ONE CRISP NIGHT in mid October, we went down the old fisherman’s trail, where the mountains meet the lake. This was before the trail had been maintained and tossed with wood-chips and at the time, it was a narrow mangled dirt path sporting thick roots and fist sized rocks at every twist and turn. You’d be foolish to not carry a headlamp and flashlight, for the woods were nearly impassable without them. We knew this, and we came well prepared even thought stumbling at points on the trail was inevitable. When we came to the light clearing in the trees, which was brushed with pine and spruce, and the tallest oak tree I’d ever seen, we sat down on two logs. They were wet through, and covered in patches of lichen and moss. Insects crept through the rotted wood, and night moths fluttered in the still air. Though half the world was asleep in their beds, and would stay that way till morning, the forest was wide awake under the crunching maple leaves.

We marveled out at the round moon, bright and pale in the sky. It hung regally, while it’s light shone upon the lake’s dark waters, holding our faces, holding the mysteries of the universe and the answers to any question we might have. Cradled by the natural world, we were. I’ve never felt as protected, since then, as I did that one night. It was as if Mother Earth cradled me in her own ancient hands.

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.

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 see you in my dreams
In vacation home rentals, 
over the garden wall, in the soft paleness of my underarm, the freckles traced into constellations

I pull open empty closets that smell of mothballs and salt. I look for white space, for that empty feeling life gives me, for the sweetness of life on my tongue. All the while, time passes me by, aging my face.

I could cry because the sky is so blue
For my mortal soul is just a fractal in this lonely universe!
For I have no direction, other than that of my heart.

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 it’s 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.

no, no, enough with them!  
let’s go to bed and wake up
soft with the sun
and sleepy with the moon on soft sheets
saturday night’s alright for fighting, for playing in the streetlights, for laying awake and whispering, for being with you

in cambridge i watch light peer through windows, and i think of you, always
my nostalgia, everreal in this city; a sinking anchor in the charles
i pretend to not notice the small blush blossoming on my cheeks, the smile pulling at my lip when i stand on cement sidewalks again, marveling at how busy the world can be

in contrast, the quiet wood of concord held solemn thoughts of worlds once known, of brick houses and plastered cellars, and beyond that
a world before settlers and borders and so many trees

i write for walden pond, a land of buried dreams, since water never forgets
for the sunlit roof deck on top of harvard, where you can see the whole world; the small winding roads, the ivy wrapped around trees,
for the bus rides between universes, stories, and loves

so keep this, something sweet for your mind when you wake up,  as you spend lazy hours in bed, and your plants reach new heights (because you will keep growing along with them)
and know when the yellow moon is swollen outside your windows, i’ll be thinking of you too, love

burst from that golden sac, bathed in light and burning in the new sun
for you were always meant to

little boy in his red sweater sits on the couch,
waiting for the day to begin

in my cold room, my plants grow slowly. their stems push through the damp soil, and their leaves turn toward the light of the sun. i watch them cautiously. i let april pass by, taking its gentle time. for now, i must be quiet and alert.

Meadowlarks over the lake, half past dawn
Yellows and blues in the horizon, hanging low in the pale cloudless sky
For it is eternally afternoon here, and even the wildflowers know this; they gently droop their fluttering heads, sealing their pistils from the sun's penetrating rays

I sit by the water, capturing that pure scent that's nearly too precious for human lungs, and imagine this moment lingering on like a ripple in the lake, the water capturing the steady beating of my heart.

We all watch the cacti flowers bloom under the atomic moon, and dance in the neon limelight. There cannot be much beyond this golden light we’ve entangled ourselves in; this must be the end of the universe, and yet the land stretches for miles into the darkness, wrapping around the mangled dark country of the desert, a wasteland of shrubbery and red-rock.  Our existence is a tangle of contradictions and yet we carry on, endlessly, under the pale moonlight and sprinkling of stars. We pray for change with out hearts, but know nothing will happen unless we act from our own hearts.

We play, we dance, we sing, and we question what it all means. And when we cease to find clear answers, we breathe in the night air and remember the steady beating of our hearts, since some such transient things as the beating of our hearts feel so immortal and precious to our mortal souls.

zwei irdische seufzer (two earthly sighs)

Outside, rain will pour down onto the glistening black pavement, while the bystanding pink white clouds hang overhead bashfully. Outside, the oak trees shake their purple leaves mournfully, shaking the excess droplets off of their sorry shoulders. Outside, only the faintest animal cries will be heard over the storm.

