i didn't know that a city on a lake could cause me to cry
at the innocently dead sight of a raccoon carcass road kill at 7 a.m

or throw my pillows down my throat in the night time or
paper clip my thoughts together and hang them
on the side of the bed

i'll still wonder why
we only drove by the lake & never stopped

to admire the white caps
that you know i love
and those black docks

i struggled to capture a photograph
but we were driving too fast.

beneath these raining golden leaves.

the road turned at a downward slope
my soles flying down it's back

but absorbing, with each trace
it's skin, my legs spider
walking with a careful ease, absorbing my own
weight against its body

i can trace the skin of these roads
with the tips of my feet i can feel
its heat rising in the morning dew

the fog dripping between its cracks like
sweat on backs except
my feet don't have to graze

search. the promise of pavement
a body stretched out to travel across
beneath these raining golden leaves
always

and the more i know, the more
i don't know.

it's as if unearthing
new facts uncovers old
artifacts, memories buried on shores
lake michigan, the tip of the
finger of the cape
bottle caps in my purse

except the further time steps
me away from them
the more i know of them and the greater
i don't know of the now

because now is not the night i
stood in a 2 am fog among the shells and whitecaps
and was able to see

because ignorance really is bliss

not knowing that you know

absolutely nothing about what
you're supposed to be doing,
here on this shore, counting shells and whitecaps
and cigarette butts and bottle caps in
my purse and the days

that go by like dust collecting in attics.
the more i know,
the more i don't know and the more
i need to know

on how i will run you out of my bones.

it's the running.
it's the running in the night,
the race against the dark
the falling of fall's fingertips along the treeline

as if the leaves are sucking
the last breaths of sunlight and
florescence from the daytime

gasping and grasping and
ringing in one final push of color
against the dark like

a need to
keep going

to wear down until the bones show

to pound those memories of me and of you
into the sand along the reservoir along
the water's edge and the edges of waters
at the edges of cities by lakes.

a solidified desk; how i am here and not there, how i am there and not here; the way my calves tie in knots as i climb those filthy hills, those trash heaps, the grit of humanity, the subway fumes and the lonely sidewalk ash; the way the sun sets earlier in the sky; the way there is always time to race; our desires to fast forward and rewind; my dashboard in the morning contains the summertime heat - my windows feel fall scrap against their panes; i am flushed, i am cold. airport dreams & the future hanging in the air, taking off like the hundreds of geese along the reservoir every time i think about the way my feet will feel setting down, one step at a time, in your city; how i'll mistake the lake for the atlantic and be okay with it; how your skin might feel near mine; how i buttoned my shirt all the way this morning against the 6 a.m. chill; how i look for you in their faces, in my sheets, in a past of tangled legs, in the ocean waves on a 1 a.m. beach; on the steps in an autumn new york; in the symphonies and the white lines on the highway; in the green summer hills & the piano keys; in the flicker in my stomach when considering your lips. how we've grown older, how my forehead might have wrinkled, but how you're still a Boy & i'm still a Girl.

perhaps i need you, lingering in the air between my days. these days. your maybe fingertips - your maybe laughter and your maybe shoulder i may lay my head against as the public transit slips us through the city like rain water, the mechanic lullaby rocking us like this vivid daydream.

my desk, so cold and so black.

fort adams.

did you hear about the elephants,
they sang and i did, i saw
them in those hills when the notes
swelled and i saw the green green
grass in those hills and the sure stone and
those hands that built us up rock
by steady rock in the summertime
beneath straining
sun. in the hotel room, did you notice
the smoke flooding my veins, did you
notice the way my hands
braided my hair that you later
touched like feathers in between the
passing headlights, the brink of
august at its finest.

i fell in love with the way that man
played the accordion, the way he made it
whoosh and breathe, each note like a gill
filtering sunlight and oxygen and
our back against the stone on the hill
beneath moons inside castles in the country,
the way the mud caked our backs and smelled
like raw earth. all of that i saw
as he moved the way
a man should move, pushing life
through an accordion.

did you notice how they climbed with
their sneakers and their cigarettes to the small
crevices and windows in the great fort? how
i let the notes and the talk of elephants
and Home wash over my raised hands and travel
down the skin of my arms, how i danced as if
it was my last hour to feel
solid ground and sweat on my brow? did you notice
how i tried to find you beneath your sunglasses
and the freckles on my nose and
the smoke between my lips and in your hair so
salty from the sweat and the sun and the grit,
did you notice how they were like
Jesus in a tent, how we all bowed down on our knees
how her mascara collected in beautiful black
rivers across her cheeks.

