Suncatcher.
Looking straight past your actions, I find your intentions. I read them in dark pupils like Webster’s definitions. Despite glass eyes staring as you let me go, your iron curtain countenance was a stained glass window. I see your thoughts cross your mind like I might see tired old man crossing his living room, just before he draws the curtains in the evening. I watched through painted panes as you held yourself still, watched through unblinking windows as you fought your own will. And so I walked to my car, in the dark, alone, breathing clouds of grey vapor in the direction of home. And you stood across the street in the amber street lights that attract the moths whose wing beats my heart finds rhythm with as it flutters from rib to lung to throat, never holding still for fear of permanence. You thought you’d gotten your heart off your sleeves but it will always be a sun catcher, hanging from fishing line, casting cold colored shadows on the actions of a nervous mind, once thought invisible, the windows you hide behind let in just enough light for me see what I knew I’d find.
Honey, I can read your smoke signals.

the river runs through,

pristine waters crossing jagged rocks,

ethereal tidal hands passing on their grace.

the only constant sound in the seclusion offered by pines and spruces,

miles far from crucifying gazes and demeaning canards, not shushed.



well actually it isn’t so far from your place,

but it is from mine and eyes closed, it’s a world away,

with our shadows next to the other’s,

feet swinging in and out of the currents,

rosebud lips and green eyes trained on brown ones, no longer discreet,

soft blur filtered-images.



i was hailed from the flighty and the brisk.

and early on i taught myself not to rely on

anything or trust anyone-

people would offer you poison disguised as milk

and venom-dripping back pats.

but gladly i oblige to drop this excuse for a heart in your graze,

still baring splinters from the plaster walls used to hide my being from the world;

on close fists you can take away my reservations.

promises have always been incredulous for me,

lest I put my trust on dandelion wishes and passing blue cars for you.



the sun goes down and tinting skin in twilight blue.

we’ve stayed for quite long basked in the brook’s mystique.

for a while longer, we stay,

gemstones braided in your hair; a corset paired with my whimsical skirt,

siren-eyed smirks and otherwise illicit touches.

no hunter has come to reveal us in this dwelling place.

the water nymphs witnessed all that we’ve done while in their home-

it’s no secret that the hills and trees have eyes,

hush, for their sight don’t leer nor scorn,

not minding carrying this partial secret,

offering safety in screaming this love out.



now i’m back to drawing your place beside mine on afterwork takeout receipts,

scribbles from memory of the secret place,

and casting my hopes upon the prismatic sky.



the sun shows another day,

and my suncatcher capturing rainbows,

reminding me that our safe space awaits,

where the river runs through.

i want to sit next to my sister - we do not have to say anything --- do I recognize her as a near 30 year old? - i want to stop and curl and curve my body like a little conch shell - i want to hum like the ocean - the songs of infants - the hands of grandparents - i want to laugh on my death bed - surrounded by bugs and bees digging deep into pollen cradles, clawing and rolling in dust, rocking wind.

i want to braid my sister's freshly washed, cool, clean turquoise green hair.  it feels like it has been years since i did something so simple, so caring.  i want to sit and weave it until there is almost nothing left, but the silk aqua rope i can run my fingers down like water.  i want to thread the pieces over and under my heart strings.  she is the earth, the sky, the moon - the altars of rocks - the shapes we see in them.

///
i dreamt of a woman sleeping - she was made of sand - she was off the shore of new york city --- before the sky scrapers, streets, pandemonium --- with purple kelp for hair.  she was so beautiful - a sand bar, as big as a dune, beneath a thin layer of sun-warmed translucent water as open as day.   she was silent, laying like a fetus on her side under the waves.  i swam to her, held in on the loose sand like an anemone. \\

i want to sit on a warm rock in the sun - overlooking the valley, the lake, the blue mountains.  i want to be the Appalachian air - i want to do nothing - but to live.  i want to listen and dance and run and flow - join a coven, scale a cliff.  i want to talk to the night, watch birds and find mushrooms - follow magical, mysterious things.  oxblood berry juice runs down my fingers.

filling the bath up to the overflow drain - i want to fix the faucet.  spaces became smaller, memories overlap and forage in Michigan forests.  the sprawl and creep - moss inches glacially over our backs.  the spine remains on the island, the bogs embalm.  i sit sweetly, cross legged, twisting my hair around my finger - thinking of pebbles as road systems, sycamore and sumac houses.  the quietest, mildest evening sunlit place you could imagine bathed in green and gold, grace - lit and heaven - struck.  a place of peace, calm, warm.

i am thinking about the sound of the stream through the house, how we always can choose simpler.  i want permeable walls to the sunrise - to rain sounds - to the crickets and cicadas and spiders - to the smoke, the fog, the mountain laurel.  wild raspberries are wisps of cadmium red on raw canvas.  ducks fade in and out of graphite and watercolor drawings against the sky // buoyant on the pond, hawthorn and mugwort dreaming.

i want to see the flickering rainbow lights, sit on a fairy's wing.  sway and jump and spread my arms wide - wide - wider - up - up - and up!  iridescent, shining, on a beam of light.  i am lighter than air, i am the essence of light.  the memory of time.

a copper suncatcher eye, a fragmentation through a lens.  i want to sit - i want to rest and run backwards in my mind - upside down and through the channels of plants - tracing each petal of a daisy.  the circulatory system of green canopies.  i want to turn off and on again, i want to be shocked and taken to the sea.

the patterns take me, the colors soar.  i sit and feel the love from everything.  it is tangible, weaving itself between my fingers like yarn.

uncover my soul, tell me it is real?  i want to make - i want to remember - i want to plant, eat, grow.  i sit and revel at it all - my motherhood, my sisterhood, their daughters.  the womb, the darkness to light to the peat.

to live in a spiral bound sketchbook, in my great grandmother margaret's wooden, hand-painted pencil box.  i would make the memory of her love my home.  the piano keys float through open kentucky windows to the garden.

i tighten the knot, the bread rises in the corner of the kitchen.  i live in a place where i am but i am not - the story is told, i put together the pieces differently.  the forest shatters, i'm holding a piece of the mirror from 3 years ago.  it shimmers, cuts, fades, dissipates the bass neon jungle throughout the night - i find it all incredibly comforting and dizzying, being made of love to love to be loved.

the moon phases - arcs - dips - dives - toward you - through you - glowing, resonant, alive  //\||