It is so tempting and somewhat expected
To measure a year in numbers.

Twelve months, twelve thousand
More dollars in a bank.

Today, eight months since spring.

In Colorado, only one inch of rain
Since July.

How many trees lost to fires?

I can’t count how many prayers.

Next year I will have three hundred and sixty-five days.

And I don’t intend on wasting
Any single one of them.

How devastating the quiet was
Without your paws pawing
Beneath my door

So excited to hear me snoring
So thrilled to belong to me
And I to you, friend.

So very quiet.

We made a game out of it
clapping mosquitos between our palms
while we sat on a blanket
in the middle of, honestly,
their house, covered in grass and dew.
And we quoted, I'm sure a very smart scientist
who said that they could be eradicated—
all of them
those tiny things with
black and white striped legs
and long thirsty throats—
without any significant damage done.
If that is the standard
for whether a thing should exist
or whether it shouldn't,
I pray no big and great thing
notices us, melting entire continents and
setting entire countries on fire.

We met you in the morning
Two miles up the mountain’s spine.
All broad and beautiful,
Full of intent, and of blackberries.
Before I knew it not three yards stood between us.
My two legs together were smaller than just one
Of your outstretched arms, reaching
For something sweet in the bushes. Quite like us, I think.
“Black bear” is the word we used.
You sauntered off, smelling of musk and honey,
Your child, all fluff and fight, in tow,
Probably entirely not knowing
That you were the miracle of the day.

I like the way my father talks about trees. Introducing me to the one across the street from the new house—"This one's a sycamore, and I'd say it's doing a **** good job at it." It'd be a cliché to say he thinks of them as his friends, which he doesn't. But it wouldn't be overdone to say that he knows them as if they were, which he does.

have the snails,
the owls,
the quiet and sleepy groundhogs
ever once complained
about something as wonderful
as the rain

It's a cliché, almost,
daffodils springing out of snow.
But does that mean that
it's not worth noticing,
maybe even marveling at?

There's a bird that sings
at 5 o'clock on any given evening
where the sun happens to be out.
He sits in the crepe myrtle out front,
so excited and boisterously
announcing yet another sunset—thank goodness.
I wish I knew just how to thank him.
I do not think that he'd appreciate a poem
as much as I would.
Then again, I could be wrong—
I usually am.

I told you a year ago
while we were buried somewhere
in the mountains, I'm not sure which ones,
that I believe in magic

and you didn't say so but
I think you silently agreed—
how could you not?

You too watched the sun climb from behind
the mountains overlooking us,
and heard how joyously the birds sang when it did.

I've spent hours, probably,
strolling the same streets,
walking the same trails seeing
just house quiet my feet
can possibly be on three inches
of dried up leaves,
wondering what the doves,
what the wrens are saying
so loudly, so charismatically to each other
and it's a wonder that
one hasn't said to me
"why do you need to know
what it is that we're saying,
is it not enough to know that
we're saying it at all?"

I don’t know if I’ll ever tell anyone
About how we fell asleep
Together for the first time in
Two months how
Even after I turned over on my side and
You turned onto your stomach
Because it’s just more comfortable
That way, we kept our feet
Tangled my toes beneath yours

And we may have stayed like that all night
But I’ll never know
I slept far too soundly

Does it mean anything
that the trees still had most
of their leaves when she arrived—
we spent the day tangled
watching them fall—
I introduced her to the larks, the wren,
the ever-busy squirrels.

And does it mean anything
that the next morning nearly
all the leaves were gone,
that I and the squirrels both
took a bit longer to wake,
to leave the warmth of our beds.

I wonder what it was that they were missing.

I can sit in the woods all morning
talking the ears off the birds
while squirrels laugh at me, or
I can sit silently, reverently and listen,
and I think I'll learn something important
either way

My father scours the yard with
sweet, intentional steps
He picks a red leaf from the field maple out front,
a yellow one from the tulip poplar in the back,
says thank you to no one in particular.
Later I sit at my mother’s desk writing, again.
I notice two leaves,
one red and one a soft yellow
placed gently on top of her daily planner.

