In The Secret Garden,
Unseen by human eyes,
Are Elves and flowered Fairies,
Near where Crystal Fountain lies

To find this hidden place,
Follow the Rainbow Tracks,
Look out for Goblin Mushrooms,
Just beneath the Mountain Cracks

'tis here that you will hear,
Music from Nightingales,
The Mystic Door will open,
Only when the twilight pales

I am freaking out on the interstate
Freaked out I am, out of freaks, (I’m the freak)
and I’ve been freaked out on the interstate for 15 minutes now,
sitting in my car with my hands on my knees and
I don’t know how to make it stop
and I am freaking out on the interstate, on I-95, East to be specific and the cars keep whizzing by
and I'm dizzy with adrenaline, I'm hot-wired now  
and my hands are on my thighs and I’m sweating now, I'd swear but I can't make out the words, any words and I swear I'm telling the truth
and I pulled over the car off the highway onto the shoulder, my shoulders are tight in their sockets, tensing, preparing my body for battle
because I’m freaking out on the interstate
and I’m a freak!
on the interstate
in this state
of Massachusetts,
I am in no state not to freak out and
it’s sorta funny because
I can’t breathe and I don’t know what to do next
And I see the highway trees and they are blurs of green, there are no more birds here, only me and the sky and one sheet of metal, one frame of glass keeping me from certain, unflinching death, that ostentatious word.
That stupid, indelible word that will not escape my temples,
but I'm a freak and
I can’t
and I won’t
and I don’t stop
freaking out on the interstate.

I know that life is complicated and often hard, that things are not simple, and that most of all they get better but why can’t I pack up my stuff tonight? and start going I’ll walk all the way down into Boston from the hills and I’ll sleep outside and catch the train in the morning and I’ll ride it down to the coast, so I can swim in the ocean again, so I can feel the salt in my toes and the wind in my hair and I will cut my hair shorter than it has ever been, not to symbolize Change! or even the wayward meanderings of a capricious young person’s heart, but so I can feel the sun sink into against my scalp, so I can sweep my hand across the bony cusp of my skull and know by heart the fissures, the crevices, the fastenings of bone and tissue and muscle that make up me. I

make me up! to create myself by wandering, to beam a smile and open up my mason jar of love to the world. I have lived enough life to write, and I've more than enough love to store for a lifetime, so I can give the extra to the flowers and the strangers on the street.

and maybe if the spirits inside are feeling particularly kind, they can bring me to the white space, or the dark honey corner that the lamplight grazes, when i can walk barefoot and feel earth below me. Maybe if they are kind, they will allot me two extra hours to explore Madrid, or to adjust my binoculars, dip my hands in Lake Erie; gasp and sigh; and ramble on.

Grabbing for rocks in indigo waters, searchlights gleaming against the waters illuminating darkness, illuminating those depths.

The center of an explosion, a heatwave ****** into a sink drain, evaporated, muscles relaxed and honeysucklesweet liquid deep in the veins, sharp crystals forming in lungs and a hard breath, cold condensation; exhale and release.

I am, she is, we are
In spheres of consciousness, orbiting the dark side of the moon
waiting for death by a bus stop.

Lazy whiskey sky balancing on telephone wires, slipping, stagnant then pulsing for life, for air, for peace. There is nothing as clean cut as a saturday morning in September. Nothing as urgent as a windswept pane of glass, cut sharply by the salt of the shoreline.

An old woman enumerates; this is addiction, this is addiction, and she’s blown away in the wind of yesterday. This is the new age of sycophants and petulant masters; it lacks heart! It lacks love. It is cold like concrete, like a highway stop halfway to midnight, pulsing and cimmerian. Vitriolic stillness, stinging remains beneath penetrated skin, releasing passion with every exhale.

Climbing through a toilet drain, stopping to gasp and pushing on through biting cold, realizing the world is not as you remember it. Crawl into the sanctum, collapse for forgiveness, repeat.

For this is it, the eternal sprint.

In the dewy mist, snow-peas grow on stalky limbs, blended into the mousy brown forest. For now, their buds are pale, firm with cold, hesitant to release their beauty to the world. They bulge with green, the silhouettes of miniature peas visible in their pre-ripened state.

April will come, and bring with it warmer sunshine and soft petals, small white flowers perched from paleness, extending themselves so graciously to sunlight, unfurling their delicacy as if they are praising the sun. I wonder why they are so shy, why their flowers ***** down.

I wonder what they know.  
I wonder if they have souls.

I am a child then; I am soaring under dark flocks of birds, spending my summer days squeezing their firm buds, for I am a sanguine sycamore elf with plump berries spilling out of my mouth and juice staining my knees. The snow-peas and I prance in the meadow, and the sun is half past noon, and there is nothing more that matters now.

I will return home, planted with kisses of nature: grass stains and ruffled hair and there’s something deeper too planted in me, a desire to love, love that loves without eyes, without knowing.
I return pink fleshed, bitten, scolded for not wearing sunscreen.

I do not know better yet. I do not understand the world of adults and their yawns, their grins, their whispers and all knowing dinner table glances. I know the world outside though, I know to not touch poison ivy and stinging nettle and I know the grace of the forest, where the meadow winds into woodland and back to Turtle Pond where mosquitos gather in clouds and bullfrogs lay dormant in murky waters, their beady eyes lurking just above water.

I know when a snow-pea is ripe; when its leaves have turned and it has flowered, like a full moon, so gentle under the sun, so gentle under the sky. And when the snow-peas are ripe, I will return to their scattered bunches, and I will dance with them under the moon.