1919, peanuts and pine, and the tangy smell of cologne and sweat mixed together

Ocean water lapping at my toes, bringing me back to cleaner days, reminding me of her.  

The train to Roosevelt Island, of black rail, steam and fog, lurching there and back again.

Sparkler candles from my sixteenth birthday. A miscellaneous collection of bottle caps, all donated from friends. A book of pictures.

Cable cars. Hot spicy soup. Three quests for a sunset, three kings for a prince. Addendums, beginnings, and wandering the hospital hallways. The boy with the arab strap.

That my aunt persevered, and taught herself to smile.  
That the sun rises after every dark night.
That beyond the horizon lays more land, more sea, and more wonder.
That you can start again and again, and no one can tell you when to stop.

The sky right after a thunderstorm, when it's still a furious dark gray, and yet sunshine creeps through its cracks of the clouds (which I always hated, but learned to love).

The soft morning glories in my hands, showered in sunlight and love. That Nature could be so tender, delicate, and pure. That yellow was no longer my least favorite color.  

The way wind brushes my bedroom windows, and the willow trees call to me, mournfully shaking their leaves.

4am, lamplight, softer than the rain. Dried flowers. Guitar music wafting down the streets of Boston.

How the only one that could forget me was me.
How I could be alone.
How I could love every small thing.

I: Down the mississippi I will go, past blushing steamboats and river banks and green mud, past algae pools, with turtles bobbing at the surface. I will march forth past crop circles, golden fields and everything worn down in Nebraska even the abandoned parks, nuclear mind fields, wastelands of pollution and industry (and don’t worry, there’s beauty too) like so many leaves I never knew there were so many oak trees that grew despite the steaming summer haze and the chomping ivy vines. I never knew the Southern forests were as thick as the Amazon.

Actias luna resides in the moss, an elated fairy, resting on hickory tree branches long enough to continue its periless flight.
I will carry myself, I will push through forest, prairie, city and not look back because
I won’t become a ghost in a foreign land. I won’t be there long enough to be remembered, or immortalized. I will not leave my metal plates or my stove behind because they can’t fit in a wagon I am
walking alone, not barefoot but I may as well be. I want to be in contact with the land, and I imagine

in this new land, we make do with what we have, and we are happy enough for the time being. we are comfortable in the waiting time.

A love poem is this ode, an explanation perhaps (to my mother) why I do not talk enough, why I stare out the dark windows as we peck at salmon, why all my words come out at once and too fast for my own tongue.

I have been imagining the open landscapes for a long time now, I have been picturing the Californian sky at night, I have been dreaming of Spanish moss and grape vines, I have been contemplating how blue, pink, and white clouds can exist in the same sky (maybe we can, too).

In this journey, this amalgamation of past and future, (as always), I’m brought back to the tide. Repetition, frothy salty cold repetition. Something not controlled by me, which I am not even a part of. The tide reminds me that we are not creatures of Earth; we are Earth’s creatures.

When I cross the border between land and sea, I will be free. I am a wanderer at heart, and will never stop moving or changing. This is the only promise I can give you, and you must cup it in your hands and keep it close to your heart, save it for a rainy day. We will all find our homes, one day.

and at night when we walk the tightrope
i wear my white silk dress, my hair mussed up.  
barefoot, i stand, in an indigo envelope

glowing in streetlamp light and orange fog
we are dancers of the night
purple haze from the van seeping through its metal doors
dream sparks, you call them, as the haze dispels in beams of light
I call them magic

our feet are sore, *****, and worn
they hang loose and heavy from our legs
like tired robins, our toes dangling below the tiled roof
it tickles! the blood in our veins sinking with gravity
as it passes into the tips of our feet and arms

air escapes our lungs breathlessly, dissipating into the darkness,
without effort!  
as if in that moment,
we are made of air

the early morning can’t hurt you
for it’s too soft with its yellows, its creams, its gray shadows and tired eyes

it cradles you in soft arms, a nostalgic mother, lulling you back to sleep
Close your curtains, baby, and climb back under the covers. It’s okay.

making but a whisper, the morning sky never fails to amaze me, the hazy sun soaking my curtains

We are slow in the morning, but we are happy. We are enough.