CALL ME BELOVED

Thank You

for mistakes, for being born
the very best kind of cosmic
mistake, never supposed to
happen but so stupidly happy
it did – so that I can shed fat
sobbing tears for the most
stupidest of shit –

for burning the cinnamon rolls,
for the smell of menthol rolled
onto an aching back corded with
knots, for promises made and
just as quickly forgot, god,
thank you for the forgetting.

Thank you for mistakes worth regretting,
like stones splashed into lakes, standing
shoreside and that perfect rock catches
your eye, just begging to be thrown –
thank you for the times I didn’t say
no. Thank you for the letting go,
for the soaring across the sky,
for the certainty of the fall –

thank you for the small forgivenesses
that I’ve learned how to grow, like
small smooth pearls I can hand myself,
string into long strands, thank you for
this opaline gown I drape myself in
like an oil-slick glow –

thank you for making me so uncomfortably
tall, chaining me to this broken body like
bricking me up inside a lighthouse – casting
out light I’ll never see, but I’ll keep it close –
just listen to the wind at night, I’m singing –
I’ll tend the lamps; I’ll call you home

Handwriting

Is there some holy center left behind
that remembers, weak candlelight
which could flicker and grow –

like how I see your handwriting
each time I open my bottom drawer,
how grief can twist like longing –

this is what I want to believe.
That motherhood is a clumsy mantle,
best dealt with as it comes, that

the daughter you raised as a son
meant more than some baby doll
you still miss, some beloved relic

you left claw marks in letting go –
I’ve written you all of these poems.
I wonder what you know.

Spiderwebs

How can I tell you I’m holding this moment
gently, so gently, so delicate and scared
like cradling a perfect spiderweb
freckled by the morning dew,
terrified I’ll twist threads
but I had to show you.
I had no choice.
I saw it and
I thought
only of
you

Abscission

shed those recurring dreams of being the tree –
shrug off the long branches, sentinel stillness of
lifetimes as limbs, centuries of old growth –

but catch yourself, when you are the wind.
recall how bark and stone just flow
like water through loose fingers –

like dreams when you can fly – you’ve found
the secret way how to skip from the ground,
blades of grass scraping past your feet –

a promise between you and the earth, it’s okay,
let go let go let go

Murmuration

You’ll take it for granted.
You will.

You can’t feed a ghost,
no matter how sweet the childhood,

but sometimes, you’ll drive home
and starlings will burst out in flight –

swirling constellation of spear-tip wings
spilling out from behind the warehouse –

that’s when you’ll gasp, remembering
you’re alive you’re alive you’re alive

Blueprints

Hang me on some new skeleton,
give me a ribcage polished gleaming
to cage up my waiting-room soul –
stress dreaming sprawling airports,
lost tickets, forever just too late and
rushing towards some perfect dread,
the plummeting lurch in your gut
that rips you awake. 3 AM, panting.
Outside it’s silent. The world sleeps.

Remake me, small as my dreams.
Most content in corners –
watchful wisher, breathing
deliciously shallow breaths,
borrowed air sweet honey mead,
I’ll drink deep, I’ll make myself sick –
known glutton for punishment, friends
gather for interventions, all terrified
of how I’ve romanticized the ache.
I drink deep. I make myself numb.

Turn me opaque, now,
I’m ready to be seen.
Arms weary and stretched wide
desperate to hold on until
all strength finally gives –
ecstatic heart thrashing
in a cage of creaking ribs,
cracked teapot still desperate
to pour, there is so much more
warmth left to give, remake me
strong enough, someone worthy,
I’m ready, I’ll drink deep, I’ll pour

Instructions for a Birthday

Look around, take stock.
Count crows feet and smile lines.
Count the missed calls from mom,
six, now, since you blocked her

paper-white, crying shaking cold
in July – the laid out reasons why
looking back like holding a mirror.
Count your breaths, how many days.
Delete six missed call notifications.

Write all of the wretched poems,
get them out. Go ahead, rhyme
heart and apart, write it down
because you can’t crumple up
thoughts – we’ve tried – get up
and look outside. Fireflies glow –

slowly remember calm nowheres
you used to know, they glimmer
inside your chest – lightning bugs
flickering beneath umbrella bows
of the tree out back, rain pours
in steady sheets down the glass,
whispers go to sleep on windows –

Listen. I promise it will all be here
when we wake.

