You should know
                 That I don’t normally do this.
                             Words come easy
                                 and shape does not.
                              I know the purpose, though,
                 And have felt the effects,
     a flowing melody
                 a short prelude
                             A bowstring across a violin.
                 I’m sorry.
             Sorry that the river rushes
                 at the wrong times and,
     sorry that I haven’t warned you
                 of the waterfall.
                     Sorry that I write
                 in pulses and not lyrics,
             sorry that the sun sets too early
                 over somebody else's mountain.
     Sorry that I can’t start again -
                 the suspense of pause
                             has already leaped from my lips
                                         and the fluttering that is suspense
                     has melted into the river
                 and all that remains
      is the value of silence.

Dear best friend, if this were a letter it’d been in writing for at least the last ten years. It starts with a girl who didn’t need a best friend, so of course she was going to find one anyway.

Dear best friend, if this was a letter there would be no plot, introduction-body-conclusion, or ******. There would be a long, long beach, snaking against the pull of the ocean, that point where the sand is in the crick of the hourglass, and time slows, not stops. I saw, you there, dear best friend, maybe lost, maybe adventurous, but not looking for a best friend either.

Dear best friend, you’re so easy to talk to. We crouch before the bonfire that tickles the scaly sand, melting between our toes, and see the world in the smokescreen that is the stars. We timeline our lives, diagramming the intersections and the parallels of our futures. Our fingertips brush against each other in fire-tinged darkness. We are mapmakers with our toes in the ocean.

Dear best friend, I’ve never been a good writer. Not the way you are, the way your words grow thriving cities in front of my eyes, or corner me between laugh or confusion, or strum my imagination at its bass strings. When I write, I try to color in the blanks you leave behind like footprints in the sand. Did you leave them for me? Or do you truly not know that the wind from your sail tugs at my face across an ocean, here alone next to our bonfire? When did I start needing a best friend?

Dear best friend, this letter wasn’t supposed to have a ******.

Dear best friend, I hear that time is shaped like a figure eight. That must be why I see you stumbling over the sand, a zigzag skate to our flickering embers. I feel your shadow as I approach, a reflection of my uncertain soul. There’s too many words in the air between us, but I still need your fingers clamped around my forearm as we sink to the ground, much the way you need mine. When did you start needing a best friend?

It’s peaceful here, dear best friend, as we watch the stars, not chart them. The warmth from our fire wraps around me like an easy blanket and rests mildly on my eyelids. I don’t have the strength yet to stand and you don’t have the confidence to speak. Just for once, let’s let a story go untold, snatched up by the salty wind and hidden in an ancient treasure chest. X marks the spot of a sand-kissed promise to open the chest someday.


Dear best friend, I don’t know when I’ll see you again. I’ll lean against the curved glass of life and feel my way through, sometimes blind, sometimes half-blind. Maybe there’ll be music too, the quiet breath of an underground oasis and a sleeping city. Maybe you’ll hear it too. Or maybe it’s patterned into the edges of our souls, a calling from the beach that is my heart.

Sincerely,

There are too many words in English
(for me, at least)
for what a fire does.
None of them tell me
what a fire is -
for that, i suppose
all you need
are images
and memories
and eyes.

And there is no point
(for anybody at all)
trying to describe what a fire looks like.
No point in charcoal imagery
and allusions to hell
and poems with holes in them.
Because that’s all a fire leaves behind.
Charcoal
and what feels like hell.
This poem would have holes anyway.

But there is always a reason
to fill these holes
with words.
Why is it
there are always words
when there are holes?
Oh,
why are there words?
Yes, words are human
but god,
so are the holes,
those between the spidery embers
that we dare to call trees.
(which are human too.)


And since I’m also made
of holes
and words
and dying embers
I (instead) focus on those holes between trees
and think that
wood is not really food for fire
and realize that
this wasn’t supposed to be about me
and pretend that
I am not at a loss,

Fitting rooms and cracked cocoons,
White lights and expected frights.
Procedure: avoid the mirror. use your eyes.
Don’t think about which better lies.
Clothes on, clothes off,
You already know enough is enough.
Clothes on, clothes off.
Don’t think about how it looks, but how it feels,
How you feel is how you look.
Lights off, clothes picked, of course, door sealed.

Thinking: it’s not enough just to feel
It’s more than enough to proceed.
If the lights are too dim you can’t see at all
If the lights are too white you’d rather not see.
You already know enough is enough.

So: for now we’re okay with a limited view,
Yes, we can’t see ourselves but no one else can too.
But I’m just about done with enough is enough.
Maybe someday it’ll be more than enough.