how i tried to feel you between the bed sheets
and the oyster dreams, and the gin
and the tambourines beating joy and red
red ribbons.

i bit my tongue into the headlights when
i wanted to tell you goodbye.

fort adams watched the cellos and saw them
the way i did, how they curled their
necks into the wind, their notes like
tiny tragedies and petals falling to
floors, their oak bodies saved between
knee cradles. i picked the grass up
between my fingers and watched you
walk away in the afternoon of lullabies.


-writing was inspired by Saint Stephen's End by the Felice Brothers.

on Big Moves

you will miss the solitude of your third floor
carpeted tower, the periwinkle painted walls,
a reminder of your seventh grade mind and
the innocent flowers you picked from the wildflower
garden along the driveway and placed so carefully
on the windowsill, as if you were already
a full fledged gardener. there are sixteen years of
tack holes in the walls and you will miss
curling your body along the left wall in year two,
the far wall in year five, beneath the window at
age 22 so you have a place for cigarette smoke
and sunlight in the morning
a view of those horses
so gallant beneath a sliver of moon.
the lupine will remain prominent without you
they will stretch their heads so high because
they know how to properly do so.
learn from them.

i've started to trust what i can feel in my bones.

i felt violated when i discovered my text messages were being read while i was busting my ass steaming milk and carrying out orders - being the coffee bitch, if you will. i felt especially smothered when i learned that my online accounts might have been hacked into, and even more so when i was quite violently approached and turned into a piece of property.

i quit.

& i won't miss it. not even a little. i'm too afraid to ever go back. i won't even go to collect the last of my tip money.



& at the same time, i'm trusting something new that i can feel in my bones. for the first time in my life, i'm experiencing the most vivid and real relationship i've ever had. there is nothing more freeing than sitting beneath the moonlight on a clear night, sharing the night air, listening to the frogs and the crickets and the world breathing around you. there is nothing more raw and real than the simple gesture of a hand you trust helping you stand and walking you through the dark to something Real, guiding you without question or a price to pay, or expectation or judgment. there is nothing better than laughing because you both can't sleep in, so you go out to breakfast at 7 AM on a saturday before the rest of the world wakes up for the best cup of coffee and the best spinach and eggs, and the simplest conversation.

i haven't had butterflies since the tenth grade. this is where i've been for the past month.

i promise to start writing poetry again. i can feel something that was buried deep within my bones starting to surface.

[it's funny how everything always happens all at once. we (or i) have these long stretches of time where literally nothing exciting occurs. i spent an entire year pouring coffee and sweeping dirty floors, doing everything in my power to change my routine, make it interesting, and not Lose Hope.

& then everything reaches this climax. i'm suddenly being frighteningly stalked; i'm suddenly landing job interviews left and right (& securing my first Real job); i'm suddenly meeting a set of parents and wondering if it's okay for me to be feeling what i'm feeling; i'm quitting jobs; i'm moving to boston; i'm not sure if i can call myself single anymore. i'm in transition in literally every aspect of my life. & wow].





my hopes are so high.

My Last Monday.

it was your typical sort of monday - relaxed. everyone likes to ease into their work weeks, and everyone is very serious on mondays, as if it's the most important of all days for getting things done - the prime day of the rat race of the working world, from what i've observed, at least. business suits are pressed, collars neatly folded, briefcases held with such an air of importance.

i've spend every monday for the past year making cappuccinos and trying hard not to spill soup or drop stacks of dirty dishes. i've spent every monday pouring dark roast coffee to the woodshop men, and conversing with P about her Middle Eastern/Islamic studies, and she recently told me that she's thinking about moving away, and I think she's grown more lonely; A got her usual large iced tea, and L got his usual salad, and between all of these people, I have started to wonder about the nature of routine - why we stick to the same thing every day, why we are so inclined to order the same sandwich each day from the same place at the same hour, why we are so opposed to changes, or left to feel as though we are floundering around in the middle of the ocean when our favorite coffee flavor has run out.

yet, i do appreciate the routine same old same old. it allows me to think about other things as I swipe their credit cards.