Intake Forms

Cameron Martin, returning client –
six foot three, underweight, vitals normal,
old enough to catch classroom chickenpox –
my gender? Snowy mornings & flannel sheets,
no option for that so I’ll just check ‘other’ – no,
I lack any significant history from my father
and no fleas from my mother, but heavens,
the stories I could tell… And sure, I’ll concede
for all intents and purposes I’m doing “well.”
(Yes, I am seeing a therapist.)

Past medical history significant for some
ear infections at three that screamed louder
than the rest of the world, now I hear
too much; midnight brings soft whispers.
Bullies peppered me with scars, there’s
four that you can see – skin a tapestry
of cigarette burns, freckles, road rashes –
heart thrashing out an irregular beat –
I’m told it’s concerning on ECGs but just
familiar and sustaining, to me. My bones
tell stories, ice patches that snared me –
the hills I’ve rolled down, carelessly, the
compounding cost of chronic clumsiness
pre-arthritic joints confess my true age,
this soul has slogged through centuries.

Oh, lots of concerns, doctor. Innumerable and
nothing that’s present to check on your form,
but I’ve left you my memoir in the margins.
No new medications, just some vitamin D
since I’m still learning to step into sunlight –
it’s harsh and it burns; I shy from spotlights –
and I meant to ask, have you ever wept from
the impossible glow of a springtime sunrise?
Signs the antidepressant is working too well
or not enough? Can you validate my surprise
that the sunrise happened at all? Or at least
my parking?

Thresholds

My upbringing prepared me for cuts.
I check corners for traps, watch my feet
while I’m walking. I’m waiting for the fall.
My father used to perch around corners
and leap out to frighten me, bursting out
from behind doors, ignoring my begging
to just please come out, please come out –

hard lessons. Ceilings were all riddled
with swords of Damocles, I learned quick
how terror was all theirs to manufacture,
all mine to manage. My better self left me
messages written in wounds on my skin,
keloids all cleverly conveying concerns –
antsy letters to the editor. Please advise.

I’m just trying to explain why peacefulness
feels to me like the setup to sad punchlines,
leading to jack-in-the-box pits in your gut –
I can paint murals of melancholy, of hate,
I’ve practiced in each medium of grief, but
joy leaves me lost for words. Dumbstruck
by the stark gentleness of my own hands.

You see, the other day I nicked my arm with
my fingernail – to my wonderment reflexively
I apologized – contrite and polite like I had
bumped into a stranger in a supermarket –
never had I offered myself such a stupid
and simple kindness. Never before had I
seen myself as someone worth protecting.

I can show you all my scars, stitch lines to
navigate night terrors – but what words for
uncovering love I have never known? Like
stepping out into sunlight, feeling light and a
primal warmth which my skin has never felt?
Standing at the threshold, soul crying loud
to just please come out, please come out

Latchkey

When the love you’re born into
is a vacant house – what then?
Love only used to be found
while latchkey, ferreted it out
from inside the absence of fear –
no fathers looming around corners,
waiting to scare you – no, love was
a quiet hallway. An empty room.

How Long Love Lasts

Your inquiry was forwarded to me –
our department handles those questions
of more existential caliber, and yours
has fallen into my eager and open hands.

I must confess, it’s been quite difficult
to nail down this “love” concept, after all
humanity has had it’s best people chipping
away these past 6,000 years and so far we’re

still just scraping against the very skin of it.
I’m but a humble clerk; this feels inadequate.
But here’s what I can leave you with, figures
to hang your ruminations onto, late at night –

Love lasts longer than the sunset and well past
the certain sunrise, longer than seasons bleeding,
calendar pages falling like autumn leaves gathering
into impossible innumerable breathtaking mounds –

well past rosy childhoods, past silly little crushes
and the parking lot breakups, stripping bare at
midnight on the beach, dorm rooms, backseats –
lasts longer than scars, longer than crows-feet –

longer than the marriage, past the eulogies and
dull echoes of sobbing sitting at the wake, longer
than grief that guts you, hollows you out empty
and retching, shivering like flu, longer than that –

love is something we get to scrape up against.
Nobody can hold it, or place it soft into your arms –
no, love is the sun, it rages hotter and brighter and
longer than our brief, childish hearts understand –

you find it when you hug. That space between bodies,
what gathers in the valley between two heartbeats –
it’s gravity will always pull us in. Inevitable, immense;
love lasts longer than I could try to explain, endures

past when humanity’s best and brightest will give up
chipping at the skin of it. I’ve tried to tuck it into
these lines, letter writer – question asker, love seeker,
lingering lonely and doubtful in the cold of night –

yes, love lasts longer than the night terrors –
longer than the heartbreak, than longing,
than humanity’s wreckage of poetry, music,
longer than we all deserve, maybe, but still
it lasts. It lasts.

