UNPLUCKED

The moon was ready like we planned. I wanted to carry it over the hill but couldn’t find my wheelbarrow. I looked in the shed so long the sky replaced it with the sun.

I came to meet you anyways, lit up and empty handed. I was three years late and you didn’t recognize me.

YOU ASKED ME WHAT I WANTED

and I said I want it all. I want to lay on the floor and hang art on my walls. I want to dig my hands into sand and watch it fall back together. I want to make time for everything and do nothing with it. I want to sweat in the shower and scream at the bottom of a pool. I’m hungry and I want it all. I’m hungrier than a bird that swallowed the big blue sky.

MIZU KIRI

Of course I want to break the pattern. Of course I hate upsetting balance. Do I have two personalities? Yes, sometimes even five. Some days, like today, I am all of them and all of the places they want to be. And everybody makes me nobody, nobody nowhere. 

I am doing my best and standing still. Asking myself how a rock can be more than a ripple. I stand at the bank and look at reflections. I turn a pebble in my hand and visualize skimming it, the way my parents taught me when I was younger.

I look away before it sinks. I turn it over in my fingers. I do nothing. I do nothing. I become a statue and the sun is setting. I think I can control it. I think it sets when I think about you. I think about you

—all the time.

WHEN YOUR ENTIRE YEAR IS ONE BIG FREUDIAN SLIP OF THE REAL YOU

Oops there I go again being myself. Silly me, showing my intentions. What can I say about my incongruous behavior. To tell you the truth I always thought I wanted to be someone. To keep up with connections and clean my house. But it turns out I’m in love with life. Obsessed with it. And now I’m laughing way too hard at everything. Squatting in the flowers taking pictures. Disconnecting calls that interrupt the shot - and I’m sorry but I’m not. It’s all slipping out of me. I’m in lust with the sun. It’s melting me like honey. I’m full of bees, sweet and sticky. This is my life and it goes with me like butter.

WEFT & WARP

I pull loose cotton from stalks. I feed it through a loom and weave indescribable mishaps. Sweaters with three arms and pants with no foot-holes. 

They’re dyed strange colors. 

You wear them anyways; you say you like them. I have a lump in my throat. You must have three arms and inconsolably cold feet.

SWALLOW

tell me about the time the rain 

lost its balance and didn’t have to fall

didn’t have to carve out the ocean 

with two cupped hands

in this version 

you are not a martyr

the world doesn’t cut you 

like an open mouth

it’s not always best         you know 

to see the best in people

save a river                      by jumping in

it doesn’t make sense, does it?

your name is written on my tongue

my name is spelled out in coffee stains

your hands are on my hips

holding me together

my heart is always reaching

always falling out of my chest

falling as in falling

always as in once

YOU GOT WHERE YOU WERE GOING

You asked me earlier, is this all there is? I don’t know. I want for something deeply too—like it’s something physical. I keep finding myself

walking into rooms. The way you do when you need something from it. But when I arrive, I can’t remember why I’m there or what I needed. So, I turn around

and go back to where I started. Sometimes it helps and other times it doesn’t. Either way, I’m going back and forth and wearing down the carpet. I can’t be sure

what’s distracting me—the lighting in the space or the blankness of my intentions. All I know is I’m leaving empty-handed

or holding things I didn’t come for. I don’t remember what I need, I don’t remember anything. I know 

I don’t want to leave the house without it. Please, don’t let me leave the house without it.

YOU ASKED WHY I WAS EXASPERATED AND DRIPPING ALL OVER THE CARPET

and I told you it’s because I am a terribly wanting type of person. I want to be soaked to my shoes. I want to bear cold shoulders and compare everything to the rain. I want to make metaphors for all of the people who blew into town and wrecked my plans. 

Let me be mad and unequipped and small. Let my clothes be drenched like they stand for something meaningful. This is what you do when you have nobody to tie your shoes. You go looking for things to put you in your place and teach you about humility. 

You want to yell into the big looming thing and hear your name clapped back in thunder. You want your tantrum to be matched. You want your tantrum to be matched in a big beautiful tempest.

LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS

wrapped in naked sheets of gauze

the week draining away—

I slept too close to the edge again

my face half pillowed, muffled

you pinned and pummeled

my aching shoulder with a massage gun

I moaned like a ghost, we laughed at my pain

you couldn’t feel it yet

but you were thick with dawn

we always knew you loved me

you must have made a decision

to become available—that day

I felt a gentle shift in the bed

as you laid down the gun

and fell into years

CEDAR FEVER

I.

Thunder-soaked skies, last night. Words make seasonal change sound like an instance: winter / spring.

I wonder about the in-between. We seem to last forever in the bleed thru: thawed / unthawed. 

II.

After rain, shaken trees. I experience “Texas allergies”. 

III.

Here in Austin girls take pictures off the highway. In the spring / in bluebonnets / in cowboy boots. I worry about them. I read poison ivy affects you more, the more you are around it. 

IV.

Two weeks now, laid dormant. Locals say it’s the cedar. I act like I’m not one. A local, that is. 

A cedar too, I suppose. Unlike trees, I want to move and keep moving. 

V.

Symptoms persist, maybe worsen. You tell me I should see a doctor. My parents raised me tough and / or unable to ask for help. I’m not sure which is worse. 

VI.

A cowboy fellow calls me ma’am.

VII.

I think the flowers are beautiful despite them trying to kill me. We have no perspective for each other’s tolerance.