Black boxes.
Smell of delicate decay
like kindling first catching fire.
Pigeons bathing in the gutter
glitter and iridescent feathers
covered in the banal bile of boys,
their insides strewn on the ground.

Fire ant mound,
stepping on those was my childhood.
Coulds and woulds and shoulds
creating those is my adulthood.

Headphones in.
Glasses on.
You: a con
bright and lustrous like the cut of a gem
coating the burgler
in wishing and
twisting of her stomach.
Because if she could hold it
just once
maybe she can justify her birth
prove her father wrong.
Life is about worth.

They say the pills have
A long half life
Like nuclear waste.
Carbon.
Dividing and dissolving
Away the sadness
Oh-so tangible
A tangerine of despair.
"Orange is the new black,"
They say

Thinking back there was that time,
days when the sun shined - just for you
You took the long way
and peddled through the puddles
Green road - a tunnel of maples, undercover
letting go, no hands
Youth's fearless reign
of summer

today you wrapped your hands around my waist
long fingers over thumbs, your nails were red and
chipping at the tips
You called me pretty names for pretty things, but
I’m Sylvia P. today.
look in my hand
count the beads between your fingers, tell me again
how I found my name beneath a crackling bush.

it was sunday [i remember] and my god squeezed the earth
between her thighs, crushed out water
clouds sank, my eyes lost the hem of my dress.
old man with the bell gave me a
reddish smile, his face cracked
he say a penny for the poor does a soul good
I slipped one in my
back pocket then
patted it tight for a rainy day.
you talked much too much, voice floated through the fog
and I heard too much

I was wringing out tears from my dress
when it fell like a note ringing out
and spoke to me then
and I spent my penny on a life.
I bought my life beneath a crackling bush.
I walked with it, down streets and up streets
and the hours turned my skin black and
my nails chipped off but my life stayed,
it did.

beads one, two, three, it starts with an S
ends with a
choker. absence of breath.
in moments like this
your words on my neck reminds me I'm
still alive.

a penny's worth of string and beads and
my life was bought on the lord's day.

we went to the vista
in september.
and after we'd travelled the path
along the edge
Lorie stood to look at the view over the
mountains, and I bent down
to find the tiny iridescent snails
sleeping in the dust.

and we stayed for a day

and it fit us so.