Vacancies

I’ve filled up that yawning vacancy inside of me
with words, again, the old problems reappearing –
how paper pages make for thin skin, or haggard
veins circulating ink which cannot carry oxygen –

but I’m consuming them nonetheless, starved for
touch and reason and all the hearth-fire comfort
of skin just beside you, sharing warmth inside and
out, pulsing like an ebbing tide between the two,

but now I’ve filled up vacancies with distractions.
I’ll pay no mind to skipping beats, no icy pangs of
DSM-diagnosable panic, no sleep-wake disorder
of waking up to the nightmare. No. It’s all too real.

Do you feel as though you’re stealing time, too?
How many of your dreams survived past twenty?
Or does each sweep of the second hand shock you
like it astonishes me, still – how my composition is

melodic and not dissonance, not screeching, nor
silence which would permit the whispering leech
of old voices not our own, poltergeists conjured
as children, campfire stories that should’ve burned,

instead now I stack notebooks. I sing loudly. Sleep
beside a faint video glow of fake fireplaces hissing,
whispering warm wishes in the dead still of night –
in the morning I’ll write something new. All too real.

Dear Dr. Bridgford –

You are on my mind. Often. I had wanted to write you a poem
but I found that I’d already written one, fourteen years back –
gushed all my gratitude, already, even employed better words
than I had planned. I just found my final portfolio, you see.
That Happy happy life! you penned out behind the final page,
the holy mantra I carried under my breath through the years.

And what should I shout to you, now, past mortal planes, years
after enduring my reckless free verse – mewling, fawn-like poems,
those clumsy, first footsteps of grief and rapture scratched on page
while you wielded forms like a surgeon. Ice cold. I was taken aback
by your precision – finely faceted sestinas cut like prisms, let us see
heartbreaking spectrums of language, whole kaleidoscopes of words.

I’ve tried to be happy, Dr. Bridgford, but I wrapped myself in words,
I mummified my heart – embalmed the calm inner voices light-years
deep and far away, now I must carefully excavate exhibits so I can see
myself in sunlight, again, a patchwork sewn from bones and poems –
oh, but the happiness? Well, you saw those reaches, professor – back
when I thought identity was what you wrestled down onto the page,

I believed all contentment had to be proven, filed with cover pages –
an explicit, bullet-pointed résumé, faithful testimony through words
that yes, cosmos, I’m paying attention, those sunbeams down my back
are warm like each hand I ever held, yes, I’ll flail – fight back the years
of dissociation – I was certain you had answers, professor, knew poems
spoke with a sacred power, pierced all foggy veils so finally – you see.

I’ve tried to be happy, professor. I try to keep writing myself out, see
how enjambment, twee slant rhymes dancing past bone white pages
help a soul cope while time erodes, but even the most ardent poems
cannot build up an identity, you can’t construct a person from words
and now, I know – my golem of notebooks still walks beside me years
after I gave the pain structure and form, you can’t just take those back.

Now I find that I don’t want to. You passed away, just five years back –
stark loss which struck me with a sudden knock of clarity – now I see
why, my earliest idol had died – I felt that springtime air, again, years
before that approaching drumbeat of grief and loss, a kid with a page
behind a final project where a remarkable woman offered up her words –
said yes, I see you. I hold such soaring hopes for you. I loved your poems.

The Chariot

In this new year I shuffle my tarot deck,
fray the edges, no more wincing. Accept
wear and tear, welcoming all wounds
like old friends; indulge their rambling
about each terrible fable, catalogue stories
and no more smothering them out silent
like hiding bodies under the floorboards –
this year I allow myself to be found.

I lost myself in the echoing hallways of
loneliness, canvas-white empty rooms
strung in a web of hope and longing like
veins and arteries just under the skin,
like hiding under floorboards – struck
blind by possibilities, bright like a sun.
I’ve only just stepped outside. Ready to
take my own hand – no more wincing.