as always, M got his chocolate chip cookie, no bag; B got her French roast coffee and chatted aimlessly to mostly herself about the recent water contamination in Boston; D came in and had his five shot latte with skim, and he asked me how i have been, and he seemed very troubled.

i performed my usual routine of staring longingly out the windows, pretending to clean things i'd already cleaned so as not to be yelled at by C, and had my break on the back porch with my black iced coffee.

black coffee. there is something so fresh and so real tasting about plain, black coffee, especially over ice. it's bitter and raw and real. as real and close to the original as can be.

these cafe mondays - the man with the root beer and chips, the women & their 'stitch and bitch' group and their piles of beautiful yarns in the sunlight, the peaceful solitude of empty chairs, pushed in neatly and waiting to be filled, the railroad man and his toasted muffins - were all so good to me, so colorful, so comfortable, so steady and predictable and sure. i will miss them.



on a lighter note, the walk-in freezer broke today.
so long, cafe mondays.

the horses.

they must have run through the orchard until
their hooves reached our lawn and then
they weren't afraid to touch, to
shake their wiry manes at the navy sky,
and prance beneath the cherry blossoms
while i slept so soundly.

it gets stuck between my fingernails
all coffee grit and stale money and
last summer and the awakening earth
once again

the floorboards have a years' worth of
dirt, a new layer to add to the old, the same
old same old, and these days
my pants cling loosely to my legs,
as if afraid of coming too close to my skin,
and the cars shine like fresh quarters
in the parking lot on a rainy day where
i sit on the old gray porch
rickety and solitary and stained
sipping coffee, watching the days go by.

***

i need to really learn how to accept that when people come, they usually go, too, sooner or later.

persephone rising.

it was bare-boned reality, the coffee so
black & so cold in my paper cup. the
cotton-ball snow in the branches caught my breath,
i ran and i ran and i ran and i ran and ran until

beneath the window in New York you
counted my rib bones with your bare hands
in rooms of mattresses on the floors and i watched
its tears and stains like grit between my teeth. there were
walls and rattling, rusting heaters and your greedy eyes all
peeling off the lace of my bra
undoing what had so delicately been embroidered
in place, so precise, just-so,
thread by thread, bare.


jeans on greedy jeans
a wood floor, a February bedroom, beneath
your window in New York your lips against
my rib as though you could devour it, grind me
like candy between your teeth. cracked and crest-fallen.
chalk dust white. ashes & teeth-chilling snow.
you'd find
i am not hollow.

i pieced my ribs back together that
were strewn about among the empty
beer bottles & dirty socks.

I returned to my Place like fallen snow.

and now, when the road's arms no longer stretch far enough,
the coffee is no longer black enough, the snow
fades from the ground like ancient chalk on aged blackboards,
when the sky's veins begin to stretch and bleed
red again at sunset
i am Persephone rising,
i am weeping away the snow
and my tattered, withered lace.



**

lately, i am searching for answers to questions that I don't even know.
i can feel myself rising into something else.
even the weirdest music isn't weird enough. the spiciest food not spicy enough, the coffee not hot enough, the running and running
and driving and driving not long enough,
the hours too fast.
raw limes and lemon teas and avocados and animal collective and how i can feel
the new heat seeping into the walls, cascading with the sunlight into
the orange walls of the cafe, giving the ice
purpose once again.

in two months, i will have been there for a year.

vivid dreams.

last night i dreamed i was driving down a steep sloping hill, and that my brakes gave out & i was suddenly vertical to the ground. when i hit, my car flew far through the air, and i was driving over icy ground when i landed, trying so hard to maintain control of my car. as i drove over tree the rocky terrain, there were suddenly cars coming at my from the opposite directions, and i couldn't avoid them, so i veered even further away from the road. when the trees became too thick to drive through, i ran out of my car into the cold and tried to run back up the steep hill i'd come down, but i my shoes had no traction and i couldn't climb back up. i was in the middle of a forest. i just kept climbing up and sliding back down, falling into ice.

i also dreamed that i was trying to take a picture of a snow covered path somewhere in Ithaca, but I couldn't quite get the angel I wanted, and I my camera ran out of batteries, and when i returned to the spot to take the picture again, it was no longer there. The lake had turned into a sea. There were gates everywhere, and they all lead to this sea, and everything was so snowy.

i recently dreamed about her, as well. she was sitting at the center table when i walked into the office, talking to her mom, my boss. My boss looked at me, who stared in disbelief and confusion, and said, "it's okay sara, she's been here with me for a while now, and you can now see her too." I watched from my desk as they talked.

