I live
I creep
on tiptoes.

I'm the dogs barking
at the end of your street
the cars honking
outside your window
the fly buzzing
behind your ear
I'm all the sounds
you mistake for silence.

On tiptoes
I peer through the window
and watch wide eyes
straight backs
crisp collars
check their watches
and wonder where I've gone
and wonder why I've gone.

I think if
I step softly enough
on tiptoes
I could see everything
I could be everything
without leaving behind anything
not a sound
not a footprint.

am I no longer a mystery
because you have been
inside of me

I am-
sugar sweet stuck-
On the idea that something
Is better than nothing

An artist too lazy to make any art
So what am I?
The sleepy commitment holding your hand in public places
An enormous gratitude lounging in between spaces with a stain on her shirt
Always seeking to be the next big thing

A stoic
Unable to process any other philosophy
that doesn't kiss me when I'm nervous
Lights turning on in the afternoon
And the warm glow of knowing people are inside
There
Ready to open up the door and invite you into the individual smells that occupy their reality

I am I-don't-remember-the-city-anymore girl
Sterile buildings and antiseptic coast
Are both memory and fiction
I am everything's-sort-of-familiar and yet exactly obscure
A contrarian careful to never admit that everything
Will make sense with enough persuasion
In the corners of my mind sits a woman
Smoothing out creases of my brain like the folds on bed sheets
Or the wrinkles in a shirt
And I allow her to because I love her
And I believe that what she does is affection
And maybe I'm right
Or maybe I'm wrong and I was never an artist
But something else entirely because that's so much easier

we say
that “nothing lasts,”
and we’re too old to ask
why gold can’t stay past
sunrise

we get
by folded, passed,
and sold en masse,
kept cold and
advertised

we choose
to mold and mask
ourselves solely after
the soulless laughs
that leave us

it’s true
that holding fast
is bold, but glass
breaks wholly grasped
when heedless

with hearts left
swollen, gashed
from a scroll-on-past
control mastered
with age

we chase
a goal of basking
in rolling grasses
where something gold
can stay

I sprung at the pinnacle
Unwriting my chronicle
With love non-reciprocal
I shall start anew
I laid bare in muddle hub
With beasts of animal club
I'm stuck at the stub
And solitude brew