I’ll fray all of my edges, ramble, abandon
endings – I’ll omit the shame, just the joy
spilling over my lips like gems, silver coins,
they’ll strike the floor like church bells ring,
twist open the handles to each lonely door,
spilling light down every darkened hallway,
sing empty rooms full again, lost, now found

Scarcity Mindset

Today I move slowly; gentler mien.
Inner voices ranting, patiently listen
but I don’t take ownership.
Quiet startle realizing I’d forgotten
what my father’s voice sounded like
until I heard a voicemail – desperate,
older, now – familiar headmate. I listen
but I don’t take ownership. I gave up
self-flagellation five years ago, dropped
all his familiar wounds. Same ache, roiling
guilt sour like hunger pangs, almost can
understand the flailing – cornered, feral, but
today I move slowly. Gentler. Loose grip,
drop the feral terror. I don’t take ownership.
Familiar fear and fangs, nostalgic pangs all
never mine. Voicemail ends, silence echoes –
free, now. Listen to new voices, slowly.

Rivulets

A glance out the window, struck suddenly
by the realness of the tree leering outside –
picturing your bones deftly woven into the
tangles of branches, like cradling fingers,
rain falls, whispering windowsill promises
to let go, let go, trailing down the glass and
rivulets through the bark, fractal shadows
of long tree limbs cast onto the wall, dark
dancers celebrate letting go, letting go – but
all I’ve ever had is a jealous desperate grip;
I’ll rake raw rivulet claw marks before I go

To Hear It Said Out Loud

Tell me that snow-covered hill
blends perfectly into clear sky –
that I was right to be breathless
when morning horizon vanished
into a clean page, empty canvas

Tell me that love doesn’t vanish,
that it has a comfortable seat in
some cosmic waiting room, one
ear listening for that right name
to be called out, ready to return

Tell me that it is never too late –
that the nightmares are all gone
but the dreams are real, always,
tell me how things will work out
and mean it, no furtive glances –

Tell me what happens after the
happily-ever-afters, tell me that
the stories keep going – tell me
how endings are only beginnings;
another author picks up the pen

The Inner Child Replies

You started this year speaking to me, again –
we looked into each other’s eyes, embraced –
and then you fell silent, quickly – afraid, maybe
of how sickly-thin and frail I had become
in the intervening decades – scary, how
traits will echo across time. Both of us still
counting our ribs. Calories. Hours. Minutes.

It’s tempting to try to stay some tender age
but I think I’ve grown with you, mine were
the other set of white knuckles beside yours –
when we anticipate those swells in symphonies
the hairs on my neck also stand, that shudder
of ecstasy rolls through both of our hearts –
if you sing in the kitchen, we sing both parts –

well, we used to sing. Used to skip, spring
down school corridors, used to wave batons
to conduct invisible orchestras – six A.M.
on the cold morning bus we sang out loud.
We knew each sinful way to stop caring,
and we’d weaponize the correct ones, not this
numb, drunk, dark room middle-distance –

we used to choose hope. In high school
the cafeteria table turned to nihilism –
a half dozen queer kids banded together,
exsanguinated, already, not even eighteen –
all dutifully tying our own ropes, building
our own guillotines – we’d already jumped
out of the plane, but I chose the parachute.

My heart sang when you saw me, last year –
oh, how close that coffin was to nailing shut,
how simple to silence a voice, surrender to
tumbling down the mountainside; one must
imagine Sisyphus defeated, resignation like
a crown of thorns – to arrest that fall would
tear out an arm, and to chase the boulder –

stopping a spiral means choosing to hope.
You avoided mirrors because that’s where
you always caught my eyes, remembered
the counter-harmonies in the kitchen, or
becoming an altar boy for the dresses, or
choosing the parachute. Stopping the fall.
Believing in better yous, mes, everything –

don’t do this alone. Take me with you, now –
not strong the way that stops a boulder, but
I’ll push, too, when the climb gets steep; I glow
bright, like how I painted stories on the ceiling
late at night – you have never been alone – fix
your eyes forward, take my hand – no more
nooses, guillotines; no more secrets to keep.

