars, but her book still felt light on her skin.

She did not question why one tree bent this way towards a patch of sun, or why the barks all felt different under her hand.  She accepted them for trees.  To be fossilized, to burn, to decay.  A fleeting thing, she embraced her verdancy.  The moss agate bookends were on the shelf with white painted trim.  Collecting dust, written, unwritten.  Known, unknown.

Turning the page, her arm swept over the sun, smearing light down to a glowing understory.

at a desk
i remember it was raining, i was 4 years old.

my childhood yard is foggy and gray, muddy and inundated with moss and clover and bittercress.  the rabbits love mustard greens and nettle and under the chipped-paint back porch.  the swing-set grows lichen, rusted chains and leaf littered platforms.  neighborhood kids are scared to play on it, but it remains for the squirrels.  plastic windowpanes frame this view, childhood really isn't that bad.  there's just a lot i actively try not to remember while experiencing it.

we painted wooden trains because of my mother.  we did almost everything because of her.  and it was raining, such a good activity to do when we couldn't play outside.  what a wonderful problem to have, to have to paint wooden trains with those I love, because the flowers had to grow.

we painted the trains supernova colors or neat orderly lines.  now dust collects on them.  when are toys forgotten?  is it a gradual decline, or a sudden shift one day?  do they ever think it was their fault?  i need to play with them, move their paint-sealed lips.  so they were not created in vain, they can speak and breathe.

in the desk were muddled crayons and pencil shavings, journals i never knew what to do with.  everything smelled like those pencil boxes from school, of reforested cedar.  sharp and woody, how can i justify learning times tables with a reclaimed forest?  shiny gray graphite rubs off on my little hands.  i am little, and i am not.

around the desk were my mothers plants, some quietly hanging brass  bells in the frosted chandelier.  home is always full of glass, colors, rainbows, vintage mohogany and soft white cotton linens.  places i want to roll around on, analyze every seam like a fine art piece.  or someone in a mental asylum.  a historic place, where rabbits and crows and squirrels are buried in the yard.  a historic place, where grandfather dogs are sleeping under juniper bushes.  i remember their cardboard shoe boxes, the chain dangling from the unfinished basement ceiling's pipes.  nothing marks their graves but our memory, what is more beautiful than a mind's image?  an untitled art piece?

at that time the carpet was wall-to-wall, before dad ripped it up and we saw old nail holes like constellations under the basement ceiling.  the carpet was a ***** cream color i could dig my toes and fingers in.  what a good problem to still have baby toys, to have parents 40 years older than me.  to have time and to hold.  to love other people's children because i chose to explore and make art and make mistakes.  the baby toys haven't moved, a lot hasn't.  crystallized or petrified, how could i be that special to another person?

the trees were growing in the yard, but you don't realize what is temporary until you outgrow it... it was a hot summer and i was sitting in an old ford 1960 green XL that smelled like old gasoline and mold, decaying basketballs and leather baking in the sun.  i love everything about you, old friend.  i'm sorry my education cost your life.  im sorry i care and i don't make a lot of money, you sacrificed so much.  gray and white and black.  now we go back.

to the left of the desk, a mahogany cabinet with pinewood derby cars, preserved pink and white wedding flowers float in a glass dome, speckled glass hearts refract light quietly on the shelf, and model cars sit neatly stacked, locked away with an ornate key in the wooden bowl.  like my great grandmothers books, margaret, who was my mother's most beloved second mom.  i wish i knew when i was younger how much you meant to her.  we climbed on your grave where your husband's ashes were hidden.  i wish to cook with lots of crisco and live with my sister in a house with a white gravel driveway, alone, playing piano and painting.  the shattered kitchen floor linoleum and creaky attic fans in your old kentucky house are all that i have of you.  i'm sorry family politics destroyed that house you loved so much.  i love it now more than i would have ever guessed.

art crafted by 4 children shimmered on the walls with pencil marks and stickers, ceramic tiles above the fireplace we seldom lit.  it feels like a pool being rained on, slowly being added to while losing definition in the picture reflected back.  dog fur clouded the periphery of the staircase perpetually, what a good issue to have.  he overate and didnt go on enough walks and wasnt in our beds enough, where he wasn't allowed.  his ashes are being buried with my mom.

if only there was more time to sit and be bored, waiting to grow.  if only quality time was a commodity, not a luxury.  if only i unplugged this computer and fell asleep, thinking of nothing but open green trails lined with trillium and wildflowers, being outside and having time.  

i sat at my small wooden desk, facing the window where bunnies played.  bored and impatient, i made a mental note to remember what it feels like to be 4 years old.  i remember thinking about kangaroos, as if that was important.  looking back, it really was.  

i am now 25 years old.  time moves like sunset colors, don't wait an instant.  the lines on my face are monet's haystacks he kept going back to, the light constantly in flux.  i spend my time with 4 year olds, they play and eat and sleep.  i watch their faces, thinking of how old and young they seem.  i draw their outlines in crayola pencil for them, soon to be scribbled over.  how sweetly they annotate their likeness with my moments.  how aware and unaware.  i cradle them when they cry, dance with them when they're happy, read to them and sing to them.  i don't feel like i'm good at my job.  i care and i spend time with them, holding them and their strangeness.  i ask them questions and get swept away.  i follow stories and am healing.  i missed a lot, i tried to fit in and be quiet.  when did i start?  when do i stop?  with them, i can't help but be myself.  i have to.  

driving on the highway, my father pointed at a break in the clouds, sunlight spilling through onto a distant forested hillside.  "grace!"  he'd say, full of optimism.  i never asked, but is grace the gap in the clouds? the light, or the land receiving the light?  i want to weave my body through the ribbons of sunlight, hold them and tie a firm knot.  how it feels to feel.  to hold and be held, suspended, full of grace.  maybe someone went to heaven, maybe someone is being blessed.  hearing joy wash over my father's voice, we were definitely blessed.  we were already in heaven.  i'm already made of light, i come to realize.  take a photo, receive it.  be taken and given to.  my reflection again in your eyes.  yours in mine.

i want the mundanity the gory the true the real.  i can't live at a desk, i have to write i have to remember i have to feel.  i have to save them.  i feel no joy looking at screen, tapping keyboard, clicking mouse.  i watch a window, hear the pitter patter of rain, and finger-paint the same spot over and over again.  tap, tap, tap.
the voices talk to me.  (it's glitter paint, by the way.  and sisters are singing.)

i cried when my wisdom teeth were taken out piece by piece because my mom took care of me, like i was forgiven.  i need my guilt absolved.  i need to be held and to cry in a woman's arms.  the children fall and feel sad and lonely and call their mother's name.  never once an "our father".  i pick yellow flowers from the garden, put them at her place.

i am a mother and a daughter and a sister before all.  i've known this lesson for quite some time, and i am strong.  i have to be for them.  ******* donald trump is president and i have to be.  i have to be.  i have to be.  i have to be.  for HER.​  FOR HER.  FOR HER.  FOREVER FOR HER.