Wrote your name on another bridge today,
the second one since I left a month ago.
In another world, maybe,
I keep doing this until I die.
In another world, perhaps,
you do the same with mine.

when winter comes and you're not here to warm me
I'll go find the patient
and gracious sun, waiting,
like always, to kiss the parts of me,
hands,
eyelids,
forehead,
that miss you most

I wonder how no one else stops to look
at the perfect, untouchable vertebrae of the clouds,
the illuminated flies and gnats and mosquitos
hovering like snow above the grass.

How no one cares to talk about october breezes
between their toes, in the curve of their ears.

How no one hears how earnestly the squirrels
run across cool pavement and up oak trees
where they'll spend the next four, maybe five months.

I hope I'm not the only one
who notices these little magics.

I spend five minutes trying to catch
a mosquito between my palms
I forget all about my book,
about whatever I'm writing,
just to avoid a bite
as if a bite would be too much to handle
as if I didn't already wake up
without you this morning

It’s not that
You don’t deserve poetry
I daresay that you deserve more poetry
Than could fill an entire book
It’s just that I have ignored
The rest of the world
For so long and
I owe Her
An absolutely gorgeous apology

I killed the spider living in my bathroom this morning. I’d left it alone in the corner for days while it ate stinkbugs it caught in its web—it’s October, 90 degrees, and my home has become refuge for anything hiding from the heat.
I was in the shower when I saw it out of the corner of my eye, sleeping I think, in a fresh web stretching from right beneath the shower head to the opposite corner. I was going to leave it there, squishing myself against the far side of the shower, the tile wall freezing cold against my back. It was just a spider.
But then it was an awake spider stretching its tapered, spindly legs. The spider looked at me and I looked at it. It must have interpreted this as an invitation and not a warning because it moved towards me across the invisible bridge it has spent all night building.
I immediately cupped water in my hands and threw it, drenching the web while the spider fell further and further down the yellow tile with each handful of hot water until it reached the tub floor and circled the drain like a cyclone before it disappeared.
A new spider moved in this afternoon, bigger than the previous tenant. It’s fixed itself back in the corner near the door and I think I’ll let it stay there until late autumn when the stinkbugs leave.

I write love letters
in a language I don't understand
delicately etched into the leaves
outside your bedroom window
traced into the sheets of a bed
I haven't been in for months
The sentences, the stanzas sound stranger written
than they do when you speak them
mixed and matched
my pen tripping like my tongue over
words and sounds I've never been able to speak

it has been two weeks and
the fantasies are starting
the daydreams where you show up
in the middle of the night hands and breath
shaking
clothes anxious to take their place
on the floor in the corner
where we are no longer lovers
in name or shape
we are sea and mountain we are
paint mixing spilling
into and out of each other
the daydreams where we stay
laced and woven
beneath your grey blanket
until the doves start whispering about us
sometime around seven in the morning

I'll lie to whoever comes next
"I don't like being called baby," I'll say but
what I'll mean is that
it will never sound as good in her mouth
as it did in yours

a light powdery layer of pollen settles on my laptop, my coffee cup, my toes which are seeing the sun for the first time in seven months.

the sun heats my right leg and I find myself strangely anticipating the day this warm kiss will become a hot red burn.

the birds have been yapping on since seven in the morning, and I can only assume that there must be plenty of gossip to catch up on since last august.

