i have a good cry
over the lives
i did not get to live

you kissed my skinned knees
to "make it better"
(a kiss for each bruise)
i wonder what it'd feel like to really
be kissed by you.

there are apples in the cafeteria
shrink-wrapped like they were
meant to be shipped off to outer space
but ended up here somehow

If I seem distant it's
because I am.
I abandon this city
like rain down gutters
trying to get back
to a home, a field, a shore,
no traffic, no smoke
where air is pure
& lungs breathe deep,
in a rhythm
untarnished by
tarmac & brick;
modernity's grip
that looks for life
& buries it, forgets
Earth has a pulse
a heart that beats
beneath us.

i was used to it:
the settling, unsettling
but never settling in
never settling down.

I've learned to doubt purple,
When fat white flakes cascade,
In ice blue eyes and winter skies
In a December rain parade

I savour the red,
Umbrellas and scarves unshed,
The blood doesn't pour, but the fireplace roars
Soft and alone in my bed

I swim in the grey,
Soft skies like seeing seas sway,
Puddles on tar,  frost on the cars,
Fat drops, like the birds, fly away

it's strange to write about myself as an entity
i have always thought of myself in terms of other people
the gap between them
a body of negative space.

as the fourth in my father’s string of children, i had to be everything. i was simultaneously the oldest, youngest, and middle child. not to mention, as the six of us were spread across three wives, the only child to my mother. i was a little of everything and a lot of nothing.