Inside here though, artificial light provides artificial warmth, and there is sour whiskey and scones aplenty and the thick curtains are drawn to prevent the windowpanes from exposing a sad truth. Inside here, smiles will be passed around the smooth polished table like candy bars, and young faces are lit up by candlelight. Inside here, things are bad but they could always be worse.

I go to the woods,
The woods go and I see them going, I’ve gone
to the forests of my home since autumnal glow is high in season,
these are holy, golden days and the leaves are blushing in the brook,
but the pond’s gone dry from no rain, it’s all muck. There are no fish and there never were any, but
snapping turtles, bullfrogs with eyes that peek above the surface, water boatmen that skit the glassy surface of the pond avert my eyes. When I was younger, I caught tadpoles in a mesh net and I let them go. Now we have forgotten each other.

Tough green shoots erupt from the soft earth, choking the softer crab grasses, there is blood and lambs in the high days of their short lives, rambling in the pastures of youth.

The pond is blanketed in duckweed, in the sunlit clearing of eleven cottonwoods.

Pictorial sacramento
On a beach with sandwiches and roads of gold
beyond the horizon

Today is 
so very important my darling, today is
the start of the rest of your life
It is the end of a road, for
two roots of an aching tree called time have joined themselves to make today,
yesterday and tomorrow, but the beginning of a new road too, a new path forged by you.

Today is everything and it
nothing and it is whatever you make of it, my darling.  

Today is full of possibility for
it is Tuesday today and the sunrise is waiting for you to stretch your arms
yawn and smile, place your feet on the rug so gently,
because you are so pretty, the sun could not rise without you after-all.

And the sky is waiting for you too, to
open your front door and notice how blue it is
and the bluebells the bleeding hearts they are
calling to you, the robin is perched by the doorstep, it will not flutter away for some time, it waits for you.

I cannot give you the world, I cannot give you much, but I give you word. I give you today and all that it can be, and all that it ought to be.

Because today is lovely
today is all yours, my darling

I write more about what I see when I close my eyes than what’s right ahead of them; I try not to, but it's inevitable; imagination is how I feel something raw and true, pull myself back to a computer or a notebook and empty it all out, or rather empty most of it out and leave the rest, leave the bits I forget and forge new ones as I write.
Everything though, behind the delicate eyelids I call my own, that black sockets which contains the trailing optic nerve that carries precious messages to my brain nestled in darkness (my whole body is illuminated on the outside) is produced from what I see, every-day, monotony and then some strange sweet beauty that sticks out of all the d’habitude, sticks in my brain like chewing gum, ready to be ****** and pressed against the walls of my brain, pulling and tugging at itself like taffy trying to figure itself out. I translate this to written thought, awkward and jumbled words, sometimes something that fits together. It wants to be something, each thought wants to be released into the world.

In a way, each word I write reflects life, but it breathes life into something ordinary, changes the filter setting on the photo perhaps portraying something more alluring, or I’d hope it does, hope that I could make someone feel the way I do when the night is blue, the trees are darker and the hazy glow of streetlights lap my window, dancing in the cool glass pane that separates the world inside from the world outside, the day is not ready for morning, everything's at once still so one could see how heavenly it all was. Maybe I am a newscaster, maybe I am a conspiracy theorist, I say “In case you haven’t seen for yourself, here it is, 5am in the Northern Hemisphere, in a bedroom with pink walls and creeping ivy vines hung across its ceilings, with a warm lamplight that leaves gentle gray shadows on the bed stand that has been painted white, so lovingly, by my mother’s cousin….. this is what it’s like (to me, to a fool, to a nobody) but this, this is from your friend, and I want you to imagine it in your own head and I hope it’s beautiful in your head, as beautiful as it is to me.” I don’t wish sleepless nights on you, but I hope that life blesses you with something of the sort, maybe it’ll change your mind.
not always though
not always do I write about beauty, and sometimes I learn what I think when I write it out
it all feels random but it can’t be, it might not be, there must be some self within me that writes these words with true intention, first thought, best thought.