Later, when i went to the area where the water bubbler is, she followed me over and pulled me aside. I can honestly say, I've never had anybody be so overly vivid in a dream as she was - her eyes just pierced me. She asked me how her mother was doing. I told her that I think she's holding up okay, at least at work. She teared up. I told her it wasn't fair what had happened to her. She hugged me.

This one will stick with me for a long time.

on being alone.

last night, i went to a show at the Middle East in Boston. After walking through sexual harassment Central, I finally found the place and the proceeded to wait a good half hour for my friends to get there while they were out on their respective dates. I stood in the middle of the restaurant area for a good ten minutes and felt ridiculously awkward, so I decided to go wait outside and make a few phone calls in the mean time. Of course, nobody answers, and I suddenly have a homeless woman asking me for money and it suddenly hit me.

I am always by myself. Literally. Any social event, any sort of...anything! I always wind up walking through cities completely alone at night; I go on dates with guys & they try to do things like take me into the woods to drink beers (hence why I am Single); I am most often alone in my house when I'm not at work, running solo during my runs, running errands by myself, eating lunches and dinners and drinking coffees and beers and wines with myself, cooking by myself, singing by myself, working by myself, sleeping by myself, shopping by myself.

This has been a year of serious Alone Time with myself. I'm ready for it to end.

After everyone finally got there & I'd spent enough time alone with myself in public in what I realized was an incredibly bad area, the night turned out to be so eye opening for me. I ran into old Ithaca friends I hadn't seen since graduating; my high school friends met my college friends, and everyone had some sort of 6th degree of separation and turned out to get along really well, and the band was fantastic. Of course, I looked around and realized every person around me was coupled off with a Significant Other of some sort. Naturally, I felt a twang of Alone once again, but it was okay because I'm so used to this. I mean, maybe it's who I am. A solo runner. I can't say I'm not happy - I've learned to become so content with myself, and with entertaining myself and just with Being Myself. But at one point, I just looked around and wondered how on earth was every person around me finding all this love and excitement and complete wonder in some other person? Like, this still happens? How? I want to know how. Part of me is so terrified that I am incapable of falling in love, of ever letting anybody get that close to me. I can't help but wonder what it's like. & part of me is so terrified because I feel as though this is what I'm supposed to be doing right now. Falling in love. Letting someone in.

Now, my nights never end without some sort of awkwardly strange encounter with a potential for filling this Love void, as I'll call it. As I'm looking around realizing I am the tenth wheel here, I do happen to notice a relatively attractive guy across the room. About an hour later, I realize he is standing right behind me. Another ten minutes later, he's standing right next to me. Now, I never assume a guy is interested in me, because whenever I do, I'm always wrong & it winds up being embarrassing. So I was sure to ignore him and figured if he wanted to talk to me, he probably would. Five minutes later, he turns to me and says something completely incomprehensible, so I yell, "What??"

And he turns to me and says, "this is going to sound really weird. But could I offer you a piece of gum??"
"uhh.... sure?" Do I have bad breath? Most likely. I was drinking a beer, after all.
"oh no, you don't have bad breath at all, but I just have a hyper sensitivity to breath and I'm a very breath conscious person."

I'm pretty sure this guy was incredibly stoned, but we actually did have a good time. Because he was even more awkward than I am, it actually worked out quite well, conversation wise. Of course, though, I meet someone who's very breath conscious, of all things. Good thing?

Looking back on my dating patterns, this shouldn't have been anything out of the ordinary. In fact, this conversation starter, along with the fact he proceeded to do the hand jive after this, was possibly very normal. I've been on (more than one) date where a guy attempts to bring me into the WOODS of all places to drink beer (this occurs on very formal dates), or to "go see a really cool spot" at midnight in, of course, the middle of the woods. I've had men pick me up to take me out to a movie, or to dinner, only to find they are completely and utterly trashed to no end, or if I'm really lucky, high on coke. I've been left at a mechanic in the middle of nowhere upstate New York; I've been slammed against a brick wall and I know how a firm grip bruises; the only Valentine's Day dinner I've ever been on, I paid for because the guy was broke and apparently coked out, his eyes popping out of his head- he couldn't even look at me; I've been cheated on, & I've more than once unknowingly been the girl he's cheating with; I've seen some dark places, far worse.