Carry Water

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

♦ Zen koan

Surely better than all I’ve discarded,
but what are my hands left holding, now?
The power vacuum within broken cycles,
cults of personality with no charismatic center,
a child-shaped hole born when I became afraid
of losing barbs, of missing the fear if it ever left –
infant macaque clinging to the wire-mother –

but still better than barbs.
Better than shallow cuts,
better than a familiar fear,
better than the blur of decades –
the pale shock of realization, how
two years becomes ten, better than
nothing. That’s all it was. Starved body
with no charismatic center, nothing,
better than toeing slowly around the
no man’s land of child-shaped holes,
too many to cover up, not enough
sheets to hide them all from sight –

at night I sit vigils. I don’t sleep.
The subconscious throws anxiety dreams
that have lost their sting, fading out like
beloved cassette tapes played too often,
(to be loved is to be changed)
I recite litanies for the living, pray
safety for the dreamers, softness
for the waking, strength for the
shell-shocked amongst us, those also
staring blankly at empty hands –
motivation to keep tiptoeing
around child-shaped holes, courage
to peek underneath the sheets,
fill space with something better –

all the love these hands can hold –
better than nothing – shell-shocked
to be a something at all, oh, to know
how much love these hands can hold.
If I could cling to the wire-mother –
lean into barbs, learn to love the cuts –
how much love these hands must hold.

Gratitudes

For the kneading claws on cat paws, like
ragged rakes reaching around your neck, for
your sweatshirt’s heavy hood cowl of armor –
for those speedbumps littering all the roads
just outside your apartment, close enough
together to jolt you from derealization, for
steering wheels steady underneath fingertips,
no cause for alarm, for sleeping past the alarms –
for buying the second box of Mallomars, and
the hot chocolate, and the bag of marshmallows –

for that time you put down the knife,
decided to be disappointed, one more time
by a society that should have embraced you,
deciding that twenty years terrified was still
worth more than a gorey Irish goodbye, an
epilogue written across the tan tile of your
dormitory’s shower stalls – you hate phone calls
but you dialed campus security, anyway –
transmuted total terror into complete shame
when the bored uniform scolded you, some child
in the patrol car backseat interrupting his night –
for the way your stomach rolled right in time
with the nurse’s eyes on a cold infirmary table –
I suppose I didn’t cut deep enough for them –

for not cutting deep enough.
For the privilege to witness each horror
that has followed, decisions made daily
every lonely dawn – stilling the tremors,
putting down the knife, saying the words,
for desiring the disappointments, for
seeking out new cracks to fall through –
for buying the second box of Mallomars
and all of the battered hope that entails

Chrysalis

To hear it all explained by my son
while I fumble with the housekeys,
arms overfull with grocery bags
and he spins in the foyer like a flywheel,
there’s just three types of parent, you see –
the normal ones, strict ones, and mean ones –
I’m stunned to be counted as normal.
I crack the front door, he darts past my legs –
another day debating disclosure. Debating
demolishing this well-constructed view –
detailing painstakingly how some parents
embody all three – that’s how they get you –
but he’s already stolen my bedpillow,
made a chrysalis out of a comforter –
who am I to shatter this kind of peace?
Like toppling over a tower of blocks,
like kicking down sandcastles, like
piercing the shell of hatching eggs
too soon, too soon, I can’t. I can’t.
I afford myself the space he’s left for me,
the sliver of cushion beside his cocoon –
I reflect on the virtues of normalcy.

Hide and Seek

I used to fit in broom closets,
contort to whichever shapes
twisted best into basement blanket bins –
I found the quiet corners, slipped inside,
hiding, holding breath until forgotten.
Safer to be discarded. Safer in stasis.
I recited strange prayers
listening to that silent dark –
let me fly away from here,
smallest, scared songbird –
make me invisible, please
make all of me bleed into
the weight of these blankets –
safer to disappear.
Safest to not be
anything at all.

High Place Phenomenon

The truth is more direct –
the void doesn’t call.
It has never needed to –
no siren songs, just
a chasm aching, empty open air
that lurks outside the periphery,
darting across the street –
a dive-bombing starling
oblivious to windshield, or tire,
the quiet is the lure. Just
one jerk of the steering wheel,
a careless step off the curb, one
step too many towards an edge,
just the solemn promise – soon
you could be all stillness, too,
nothing else. Nothing else.