I'll not write poetry
until the poetry
begs to be written

february was a siren
each day—a breath
each hour—a heartbeat
each moment—the tick of a clock
the wind is not the wind no the wind
was a whisper, a call a beckoning
to both the cold of january and
the wetness of march april may
each of them a lover themself
she doesn't know and the moon
won't tell her what she is
not a siren, a nymph
the breeze—her kiss
the sky—her soft cheek
the trees are her dance and
the night is only her shadow

what do we do with



the vast sea of silence



between the small spaces of sound

what good is it
to be a writer
who never writes

-I'll never call myself a writer again

I've become a museum
in which you
are the only exhibit

the first sun of December
accompanied by a chilled wind
and frosted leaves, decorated rooftops
came with a soft "hello"
and a gentle "good morning"

sometimes I forget
where my body ends and
where your body begins
where the boundary lies and
sometimes I wonder
if the boundary even exists

during the last week of september
the grass wore a thin layer of frost
that I could have sworn was jewelry

as autumn quietly approached
the cold air against my fingertips,
hanging out of a cracked car window,
began to feel less like a bite
and more like a kiss

have you heard the way that girl speaks
her voice cracks skies in half and splits seas in two

It should take more to bring me to tears.
I shouldn’t quiver at the sight of the moon’s light peeking through a cracked window onto your bare chest,
wrapping your bare breast in a blue glow
like it does the crest of the mountain, a convenient twenty minute drive away.
Yet here I am, placed perfectly parallel on a disheveled mattress,
Skillfully settled between your naked body and a clothing adorned floor,
hiding from your view my wet cheeks and misty eyes so that I won’t have to explain why the sight of you
does to me what lightning does to trees.

her eyes were so warm
I swear they could melt steel

your clothing fills the space on my floor
with such defined intention
like that of a form cast onto an abstract canvas
perfectly articulating and punctuating
wordless conversations from the night before

first you began to love me
slowly, ever so slightly
and then
suddenly, violently
like a wave that has been waiting
centuries to crash

on that last drive home
down that same crowded road I'd driven a million times
I prayed for red lights
and cursed the new hotel
that dared to alter the skyline
I'd been staring at for ten years
and wondered what else would be different
when I came back
I wondered if I would come back

the sky began pushing out the june air like it was
a visitor who had long outworn his welcome
and pushed us along with it.

and so with grace she parted with us
and welcomed july like a lost lover.

it's like she knew that whatever we would grow
would never fit comfortably in the heat of mid summer
and was better suited for the dew drowned mornings of september.
like she had a premonition that the shape of us
would quickly outgrow the box we spent two months apart building.

and so with a slight breath
she introduced us to a late summer wind
carrying both a silence and a secret that neither of us
yet had the ears to hear.

the clouds effortlessly part for the sun
so she can get a short glimpse
of the girl the moon keeps talking about

I begin to envy the sun
Who sees you dance in the morning light
I start to resent the sea
Who is lucky enough to feel your touch
I grow jealous of the moon
Who gets to know all of your secrets
When all I have is
The occasional evening text
And blurry photos taken by your friends

and then it was may
and the air touched us
like a lover's wet kiss

the trees tell each other
about a girl they've seen
the conversation dancing up their vines
whispers of her shared between their leaves
"I've seen her too"
says one to another
now even the birds listen in
using freshly bloomed ferns for cover
"I've seen what she does to rivers
what she does to seas
how she cracks the dawn
and brings the sky to his knees"

your eyes flicker open
only slightly and
the dawn holds its breath
waiting for you to rise

it's the way you delve into me
like I am the most divine flavor
to ever grace your tongue
your lips pull prayers out of me
that would put those
ancient hymns to shame

you wonder why
I get so frustrated
when I try to draw
it's because my hands
will never know you
as well as my eyes do

It’s a quarter past eight in the morning
The birds are singing, they’re getting better at their harmonies
As the weeks pass
I count four different songs, mingling together, pouring in
Through the window we left open all night
It’s finally warm enough to let the breeze
Carry through my small over priced apartment
There are new leaves on the trees, my favorite color green
You leave new fingerprints everywhere
Like I’m your favorite book and you’re rereading me
For the third time
The curve of your smile compliments
The arc of your lips,
The curve of your hips, eclipsing the morning light peaking through
My ***** window
You say you could stay like this forever

you plucked at my heart strings
like those of a harp
and pulled music out of me
when I was so sure
I had been bent
permanently out of tune

it rains every time I'm in your city
you say that it's a bad omen but
I think it's just because
the universe is trying her hardest
to grow flowers out of stones