I cannot write myself into self-hood, existence through some physical tangible proof that is these words on this paper
because my brain knows better
I must be something more than words on paper, I’m a physical body and I am a soul and I am I am. I inhale cold air in the dead of winter and feel it sit like a weight in my lungs, like a punch in my stomach, I taste blood in my throat when I run too far and too fast for my own good and my heart tries to catch up with me, and my sturdy legs buckle at my knees when I’ve walked too far. In some way, these sensations, these memories affirm my livelihood, my existence, my place in the world. I do not have to be great, I do not even have to be good, I am, I am, I am, I create for myself and if I find something valuable in the stale-clumsiness-that-is-sometimes-kind that is my perspective on affairs, my World, then I will give it to you dear reader, not so you will love me or so you will care, but because I like to share wonderful magical little things with the world. Through specificity, of location or experience or taste or shape or color, we find our human universality within one another. We understand that they understand.

I’m making a folder of tiny intimate photos I’ve collected from my camera roll, some are collage bits, one in fact, is a note from a book I found in Rennes with my roommate at the time.

We stopped at a bookstore in town where everything was under 10 Euros, and there were vintage films and books of collage and small chapter books, pocket sized ones (they were 2 Euros), and three men ran the store in rotating shifts, they sat on chairs and played chess and smiled at the onlookers as they passed by, never once advertising their goods. They knew whoever stopped at the stands would care and there were a lot of people who cared in Rennes, about literature and art and love and things that are so often overlooked in the States. I don’t mean to make an indictment of Americans and their culture and their loud cars and silver cities, neither do I condone the French…

I’m getting ahead of myself. The note in any case; it’s written in old French cursive, I couldn’t read it if I tried, but I haven’t tried yet. Maybe I will someday. one day.

I went whittling
and smoking in the woods
When I finished cutting my three pieces, all unique, all distinctive, all pale and soft with  
white wood underbellies that exposed their grains and knots,
I paused and smelled my hands
They smelled of smoke and wood and sweat, and dusky summer air
I rather liked it that way,
my scent.

sometimes i get an idea in my head, and i gotta write it down real fast before it goes away forever so
I’m sorry i snuck away from dinner and plodded up the stairs but my
head was drumming too fast heart pounding too fast and
here it is, unpolished, but existent, somehow and that’s a miracle in and of itself  

I  am eating dinner with my family, minus my sister plus five guests, all with different backstories (but they’re not important now). I am eating dinner with ten strangers who I ought to know better. The first woman talks, the one in the sundress, with tanned shoulders.

and i’m mad at her for being in a bad marriage where she is hurt time and time again, and won’t realize, for being intolerable and intolerant (she doesn’t like people like me), and for her black curls which are beginning to gray because
I look to her daughter, who shares her eyes and silently wonder what her fate will become.

Later, later, they talk of politics, of my father’s late mother, of Christian truck drivers, of moments I wasn’t present for, and I sit, and swallow my hamburger meat and barbecue sauce and giggle every once in awhile so they know I’m still alive. Somebody starts talking about alternative education, and my grandfather listens attentively while sipping Blue Moon out of a can and the woman with gray fluffy hair whom I love so and for whom I’m named joins the conversation. I don’t remember what she says. I do know

in another life, she was trapped in a marriage with a loveless *******. She escaped and left him; he dated his therapist after and they might’ve gotten married; I’m not sure since we stopped getting updates on him awhile ago). I never loved him, and neither did my sisters so it didn’t matter.

What mattered though, and what still does matter is that she was so observant. I think that’s how she tells people she loves them; she whispers little details she sees to them, and is so genuine about it.

Once, a woman said that truck drivers thing told me I only acted nice when I wanted things, and since then we’ve been drifting apart, and it’s like there’s been blue clouds of ice forming between us, the kind you see in Finland in the winter. She was warm to me today, in a plasticy way, and I tried to be pleasant. I think I was too blunt, though. I wish I could mean it, when I was sociable and lovely, but it’s all an act.

I scrape my fork against my porcelain plate, and swallow once again. The tomatoes sting on my lips; they are too acidic, and the mozarella has been stained by the red, shriveled because it absorbed the juice and
suddenly this is the most terrible salad, and the most terrible night and I suddenly feel so green with rage that I run to my room.

And I inevitably return to the table, and the people, and the lights, and I avoid their eyes, but by now the children have wandered and one is arranging lemon squares on a platter in the kitchen for dessert. Thank god.

I start talking in the bright kitchen, much too fast, and then I chide myself and try to look at everyone else. A child sits, perched on the counter. “Can you do this?,”  she inquires, and clucks her tongue and smiles, her sunburned nose ever visible in the light. Her eyes are green and too big for her face and my heart hurts because she is truly lovely, and she means it.

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.