The stories I have to tell may not all be true. This is why,
when I break open my fortune cookie at family dinner I
get a message, poetry is for the selfish. Words that come
from my father who holds my cosmos in his reading glass,
thoughts stolen from my mother who is determined to curve
my shadow into a snow globe.

You see, I have a theory about resistance: I exist
in the tension between warring magnets, a wormhole
between universes that have no blue and green for me,
my soul a tribute to the fact: poetry is for the selfish. I made
my apologies already, sorry for being loud in the wrong
ways and quiet in the right ones.

You see, in this life I can have only one favorite color but
in reality the answer is always C#. In this life I have woven
a web to keep my head above the clouds just so my feet can sink
two inches into ocean sand. Poetry is for the selfish, says the spider
at the crown of my head. And if all I can allow myself is four letters,
I’ll take them with the uneven edges of piano keys and the shadow
of something more wholehearted.

I learned how to write from ghosts,
at a time I didn’t trust anything
more concrete.
Afraid of the ravens, searching for my eyes,
I drew heat from the thinnest whispers
the most deceptive mountains.
And when I couldn’t take it, I also grew feathers,
to escape the birds tearing at my hair.
Letter by letter, I claw back.

I learned how to write from the bottom of a cave
a place I thought I’d been to
already.
I felt it this time, the poetry
humming from my lips
and my heart
tip-toeing across an open window.
The sun pours in, dripping fire and honesty.
I swallow.

I learned to write so I could follow the river,
imagine the mirror
that is a drop of rain
so that I’d find the curve
in the plane of my soul.
And now, I write from the ghost
of my thoughts,
the metallic edges that spin breathing colors
the worlds in which I have wings.

Say I defined time in quarters -
A flash of lightning, an inflamed heart
a silent revolution, a fallen photograph.
Suddenly life is too short.

Say I divided a circle into thirds -
Hush, no space for shelved dreams
And buttoned up plaid shirts.
We do not break bread with discontinuity.

Say I had two hemispheres of life -
too many secrets spill from my ears:
the nook where I braid my hair into knots
the reason not to walk a beach at night.

Say I was brave enough to erase all lines -
unexpectedly, it is not enough, not at all.
I breathe even with the wind-whistle in my skull,
but then it is not a breath, how unready am I?

regret number one: i didn’t do it for love
i confess i know too many languages
i didn’t ferry the moon across my heart.
too much fear to break the rules.

regret number two: i wrapped my voice
into a seashell and buried it into the sand.
i broke my poet’s promise to always write in caps.
i am too unsure to write in triplets.

this is where i apologize
for bringing us to the end.
every poem is too long
never enough slices of happiness.

this is where i admit
i broke yet another promise
fingers dripping with orange juice
and i couldn’t give you a slice.

final regret: this one’s a whisper
as my legs stumble a beat
and my heart misses the horizon.
don’t let go of me just yet.

i take it back. there is
no conformity in lowercase.
a quiet breeze, a soft freedom
a will to sketch a greyer plot.

and now, for once
there isn’t enough room for regret
all i can do is hope
this is not the end

sit here with me, won’t you
and hope this is not the end
that this moment will come again
and there will be more oranges to slice.

the secret to
   any open window
i found over
   three different lives.

i spend the
   next trying to
share it. but

what matters is:
   a broken ocean
a gentle gradient
   your breathing heart.

At the base of the mountain
I meet a man who sells prayers.
I do not know what to wish for
so I take them all.
One for dreamless nights,
One for gentle tide.
One for locked doors,
One for shameless pride.

At the ridge that separates sky and earth
I find myself in a pond.
It asks me not
to see life a series of obstacles.
I kneel to drink,
but am offered no cup.
The water is beyond me;
I must climb further up.

At the tip of this world,
At a place I have no proof of,
I am close enough
to touch the moon.
In some versions, she descends
and I come away blessed.
In others, I just wonder
where there is to go next.

I’m told I was a twin in the womb,
And that is why my life is twice as lonely.
But sometimes it’s like
A different pair of eyes stare through mine
And my head is too small for all of its thoughts.
I hear her breathe, softly, from the chair I am sitting in.

Time passes, but we are still next door neighbors,
of limited use to each other, all hues and no gradients.
We are one note, the both of us, but it is only I that seeks harmony.
I call to her, but she may not hear. I feel her approach though,
a tsunami in the guise of the tide. My feet submerge,
and my lungs flood.

Somedays, her door is open. I am afraid, but I will enter.
It is but a blink, a walk through a wall of water,
And then there is a stranger in my house.