this is the part where your feet share a slip on shoe
because you felt hot, and now you're cold again,
and one shoe is cozier than two.

honestly, watching a man inch past me with a dull red shirt
and a duller red walker to match,
socked feet swollen in brown Velcro sandals
makes my own legs twitch and my heart sing;
it reminds me to take a flying leap from this table
outside a conventional coffee shop
and kick my legs into a graceful stride
until I trip on a pebble and come tumbling down--
such is the art in my elegant facade,
of which I am only convinced.

really, I'm just here so I can write,
pretend that I'm a fancy published writer
with leagues of followers salivating
at the thought of new words from my finger tips
that frankly do type at hare speed.

I'm writing to the beats and poetry of your songs,
the playlist you created and shared
once you asked for my instagram handle.
enthralled is a good word:
I'm enthralled by you, by your presence
and the tiny amount of ****** hair under your chin,
how you arch your eyebrow and push back your long hair,
shorter on the sides all around.

when I close my eyes your hand is on the smallest of my back,
and you're guiding me in front of you, along a narrow walkway,
until we reach steep stairs, and we laugh at where we are
because we've both been here before, before this moment that
connected you and I and the others around us
who faded once morning grew near.
mocking vampires, we welcomed the sunlight and ran in its wake,
shoulders bouncing, hair whipping in the mist, laughing hysterically.

I visualize a trend
between the beginning and the end
of first meeting and sudden departure.

Remember the gasp,
the intake of air in the inhale?
when you first saw me your eyes widened
and you drove your small red car with vigor,
eager to drive us to the light that would
better spread across my face and dance in my eyes:
fixated on your dark brown beard and your own
bemused green eyes.

I don't think you ever breathed
past the conundrums of our time in space,
pushing past the questions
with pursed pale lips,
a tiny opening.

I am not as difficult as I seem,
and you are not as smart as you feel,
if you feel anything at all
for if someone asks you whether a trouble is really that
and you sigh and nod through the phone and say,
"Yes I believe you are right,"
then I'm sorry to not be wrong this once.

You left me hanging
up the phone,
looking around the empty classroom,
and tears sliding mercifully,
warming an already warm face.

You don't know this, but I loved every part of you
that I knew.
Every glance, whisper, silence.

Even now, when my voice cannot reach you,
and my hand reaches for the phone,
and then remembers.
Even now, I touch my lips and imagine yours
pressed close against

sharing our breath
and our lives again.

I love that my cat decides when we eat cat food and drink water.
(My cat eats the cat food of course; I just have to put her first
in the sentence because she's cooler than me.)
She looks up at me, lazy green eyes suddenly expectant;
tail twitching and curling into an upright S,
she guides us between thrown pillows and an oversized
Doberman kennel,
door wide open, confusing my path,
but Pasha gracefully darts past, a prr of joy escaping her tiny cat lips.

When we reach the kitchen, all five seconds of our journey,
I reach for a glass, and my cat, she meows,
loudly and loudly-er until I acknowledge her cat bowl.
She insists I stand by it, and she looks at me once more,
waiting for my fingers to materialize on her fur,
petting her neck and her head.
Once she is satisfied, she buries her head and I close my eyes.
And we drink. We eat.

Listen child,
for I will tell you the ways of the One
who knows what you do and what you do not.
For truly you are alone within yourself,
save the divine whispers and the evil beckonings.

Life is not gray as we tell ourselves in comfort,
but it is the constant dichotomy of black and white--
sharp contrasts at war.
This war arose before you were born, before I,
before the first peoples.

You will face many challenges.
You will cry, scream, curse the Name
which gave you life so freely,
with such little to gain
and so much more to seek through
your surrender.

You do not come from me, my love.
I merely housed you, birthed you, fed you,
nurtured the spirit within.
Soon you will leave this place we call
safety.

You will stand on the precipice of the unknown
and outstretch your arms to where they naturally reach.
You will taste the splendid meats and drink from the lush fountains
of wine.

But my darling, my most beloved child,
do not fear the unknown:
it is all around you,
breathing through our skin.
Sing through your lips, through your smile, through your fingertips
the words I have taught you thus, the words you knew all along.

Love does not give what it does not freely take.
Know that life is transient, and all your joys and griefs
will crumble beneath your feet and dissipate and subtly as they came.

Feel of the wind in your hair.
Let the gusts whip you pants against your legs
and away again
until you sense the rhythm of the Universe.

your truck drives by;
blinds me with shiny red paint
that seems much more pristine than when I drove it.
mud aside--there will be mud
because that's the nature of your play:
together you romp in the open terrain
over grassy hills and splashing through
beckoning hot puddles that douse your windshield
where tiny wipers wipe in reverse--
that always killed me.

your truck drives by,
and I look away,
then immediately look behind me
and search in the flash back, the seconds of time
when we were in the same space
at once
because there are no mistakes in this universe,
and I find meaning in this moment:
the red, bright, mud,
especially the sound of my sobs,
drowning out the stereo.

clean lines cut shiny wet skin

cold menacing eel eyes meet
a jellybean nose child's sticky fingers,
calculating; deriving the smoothest way
to unfasten Oshkosh suspenders
in a sun-drenched park, with fierce
protectors, and the wrath of an angry God,
one that judges perverse men and protects
innocent children,
but God must be on vacation;
too quickly, aplomb aplenty,
he slithers past the slide where
a trio of blond ringlet drenched heads tantalize
when the boys hop and jump
their curls excitedly bob, mimicking the children's movements.
the man, he waits, tucked
in a leafy green pardah, a veil.
the sun crawls into the clouds;
thunder bellows in the distance,
and like a mercy, a tiny raindrop
hits his eyes, which he has closed
in respect of this jubilant miracle.
the mothers grab their own sticky handed babies
and run for drier places
and safer
though they only heed the rain
and not the man peering from the soaking foliage

flash of lightening.
darkness.
a scream.
silence.

this is bigger than the end result.
you found a way to hold the papers together:
a necessary tool, matte crimon, reliable by brand,
but what happened to those before?
have you forgotten?
small, ergonomic, stark white against teal--
designed to stand tall and upright on any smooth surface.
it seemed so promising, potentially the one that would
glue together the edges of paper neatly at a crisp corner.
then mishap.
a human error, as every error really is,
and the staples lodged themselves deep within a tiny cartridge, immobilized.
an enigma.
and it was on for the next source of solidarity and office supply strength

I keep them near, every failure, every disappointment, every almost was,
never will be
because when I am alone I am surrounded by family