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.

It starts; a fading pink glow in the distance, tucked behind violet clouds. And the white puffy ones float by as night begins its familiar course, creeping up from behind the brick buildings and settling over the sky, in deep shades of cobalt and navy. It (night) pushes away light to make room for stars and darker things, shrouded the in gray mist of 7pm clouds. The few stars, faded from light pollution and tired eyes, twinkle effervescently, frothing and churning in an endless black sea. I watch them as I orbit myself. Faster and faster I spin, swinging my arms languidly, and the earth catches me as I collapse into the grass, whilst my stomach churns. Beyond those pale specks of light, a plane soars by, its green and red lights glowing in my eyes. My body stiffens as its engines growl like feral animals. Now night has fallen, and all that once crawled under the light buries under earth, taking cover.

And when you feel an evening chill fall over your shoulders, know it is me (Original spirit) gracing you, blessing you, existing with you (despite our distance between dimensions).

the Sun King and I, we were cousins many years ago. We used to drink sherry wine under the stars, and talk of world *******.

The fiery noon, the essence of dawn and dew and earling light, and Neptune’s stinging salty breath contained in glass jars, sealed by Time’s breath.

An auspicious start to october; the still cold air hangs heavy and the sidewalk is dark gray with rain, laden with crisp brown leaves and dirt. The sky is a gray white, thick upon the horizon and every tree is dying.

The mist is thick and hangs heavy in the pale orange light of streetlamps, the air is sweet with petrichor, everything is dark... You must learn to appreciate moments like this more often.  

Heaven must be filled with wheat fields, golden light, and a beautiful expanse of emptiness. Like the world of dreams, but better because it’s real and you’re not instead of the other way around.

Like red hot coals, the jewels glow in the night,
they’re tucked into the tarmac in the rugged mountains spotted with evergreens.

the City in the valley has materialized, turnt to silver under the stars. Riverbeds dry up, caustic machinery acidifies the soil.

There is a dizzying flash of lucrative indigo, beneath the flashing crimson that signals take-off. 
An orange streak hangs in the distant horizon, above it an oppressive navy sky turning to night.  
The window across from me reflects something I’d imagine in a spaghetti Western,
in the final moment of triumph when the hero declares himself victorious and all forces bow to him. He is the indomitable, conquerer of man and nature.
Day is done, it retreats into faded pink and night falls, the mountains gray. It’s almost beautiful, but it’s burning. It's smoldering. A quiet fire, is it even burning if none care to witness it?

Pull the sleepy half moons from my face, and spin me around again; you love me, don't you?

It’s spring outside and the days are long and it gets dark late at night, past 8:30 when I’m home. I’m happy stomping my feet in the fresh clean grass and I don’t mind the back sweat clinging to my T-shirts and the way I can’t help but hate my body. I don’t care, as long as I can prop my hand up through the window to feel the breeze and as long I can see the sun glint the sideview mirrors of the car, I can feel all cheesy and soft inside. I like to watch the college students share picnic dinners on the grassy shore of the Charles; I like when they sit in circles and wear bandanas and sunglasses, smiling with their 6pm rosé smiles and glinting teeth and whisper to each other, and sometimes I’ll see someone scurry by on the cement on a pair of roller-skates or a bike, and the sunlight dances shadows through the trees, the trees that are impossibly green. Green, shiny, and full of life they swell with the late spring breeze, and they lazily hang over the road so I don’t see the blue of the sky when I look up through the sunroof, only leaves of green. Today I walked home after I saw the fish and I filled a cup with frozen cherries and I ate them with a plastic spoon while listening to Josephine Foster and I felt rather pleased with myself. I am going to read now.

In this time I think of my life six months ago; lest I forget the burning cold of winter, the gray that envelopes Boston in a ceaseless ashen fog. Even in that winter though there is still beauty; I watch dark birds flee the sky and little children cross the street bundled up in red, blue, green, and I feel that same tug of love in my heart for the world I live in. It’s melancholic, the connection I have with this world, and yet it finds its own balance [I find my own balance], between the anxiety of what could be, the anger of what is, the hope for what could be, the satisfaction for what is. I wish I could do more.  

Of course, we say goodbye to some things (like winter), and forget we say goodbye to others, perhaps for good reason (like the ashen fog), and some things we don’t want to say goodbye to but must anyways (like friends), and there’s a balance somewhere in all of that, I imagine. Something like a hallway between open and shut doors, or perhaps the door itself is the pathway between one state and another.

