wet grass
we are living on borrowed time
the green of spring will soon fade to browns
struggling to breathe and blaming it on allergies
blood is pulsing through my veins and my fingertips
this isn’t my bathroom floor this is real life
there is no second chance

sister I am trapped, my body weighted 
by morning, when I woke
birds were calling till my heart stammered 
this time gives meaning to suspended

All is good, good is all
All is good, good is all

Is it?
Yes, it is
At least . . .
I need want to believe it is
It’s my hope,
For my sanity

All is good, good is all
All is good, good is all

the first thing is to wait for the rain
to soften
our skin so that
might easily peel the surface
away
and still the blood stays
clinging in our veins
like the fly to
a horse
pulsing and swaying
to stay the rippling body
veins

and then maybe i can stop breathing in counts of fours,
as the matter in black holes is reduced to nothing but fragments of time, and
impossibly cold remnants of stellar light implode like spiders in the sky.
how is light reduced to remnants?

spectra of light shine in and out of
view a rainbow of emotions envelope the
mind as the music pumps harder and louder and faster
computer static is in my ears like bugs
piercing my eardrum drums faster and harder and louder as tears
fall.

—Begin again,
With an unconscious adoration
For perpetual repetition.
Life in the shape of loops;
Generation after regeneration.
Comfort in conclusion,
Because it is also conception.
Sacred symmetry, familiarity,
Time’s curated conventions.

reverbs of rhythm surround me, and
the aftermath of melodies float – circling my existence.
my thoughts are still, as my fingers
gently pluck the strings of my fender strat.

You waltz by
Zipping through my stratosphere
Leaving almost tangible trails
Streams of fog and particles of water
Falling slowly down to my earth
You come in and out of orbit
Following a reckless collision course
Sometimes I could reach out and touch you

What if the tides bent out from the shore;
Waves broke from themselves, curling out
and up, scraping the sky,
rolling back.
They would collide into each other in the middle of the sea
and then fall, plunge
into some slit of darkness, of magma

we sink
& choke on our own want
& decide it’s enough
& pull down our own quiet
& swim in swallowed songs
& follow our own wounds home
& peel back our skin
& look at the mess we’ve made

Leaves look up to the rising sun
A bird sings its song, letting anyone hear
Dewy grass drips with sweet sugar water

My eyes gift me this
The clouds know I don’t deserve it
My body was put here and for what?

as the clock strikes the bell tolls
clang
clang
clang
the steeple has never looked as high as it does
when you are standing on the tip
looking down at the cobblestones
there is no room in the temple
for the sinner
who does not repent
the

i watch jellyfish billow on the screen like souls floating across skies, their bells blooming as gracefully as bloodstains in bath water, and i reach through the pixels toward some form of salvation, some return that promises in the next life i’ll be something softer, something expansive, wounds

Turquoise vinyl siding
a green darker than any Carolina marsh.
Twenty steps up to the front door.
Fifteen more to the bedrooms.
Will the luggage make it to its destination?

A Prodigal daughter never returns home
She may enter its walls after her respite,
but is always a guest
to the ghost of her mother’s daughter

something breaks in the frozen night 
    tearing / you sit up and i stay

right here in these warm sheets
    you say i am pretty only because the word beautiful

Decorating a Christmas tree, 
Lights cast taught.
Seeing beads of light – asymmetrical, imperfect.

Grease in my hair and oil on my face, 
Piercing uncleanliness.
But sharper is the ground leading from bed to shower.

Over and over and spinning and spinning
The beiges are dancing in the machine
I sit on the dryer and wait so patiently
for the load to be done and restarted again.

at the end of the Earth
there is a dandelion plant
the corner of the sky rests on its bosom
our world relies on its strength

in girl scouts, they teach you sayings
ones you sing around the campfire
they’re supposed to teach lessons
“make new friends but keep the old
one is silver and the other is gold”
except no one remembers the silver
the second-place trophy
the insignificant

In the evenings, 
  Following sundown
     I observed you
        However,
            I never saw you

Your twinkle of light
  Alone –
     In the dead of night
    Impunity
     In absence from society

New

We wake up and feel the absence of warmth.

*** 
Waxing Crescent

Slowly now, we embrace
the blossoming light all around.
Was sleep an absence
from the world, or an immersion
in it? Eyes open, the lights
offer us their hands.

Salty wind pushes at the falling tide.
Blue serenity veils the town as a 
melancholy buzz flows through the idle docks.

A boat pushes through the harbor:
It drifts along, 
lazily down.

the purple lights start to fade, the crowd dying with them.
     your eyes once hidden in the crowd glow vermilion,
     failing to camouflage themselves beneath the shadows
     of your white pupil, an outcast among the filthy onyx pupils

Every day,
I walk a walk
I walk in the hot,
And in the cold,
I walk on grass,
And on the road
I walk under trees,
And under buildings.

I vividly remember
the rough feel of my closet’s carpeting beneath my fingers
as they traced lines and circles and stars
like the ones that filled the sky that night.

In a rare process called transdifferentiation, the turritopsis dohrnii 
(known as the immortal jellyfish) can, in response to physical danger, 
leap back to its first stage of life as a polyp. The born-again polyp 

I am a werewolf.
Waves of pain
Bitter transformation
I bite back
When nothing is wrong
Queasy ramblings
Crying in the bathroom
Clutching onto my stomach
I pray for forgiveness
Fur on my body
Shaved and prickly
Pushing down my nature

come to you in
cyclical relapse
with each syllable
escaping

muzzling silence
be tempted to borrow
its imprisonment and speak in
dialogues conversed by

friction of skins.