So as I walked to the T at midnight, alone in Central after a night of being surrounded by people but estranged from the love connections occurring around me, (aside from Breath Boy, of course), it hit me, along with the bitter cold, that here I am, walking alone yet again. And this time, I really don't think I should be alone. And as I walked by men who got in my face and told me I was pretty and made moaning noises at me, I began to run. I could hear men laughing at me. I ran, and the T was so far away, and their noises and actions and words came hurtling at me, and one of them even tried to follow me. And it was just laughter and cold and this panicky fear I've only felt a few times, the kind of fear that clutches your chest and shakes you; it's raw.

I was terrified. And I realized, (safely?) on the T, that I really should not be alone. Not anymore. Not on nights like these.

Why is it that I increasingly find myself alone in dangerous situations? Why, at age 23, with a (usually) level head and a body I care about and goals and financial independence and passion for life and an education, am I walking down these dark streets and into subway stations and emptied parking garages, alone at midnight? Why am I paying for coffees and paying for dinners and driving to the ends of the earth and calling to say hello all while sitting and waiting for the phone calls that never come?

The sad part is, I know how lucky I am. How easy I have it. But I speak on behalf of all girls who find themselves walking alone at night, running from men, being stood up under restaurant awnings.

architecture of people.

i made the most exquisite looking latte today. soy milk is good milk, but most especially for decorating purposes.

P tells me that she's taking a class about the history of the middle east. i know her so well, & yet sometimes, when i ask her how she's been, she's so taken aback, & then so pleased, that i even bothered to ask her such a question. i think she's one of my favorite regulars. the wise world traveler. a lonely woman who seems so okay with being lonely. if i do end up alone in this lifetime, i hope i can be as accepting and independent as she seems to be.

i want to write about the woodshop men. next door is a wood shop, a part of the architecture firm. it's the rough & tough, hands-on part, where the workers wear flannel shirts and paint stained blue jeans, work boots and hats in this cold. they are the ones with the occasional earring, the tattoos peeking out beneath their rolled up sleeves, the wiry beards, the leathery, sunned skin. these are the ones that use their hands and make things happen - they turn the things on paper into three-dimensional reality.
i don't know them by name. there is the one with the white beard, who left a $20 bill in the tip jar around Christmas. There is the one who orders a muffin with his coffee. there is the one with the earring and the soft eyes, the one who is jolly and calls me a 'cutie' in a fatherly sort of way, and then there is my favorite one: the one who shaves his head bald until it shines, who tells me about his three daughters, & i tell him i have two sisters, & i can tell he cares for them so much because i pour black dark roast into a makeshift clay creation mug, clearly created by a young girl. he has an earring as well, wears moccasins on occasion, & i can tell he's the type that puts his feet up on the table and doesn't take things too seriously. he's handsome, & i can get away with calling him 'dude.'

they seem so enduring. so simple. scratched up, yet unscathed.

***

"The knowledge of impermanence that haunts our days is their very fragrance."

Saturday night & Chicago dreams.

i keep on telling myself that someday, everything will make sense. but i've finally realized that no, it won't,
& all we'll have are memories of standing in puddles,
my hair strung along my forehead that you almost
touched. fog, clinging to my coffee breath,
violin strings in the backs of our minds,
you sipping your peppermint tea in the rain.

one year later, i'll scrub counter tops & feel
my way through icy basements
& dream about chicago in all its glory,
pouring coffee & sweeping dust
into a bank account

& at home on saturday night,
i'll find two dead flies lying beneath a lamp
their small bodies fragile & overturned,

dead to the world, i'll stare
at them for hours on a saturday night.
this is reality.

i'll leave the light on
dream of chicago & violin strings & the places we
could have gone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3azDdaFlu0



[Can I call you mine.]

this song got stuck on repeat while i was driving. i love when that happens. and when i can see the entire night sky from certain parts of the highway, and just driving and driving and driving, and thinking but not thinking. meditating.