I am sixteen now. and I will say goodbye to some things soon and other things later, and perhaps a hello or two will be mixed in there. For now though, it is late spring, and I am here, here in this moment when I am listening to Billie Holiday and my empty cup of cherries is resting on my bureau. For now, I am here in a room that is not too small for me nor too big, and I will be here now, I feel like I will always be here in the way that most things continue for a long time until they don’t. And I am okay with that.

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

Moonflower, primrose, and goldenrod are hanging on silk strings in my Dream Room

Everything is lovely and lively in my dream room, the flowers in my Dream Room smell like Candlelight and cinnamon and starlight
I am so happy here i have never read so many books before, I have never pressed my nose against the glass and watched condensation form like clouds so gently
So delicately, before

Anyone was awake, I was prancing like a sprite and
i never knew the world could be so beautiful, so still before dawn; the eerie indigo in- between, evening slipping into morning, when I lit three candles and blew them out and laughed. I dreamt

Maybe we could sail away in a hot air balloon with a
On a warm sunday Morning before anyone else woke up too; I could show you the world

you could collect it all in jars and put the jars on your shelf; all those scents and sights and sounds and i’d Keep them in my dream room, i’d protect them there in my Dream Room forever.

I have never run so far through the dark grass, leaving my wet footprints like loose threads on a satin trail
I have never taken flight
But maybe, just tonight, in my Dream Room  
I can

Sweet, cold, pinprick, windy sky
streaked with color
Rolled up my sleeves

And I stepped out in it all
I walked rainy  
streets and smiled

Like gold, it’s first notes emanating out of polished brass. Brass, that gleams and feels cold and smooth and haunted. Jazz! like an anxious sort of happiness, like something brief and sweet, there in one moment and gone in the next.

When the trumpets go silent, something still sits deep with you and grabs hold of you and won’t let go. Maybe it’s just in the background of the room, or your thoughts, but the sound seeps into you and blooms inside you and grows into something blue, brown, red. Something curved and  circular, lines bouncing off one another and intersecting and going their separate ways once again. Jazz, pounding with the urgency of a heartbeat, but not matching its steady beating. For some are early and bright, others take their gentle time and arrive in auric shades and dark shadows. A mournful note strays.

There’s a man on the sidewalk, wearing a gray cap. He listens, he pauses. For a moment his dark eyes are fixed on this sight, this sound. For one moment, his back straightens, his eyes closed. He drops a dollar into the upside down top hat. Then he nods his head wisely, sighs, and moves on.

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.

Visions of blood honey, lavender and ruby in sticky sweetness
Burning the tongue, that pure secretion of nature, soaking our fingers
August brought forth the bearings of strange fruit, and new faces
We hid away, for fear we’d burn in the heat, too

It’s warm, like that muggy heaviness that hangs in the chlorinated air above pools; artificial and stifling but comforting nonetheless.
You get too close, and the neon will burn your eyes. A remnant of something long gone, but it lives on. Its warmth would **** you, you know. Don’t get too close.

There were always clouds, I thought. There were always clouds and rain, and sunshine, and snow. There were always leaves, trees and flowers. There was always change and decay. And maybe, just maybe that was enough for now.

And so I painted a little red house for us to live in, darling, with a brown roof and four sturdy walls and we could live there, live there in that little red house and pick thistleberries and have stained glass windows and teabag dresses and little leather boots

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.

Reach out!
You pure flesh, of rock and stone,
Earthly creature sighing of earthly delights,
Of things unknown to us, from just beyond the horizon, from just beyond the grasp of the sun's gentle rays

And come to us now, rest your drowsy head
Tell us of your travels, your sprites, your wonders
Tell us of those dark spots in our mouths and things buried in our teeth, of river-veins and soft mountain curvature
Tell us what lies beyond the green seas and deep purple skies

Drink up, from that purity and sweet ignorance that you have grown
For our weary hearts yearn for your tales, and to see what we can't

Sleep tonight, in sapphire shadows under the full moon, by the lilacs and moon-moths
Rest your feet on moss pillows and dream of tomorrow, forever
For you are ours

Almost sad beneath their fantastic disguises, they crawl under the moonshine above. In a minor key, the lute strums— the marvelous night hums with the fervor of churning water; fountains of shining marble contain the ephemeral source, funneled towards heaven. Day breaks and moonlight slips away, the dancers abandon their masquerade and dissipate into the atmosphere. On the horizon, a castle across the yellow sea blushes pink, its shadow cast across the waves.

