The first time you flew you told the birds how unfair
it is that the air is so much thinner up here, that below
they have to breathe the crushing weight of the stratosphere
just because they’re accustomed to it, and your gasping
for breath doesn’t make any sound yet every day
you choose life,

man and wife
man and wife

placed in a gunfight with a pocket knife and a guidebook
of expectations. You don’t remember filling an application
for this, for now-flightless wings or for being this daughter

I will love you
come hell or high water

but the first time you landed you didn’t write a thing,
you just drank tea out of a paper cup, no mug in the sink,
no need for anyone to look up when she came home.  
The first time you used the key in this new house’s door
it fit so perfectly that you didn’t feel at home anymore.
The *** boiled even though you watched, and you drank
out of a paper cup and no one looked up, it was
biodegradable and then it was
gone.

The first time you flew.
The first time you really saw you.
The first time you heard that song called poison oak,
the first time you said what you meant to say,
the last time you spoke.

I remember you bringing reds and oranges
back to the leaves as if you’d painted them on
grey canvas where there’d only been negative
space before, remember watching you watch
your works of life drift to the floor.
I remember you trying to look down
when a perfect snowflake landed on your chin.
Now I sit on the ground, just waiting
to hear that your flight got in.

I remember sitting in the crowded café,
remember knowing you had entered
by the way the room got softer, the way
the colors saturated and the crowds got smaller
and the windows magnificently taller.
I remember staying away.
I remember being afraid.
The sensation was not enough to drain
the warmth or color from the room
until you left it.

Kids will be kids
and boys will be boys.
We’re not who we are
and we don’t share toys.
Most days I can think
of yet better things
to paint and to trace
than my face, but that
acrylic blue, they tell me
I’ll rue the day
I let it highlight
my fingerprints
so well.
And so by fall, I  
am scrubbing my hand
off the bedroom wall.  
There are spikes inside
my unpeeled grapes,
in my father’s wine
and mother explains
about seeds and vines
but I forget, ask,
say it again, please,
she says write it down
instead and I tried
but I can never
find a pen.

In the beginning there was light
and so much fight to be drunk into
our very bones, not an eye sunk in,
nobody drunk except on finger paint
and what the stars might taste like
when we thought stars were small,
when there wasn’t far to fall,
before the white-tiled kitchen floors
grew too far away for us to notice
the texture of the black mortar
that held them in place like Elmer’s glue.
School is a bright maze of halls
that we walk through hand in hand
and mark our heights against the wall,
unsure whether to fly or to stall and stay close.
Our eyes are level as we hopscotch
round the ankles of women and men;
I think we’re going to be friends.
They weave a Charlotte’s web of pigtails
and bright red balloons, but isn’t it just
true that we feel safe close to ground,
tempted upward by gold and warmth
but torn, for the kitchen floor is close
and nice and cool, and doesn’t burn us
to the touch.