In the mornings I stayed in the blue, carpeted room.
My Cello played the best friend, while I played upon its bare back.
The halls sat silent there.
The walls, bear aside from the occasional music note half sticky-tacked to the white cement, only emphasized my isolation.
They hung yellowed from UV light, and their own forgotten presence.

After the day slipped by,
Through Stephen King book pages
And colored comics,
Through love notes scraped into wooden tables,
And the ring of my own repose draped upon me by scrambled, and passing conversation
I would make my way to the baseball field.

5’4” and nearing  200 pounds
My ardor was never withheld even in the face of exclusion.
I tried for the team
But when the roster ruffled in the fading sun behind the bleachers
I made myself a part of where I was not welcome.

I loved the team
Even as snide comments slithered
Through the teeth of passing players,
Even as the coach spat not a centimeter above the toe of my white, worn tennis shoes
I came day in and day out
If not to catch the practice ***** then the occasional smile of young girl—a pitying young girl, but a smile nonetheless.

The life bodes loneliness,
But to me it presents possibility.
Never doubt the adequacy of introversion.
The quiet mouth begets the much more boisterous mind.

I get to watch the moon rise as the sun sleeps
I don't have many permanent friendships
that's either a blessing or a curse—I suppose you choose.

Sometimes getting stomped on just rubs the gravel into my worn body,
but it's pressed there softly with each step
Some kind of love few are familiar with.

I guess I bring a kind of solace
to the overworked brain,
and the underworked body.

There are regulars;
people who come with the pink of morning,
some with the sun and the wind,
and others only with that of the silent night.

Some days they take memories;
Rocks pressed in the rubber folds of their souls,
Mornings they will forever miss,
Tears they drape across their imaginary finish line,
Words they will speak only to me,
Thoughts that come with the discomfort of this passion.

They take breaks to push their fingers into the dirt of my body,
sift the sand up through their fingernails--
perfectly painted, and they still grab at my chest.
Pushing rocks between them and their polish,
I am left pieces of pink.
That must be some kind of love, right?

There is something that has been bothering me almost all summer and I didn't really know what it was until I spent the day with Claire, the girl who has been my neighbor for the past six years of our lives.
It wasn't even until after the fact that I realized what it was. We talked about a lot of things as we went to hit the town.
She told me about how she would be leaving and headed off for college. Then she told me about every friend she had, and how excited they were to get as far away as New York City.
All of these people that I had known, but not really KNOWN, were pushing and packing to fit every last thing they could into some bags, and onto a plane where they could FINALLY sit down in a seat, release a sigh--because the day is here, and get as far away as they possibly can.
They are droning on about the here and dying to get to the the there, wherever there is, insistent that life is better and brighter somewhere else.
At first I felt so left in the dust, but I realized that wasn't what it was.
I felt offended. I love Austin, every spec of it.
I love it's grasses both green and yellow that smell like cinnamon when you breathe in deep on a hot day.
I love it's hills, it's plains, it's rivers, it's lakes, I love the puddles that pile up in downtown's pottholes on a beautifully rainy day.
I love it's trails, it's sunset, and it's moonshine.
I love every race runner lizard and every single summer night.
I love the subtle breeze, and the slow moving trickle that comes with a Texas creek.
So I just keep on asking,
is the grass really greener anywhere else?

Put everything familiar inside of a red raft,
on smooth mud-covered waters,
And as his heals sunk to the sand
I didn't know the compassion that was coming.

Your vastness encompassed not just my body,
but my mind.
I was encircled in your silence,
Your golden sun that by night was replaced by an even more enormous beauty;
Lost in your curved and jagged love.

Birds of every blue,
water that tickles back as you touch it,
and wheat brims that stretch for miles.

Those Rock edges,
two hundred feet up,
they leaned down.
Leaned down and grabbed around the small of my back
and the Earth hugged me--
warm and familiar

Then released me back to my boat
I lay:
face to the sun - back to the river,
and whispers of wisdom created ripples in the water.

The warmth of the rubber took to the curve of my spine
Feeling like I'd never been let go.
I don't even think I realized how much I love you
Until our eight hours wore down—too quickly.

So as I left my memory,
I leaned my face to the sky,
pressed my chest to the sun,
And tried to let you know
That I was hugging you right back.

Covered in the soot
of last years math lesson
his drooping, purple button up looks as though
it has soaked in as much chalk
as he has knowledge.

A fragile bent-over body
even more worn than his blue jeans
and his thin, but wrinkled hands.

He is witty
Calculating,
and as cool as the deep grey slate
that he writes his stories across.

His white hair matches his dusty fingers--
dry,
and thinning
with nothing much left
to give.

I imagine him going home to a wife
Even though I have never seen
a ring.
His thin, and brittle body
Taking in the warmth of a woman.
A soft  woman
The only one who knows how to love him.
She fills up the edges of his concave bones
the tender heart that he never had.
A Juliet who escaped his callous,
chalked-over hands.

A human
that can, somehow,

make him Smile.

It's been a long while
but I've no trace of time.

I'm covered in brown mud,
piled over with rusty
red and orange leaves.

I lay at the foot
of what now,
is an old friend.

It's not easy
to get much sunshine
the large Oak's roots
are what both isolate
and keep my company.

I'd been loved
a long while
but that story
is an old life lived
a memory
that became a fantasy
time stretched
until it's bonds broke.

They tried
to recover me,
for a short while
for something
that mirrored
commitment
at such a young
and impressionable
age.

They hunted
in and out
of trunks
of the large Oak's home
never to find
where I lay.

Embedded
in October's leaves.

Yet,
distance
didn't make
the heart grow
fonder.

I'd been lost
and long forgotten
at the brink of dusk,
at the ring
of a more warming
love.

They came back,
once or twice,
to test
the shaded wood,
the darkened dirt.

They came back
until leaves
covered me
eye-high.

If they were still yelling
for the track of my presence
I could no longer hear them.

Even if
they were still scouring
built-down woods,
I could no longer
see them
allow them
to catch my eye.

Even if they still loved me
I could no longer feel them
covered
by cracked dirt,
and crumpled leaves.

The roots
had become my lover
now
grown to hug
my rounded hips
my heaping
dirt-covered
smile.

The wind
doesn't play with me
much
only to allow
a sweeping
kiss of leaves,
or to pick
the dirt coat
from my back
and donate
to a better cause
the warming
of a seed
that tiny
Christmas Rose.

I quit
listening
long after
I quit
looking,
looking for the boys
that had once
loved me.

Only then
did he come
sticky handed,
dressed in metal,
and armed
to save
a princess.

Engrossed
in his enactment,
poking swords
at my Oak
demanding
emptied branches
release
his Rapunzel,
I saw him
catch glimpse
of my rounded edges.

I
didn't notice
until
I looked up
into those
adventurous
eyes.

He knelt,
gigantic
in young age,
he plucked me
easily
from my big
Oak roots.

He wiped
dirt
from my body
slowly
and softly
like I was
new-found
treasure
Like I was
the gold
every child
hunts for
in their own
back yard.

He ran
his rough thumbs
on my edges
never lifting
his eyes
from his fingers
on that short
walk home.

He rinsed me clean
under
warmed water,
wondered
about my stories
then dusk came.

I was tucked
warm
under his protection
under that imaginative
mind,
and the boy
made me his own.