The 50% floating out in the G column somewhere
it’s waiting for me to put it down and place it
I’m not 50% but I’m gagging at the numbers, so many
This clanging piano is making me feel like I’m in the midwest, definitely
indefinitely, do you think I could spend the rest of my life away from the sea, next to Canada
in the cold-slowly-warming?  
I could move to Duluth.
in 2010,
I was five
I didn’t know about Alex G,
I didn’t know about anything but the way the swing in the cherry tree made me feel,
trapped and small
(I’m hopping around lines
but not reading them once I write them)
yeah I could go across the country
yeah I could walk for awhile
yeah I probably couldn’t tell if I liked a boy
or tell him I like him
yeah I think acoustic guitarists and emo vocalists and edgy, chainsmoking guys
get It.
whatever It is (and doesn’t everyone! feel that way too)
and my teapot smells like plastic when it boils
and it doesn’t whistle
and I chewed all the gum I bought yesterday and
my mom’s name is Alex, too and
my face is puffy, round, just soft skin folding in on itself for eternity,
soft hanging skin stuck to me, and recently, I've been thinking 'everything’s fused it couldn’t rip apart
without dragging the rest of it with itself--
My family’s in new hampshire and they miss me. 
my family drove to new hampshire with my sister and they are a family
four years apart (without me).
I don’t know if I miss them right now and
this coding project makes me feel like
V-sauce or a conspiracy theorist
or something awfully STEM-y and it scares me
and it makes me awfully happy too.
i hope everyone majors in what they want to and that they love it
and they feel glad when they have that degree
and we’re gonna be twenty-two in May
some people will be twenty-three
and last night, Vik said she’s glad I’m awesome and I told her
awesome is a strong word, I don't know about that,
awesome is a big word
and we laughed about it.

Under the yellow waxed paper umbrella
I found a girl humming sadly
I asked her name and she only stared down at
her shiny black boots

They were so slick in the midnight rain
they wouldn't make a sound on the silent pavement  

Neither did she, after she left

we were barn people and star people and those in light and dark, those boys who work until the sun rises and the moon falls

In winter, we stepped onto crunchy snow in hand-me-down boots, and listened to the silent wind and counted our blessings.

settle down with a story, learn to live constantly, rather than in leaps and gasps. Little moments are precious treasures though; collect them, write about them, feel everything that is ought to be felt.  

Steep yourself like tea; laze in warmth, seep in that couch and finger the plaid coverlet worn with age now. These coverlets; they are now relics of a bygone era and you know that. Treasure them nonetheless.  Run your fingers over each stitch; it was made with care. In these moments, exist languidly and proudly, and stretch yourself out to realize just how big you have become.

For you, I have left three crates of books in my apartment; two boxes have been read, notated, and worn by cautious fingers. One has been left unread, aged by time; the books will smell of yellowed paper and the covers will be dusted over. I have collected them, from libraries to garage sales, and now I impart their wisdom onto you.

Fear is primal and raw, it latches onto you and won’t let go, until you let it. Trust yourself to know when to let go.

Time is aching, it is beautiful, it is as steady as a lake, and it carries on like a wave of water, pulling out and coming in again to lap at your toes. Let yourself sit by the shore and watch the tide.

Remember to breathe. Remember that tomorrow exists, and a hundred more tomorrows afterwards. Remember this.

—to cardinals, with love

You are an angel in the snow, you pale cheeked wonder, with dark eyes so bright. Go to sleep now, don’t stay out in the blue black cold, under the new moon, in the night air that will soon glow pink and glassy with the sun.

and you watch me, as i look around in the pile of ******* i’ve built up of myself, and try to find anything salvageable

I buried your box of notes and some cicadas
in a hole in the earth outside my front door.
Then I was small and I went inside the box
there were beds there, damp walls, a toilet  
a crochety man and a girl
who wrapped me in orange flowers  
and cradled me on a bug ridden bed.

The stale taste in your mouth grating
only remedied by more mints that melt away
into only more staleness.
some of your body is too warm and some of it cool
some of it itches from this shuttle bus seat which has crumbs from the last person who sat here.
The livid clouds outside are shifting across the sky, shirking nightfall, the street lamps fulgurating, giving the bus interior a ghastly glow.
there is not enough to look at, to listen to, to do, just the temporary sensations
of ******* on peppermint altoids, tapping on your phone, pressing your shoe heel into the soft skin of your thigh, feeling ugly but more tired than ugly under that harsh aisle seat light. Home soon, and not home soon enough.

