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Sarah Jul 2020
It's 1991, community-based drug treatments
are on the rise. People, on the mend, bending over each other to fix addiction

It's 1991, my mother is holding her
low belly, watching TV in the basement
Shared housing, bending over her arm, grip,
friction

It's 1991, have you heard of social feminism? Have you heard how
they do it in Sweden?
Inequality.
Household labor.
This is America. It's a "man's world"
Hold her belly, water, it's a girl.

It's 1991, rise economy,
rise homelessness,
rise, her chest
her ribs
her lungs
her body
expand,
rise, push,
rise, fall, rise, fall
pushing
household labor.
Sarah Jul 2020
I'm sure it's predictable by now, the starts
& stops, the usual way of speaking
like ink is coming out of my eyes,
your eyes,
every opening

     let's close them.

Too much velvet, too much smoke - too much love, it's love, it's always love. It's too much, we get it!!

I can't stop writing about flowers
   but I never go deep? Too
clever. Too witty. Too descriptive. too pretty.

I won't do it and wild roses will stay
a simple vision in passing, with nothing else thought to be said
in our
absence.
Sarah Jul 2020
I drew it best like a river once,
calm to violent
wasting so much space, un-hoped for, an unpleasant
surprise, and
never treated like I
was

There was a lot of laughter, dirt, loud voice, loud TV,
smoke filled rooms with
strangers
The power's out, the water's off
high again, sad again
off our meds again
but laughing
again

We're joking. We're troubleshooting.
We're running out of gas, looking for
quarters

We're knee deep in a creek & our
teeth are falling out.
Dogs, rabbits, skinny horses, pins, cows, rust, motors,
cars, and cars, and rain. So much rain.

It always poured until it didn't
Sarah Apr 2020
Summers where the wood
Was rotting,
the humid stench of
 Root rot,
Paint, and pine

Where tv trays were popped
In place,
while
mom & dad
Got high

Winters where home
Was bitter
Muddy dog prints
stained
Linoleum

Someone I trusted
put
Their hands on me
And I
Never
Told
anyone.
Sarah Apr 2020
In watching light flood
through a window,
there's a sort of
haze
It's sleepier and cloudier
extending
length of
days

I somehow miss the
   orchestra
I want to sit next to a
stranger
Or hold my
sisters' worried hands
and believe that there's
no
danger

I want to step into a
crowded bar
and tip toe to the
counter
Then tipsy, laughing,
saunter back
when all of this
is
over.
Sarah Apr 2020
For a second I smelled
smoke
the charcoal, burnt ash fog of summer
in
the valley

  in that second,
I felt sunlight
too
that feeling after endless days
of
gray

I've been lasting here
alone
  miles, states, may as well even be
planets far
  from you

Long days
long nights
and long thoughts about
   hot days where we were
together,
and we believed
the

good times
would last
forever
Sarah Dec 2019
I always thought I'd
  feel the same,
living off of fumes
you can't stop burning

I always thought I'd
  want to stay
Inhaling and
exhaling all our poison

I don't know if through
thick smoke
you can see where this
is going

I'm throwing out our
ashes and pretending that
it's snowing.
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