Blue Jay

I am twenty-two streetlamps,
sodium-vapor orange spotlights
counting the way back home –

I am the home that never was one.
Warm comforts were made, or found,
but never a room for me in the heart
of those timbers, that steel –
windows rattling in hurricanes –
they never broke, until they did

I am what remains, what’s left
after everything I gave away –
much easier to be pecked apart
like blue jays at the bird feeder
feasting on their entitlements
with a calm show of force, bullies
belied by cornflower feathers

I am what couldn’t break, so
it bent, it crumpled, it folded,
I took the branding iron
and held it against my own skin,
I’ll accept all of the sin
so others need not carry it,
I like the weight. It sits
heavy across my shoulders
like my father’s duster,
lost once I left it behind –

rounding a corner, cowering
quiet in the backseat, counting
streetlights silently in my head –
seventeen, eighteen, nineteen…

Blazes

Look to the leaves, how even the trees breathe –
slow, deep sighs before that first blanket of cold,
leaves orange and gold, painting desperate blazes
against a cloudless October sky; baring thin fingers
all pointing home. Rustling voices, whispering choir,
sing divest from the past, make room for new growth.
The coming dawn is inevitable, the wheel turns anew.

How to Write a Letter to Oneself

Consider the audience, how
she’ll jump from her chair, terrified
by the swinging clang of the mail slot –
consider the envelope, abandoned,
just joining the jetsam of junk mail
lingering lonely until slender, tremulous
hands tear into the insides, hungry to
fatten up – cold is coming, famine with it –
consider it’s already been said, she’s already
chewed it, all those words crumpled up,
tossed, and discarded – consider

another medium. Consider postcards,
how you could couch concern within
a lovely little vista. Wish you were here.
Consider the cost of stamps, versus
costs of courting with silence, how
quiet needs to be punctuated before
the ever-present ringing sets back in,
consider how emptiness cries to be wasted,
mewling, awful books chock full of blank pages –
consider the island of each postal bin, drop box,
the trucks, each conveyer belt, set of eyes
and hands which a letter must pass through –
consider the certainty of delivery, versus the
desperate scrabbling of being misunderstood.
Consider words, themselves, how they’ll weaponize,
grow like tumors so they can thrive, choke
out green growth, crawl like greedy vines, or
how tree roots glacially move the sidewalks,
suburban continental drift, slowly. Certainly.
Consider all of the costs.
Send the letter, anyway.

Riverstone

Beachside recess yard, asphalt-hard,
waves crashing white noise, background
metronome beating steady time – youth
was wasted on me, certainly, sitting
cross-legged, sandblasted by gusts
stinging and scouring but I’m all smiles,
dedication to lonely crafts, studying
so I can remake myself stone still,
hope so far flown all my dreams are
monochrome, those escapist fantasies
are best left to books, but if all it took
was stillness, then yes – I could hold,
pray to empty dogma, turn me cold –
let erosion be the steady hand that reveals
the shape of me, she lies asleep; make me
a fossil. Break me down. Reduce me
to elements, make me the wind,
the sand, return me to the land –
unmake me, anything but soft,
just listen – do you hear it?
Waves, wind, white noise
just listen, make me new.

Narcissus

Maybe mirrors were a mistake –
one should not be able to peer
through pupils, into darkness,
clenching fists around a toothbrush
daring reflections to flinch, apologize,
looking for that faint, visible pulse
beating through the diaphragm –
does it move, too? Is this all true?
Last night you woke up crying, a smile
turning up the corner of your face –
there’s no smirk in the mirror.
Who knows what Narcissus saw.
Who can tell which reflection
looked back, a voice from the black
that can burn a soul down to petals

Invocation

Yes! Yes – poems for all the unfit parents,
stanzas for the neglect and slant rhymes for
each time absent affection gets rebranded
as a lack of gratitude – yes, beatitudes for
each and every sob choked down better
than the meals I purged – yes, poems for
the poison inside me, I had to get rid of it –
yes, lines for the lies that bound me, better
than unravelling; maybe, maybe not – at least
the fiction was my making, frames for slants
to skew into a form that could align, justify
me neatly onto the page – yes, psalms for
the rage reduced to meager coals in my gut
too heavy to regurgitate – songs for bonfires,
for when those coals glow white-hot and you
burn and you burn and you burn and you burn
and if you have any voice left, then yes – hymns
for hope, the right words to invoke a glow of
ashen coals, to write the poems, break those lines,
prayers for enough time, but yes – always poems

Bodyhopping

Sometimes the cricket, waterlogged
in a puddle, eyes sunward, exhausted
and welcoming the finality of the sole,
legs thrashing, I will die singing loudly

Sometimes the cat, all suncooked fur
purring beneath fingers, waves of her
contentment circulating to your heart,
teaching that peace is what you take

Sometimes the backroad tree branch
voids of leaves cut out in right angles
by mail trucks, live defiantly, root deep,
you were here first; that sun is for you

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