The kettle is trying desperately to boil more water than it can hold, 1.7 liters,

it vibrates the table with its monotone groan.

Sixca says the flowers in the square vase are real, she touches their petals and says you can tell

because they’re wilted, they smell.

The coastline is vast— we are thumbtacks on the rocky hills, our lines cast out to sea. Sinking an anchor is an act of trust,

we believe the anchor will find the seafloor each time with the same length of rope let down.

The kraken will sleep, until he is awoken with fire.

There are wolf spiders perched atop the red seas of Wisconsin.

The kidney beans are the same color as the beets, but the beans do not bleed.

The cat’s back was greasy, brown-red; the harbor cat was not hungry in July.

I burnt my window screen with a blue candle split in two, its pieces held together in my palm.

I saw a sign that said Name it, they’ll do it — princess, robin, hello, cat, sugar, skull.

The stars do not boil in the St Paul airspace. The moon is bright and full. Photos can find my face, but ‘moon’ in the search bar yields nothing.

The kraken will die upon the water’s surface.

The love is intertwined with the horror, forever.

One might propagate pothos in glass, so as to see the white-yellow roots curl outwards, larger and swarming underwater.

Little bubbles form at the top of the kettle and now they soar rapidly towards its plastic cover, hissing.

Nothing smaller than your fist should be recycled.

I go by Finn, but with an o so its
Fionn
because in senior year I chose to do a project about Irish folklore,
well I had to do the project
but I could pick the topic
so I read Irish myths and told everyone about Fionn mcumhail and my little pocket knife’s namesake
in the Newton library I was looking up articles on folk-websites, the kinds with funny graphics
the sun was coming in through the windows and it got in my eyes
I was drinking seltzer and I crushed the can in my hand
when I hugged Lydia
the hug was hard and the water spilled on my shirt

i’m collecting all my sweet, translucent turbulent marble darlings
I’m breathing life into them

they were always mine and will never be anyone else’s
and no one gets to know when my feet were cold
or when i could only eat butter spaghetti for dinner
or what I got at CVS
or anything I ever told my “kids”
or ******* whatever else or the sun on my jeans when i walked on the charles
with my sunday school students.

On Ash wednesday I got some candy hearts, one of them was a # and the other said BAE
but there was no ‘call me’ or ‘fax me’ or even something contemporaneous like
‘text me’
like maybe we’ve aged out of those, I don’t know.
last saturday car put gel in my hair
and dust stuck to it so I had to shower and I found glitter
and donuts in Dupre
and we were greedy little silly boys, shoving stale, sticky sweetness down our throats.
We had soft cheese spread on bread with grant, too
who got his glasses broken by some guy a few months back, grant
who looks like elly pickette but with flat, blue hair
slicked down! and John lennon glasses, like gavin’s

on Saturday we sang Talking heads in owen’s room
and we had real irish whiskey, sipped it slow, let it burn in our throats
it didn’t feel like much, at least not too bad.
on Saturday, I felt so organically pleased it was almost frightening
look at my pretty friends! look at those angels.
they’re gonna go so far,

because I study with them sometimes
on days like Thursday when I read dylan thomas
and I just love them, so truly
not unafraid yet, but I do love them. i look at them looking at their books
and I feel grateful for a place such as the library
and I read this little think piece (when’s the last time you heard that word? I havent heard it in awhile )
about Mussolini, it was a satirical play.
and this Russian sentimental sonnet about the tropic sea
(oh but the sea, it does not raise its voice to me!)
and the oppressive sun,
like my third grade play (yikes)
and I wish I could tell people stories without laughing.

The saturday before the last last saturday
yamalí and I got an uber and we walked up
flights of winding stairs and learned about the golden horses on top of the statehouse
and someone rode on the horses
(but you can’t do that anymore.)

I dropped a bag of sleeptyime into my steeping cup of steaming tea
turmeric turned it this deep orange shade, sort of beautiful,
I turned up Marlena shaw
I sat and typed against my cinderblock wall, face to close to the screen as always,
comforted by that familiar return, the learned response to the stimuli,
and the unconsciously practiced
and I am not afraid of all the things I don’t know and
I have so much to learn and i have to do lots of things,
im going to try to make it all worth the while and gather memories
of time, my little friends.