The Things We Leave Behind

today at work, in the office of white paper stacks to the ceiling
i didn't even notice how the amaryllis flower in the window
right in front,
right there in front of my face had
fully blossomed and when i did noticed
it made my heart leap, as if startled by someone
who'd crept up on me cruelly.

and yet right away i had noticed
at the bottom of the nearby trash can the
sticky note stuck there, neatly
in green pen, a name, "allison"
a group of flowering ink surrounding her
at the bottom of a trash can
a piece of her once life tucked away, discarded

and we walk into each day, opening our eyes
to remember in the dark morning
that it was not a nightmare and
proceed forward, step by mechanical step
to bury ourselves among the
piles of white paper, ignoring
the amaryllis and how she used to stand on this
orange carpeting, and pretending
that we won't Go too, and that
they didn't have to tape that sign over their doorway
to keep the reporters out.

sticking, on the bottoms of trash cans,
the things that actually happened.

***

she is scattered all over that office. on the sticky notes, on pieces of old yellow paper - notes to her mother. her picture on her mother's desk. on the covers of those books she'd designed that summer.

when we sat there side by side that summer, chatting and working, writing and doodling, we didn't know that half a year later, i'd be reading her obituary in that same seat, surrounded by her old and beautiful doodles still clinging neatly to the walls.

i still get chills to the bone. i am so sad for them.

Prompt: My home makes me think of...

My home makes me think of...


summer. the way it always blows gracefully through white curtains and urges us outside. Running barefoot through the yard, skipping across the hot tar driveway to the next island of grass. The nagging of a knotted bikini tied behind the nape of my neck. Sweating glasses of iced tea. The cricket hush dusks. Sheets hung on the line, blowing crisp in the breeze.
"That summer fields grew high with foxglove stalks and ivy. Wild apple blossoms everywhere. Emerald green like none I have seen apart from dreams that escape me."

The way the rug felt when I was young and used to slide down the stairs headfirst, steadying myself with my arms. The carpeting smelled like burn, and it was cream colored and rough. My knees were always red after those headfirst slides.

Daisy crowns and watermelon, even though I never liked watermelon. Lupine reaching its purple arms through the meadow.

My father's painting sweatshirt. Stained with blue and whites, mostly, yellowed in the armpits, smelling like cars and gasoline, heat and garages.

Sitting in her window seat, how I'd fold my legs to my chest and listen to her in the dark. Our giggles would always reach downstairs, but it was always worth those late night conversations about who was cute, and what it might be like to smoke a cigarette, and what did we want to be when we grew up? Conversations in the dark. Laughing at midnight until it was time to go to school again. Her big eyes looking up to me, always.

Smoking a cigarette in my bedroom at age nearly 23. Watching how out of place its smoke looked against my teenaged walls. The feeling of being outgrown, as though my legs are suddenly too long for my bed, as though I am trying to squeeze myself into a doll house. Staring at bills piled up beside a vintage paddington bear jewelry box and my 7th grade music collection.

My Ithaca home(s) remind me of...

those sideways conversations we'd have at 2 a.m. Me, lying on the floor with my feet propped up against the sofa. You, beside me, taking the same stance. Us, talking about the past, the present, and the future, and all the things found in between.

incense ash. the way i'd spend hours watching the smoke twirl itself beautifully around my pencil that needed to write but couldn't. the way i'd let it fill the tiny room until my roommates complained it smelled like a church sanctuary. how the ash would pile on my desk, and it'd be weeks before i'd brush it away. remains of yesterdays.

A rainy day where I walked to town in the downpour. How when I returned home, I stripped off my clothing and hung it over the balcony in a thunderstorm. How I watched that storm from the balcony & watched it wash away the rotting pumpkins. Blasting Neko Case, glasses of wine, eating only pieces of toast for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The puddles that'd form from our boots in the kitchen, and my soggy socks and how each boy that kissed me had horrible breath. Being alone.

A rooftop where we'd watch the fire station and wonder about the passerby. How we carried pumpkins all the way from Wegmans and carved their insides onto that rooftop, and you propped your rickety speakers against the windows and turned it up loud. Melted candle wax - how we'd talk for hours, and you'd pull my hand to your heart, sometimes.

Love letters in London. A yellow room with a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. A lace curtain billowing in an early spring. A constant siren, a cracked coffee pot. Marijuana and our clothing hanging on the doors, the chairs, the sofas and doorknobs, our socks hanging neatly from crooked drying racks. Hardwood flooring and their singing and strumming, the weaving of melodies that saved me when I started to Miss Things. Talking ourselves to sleep, always.

Watching a sweat bead drip between my breasts. Blue dresses and the tickle of grass against my bare legs. White wine in my throat and the sun rays cradling my dizzy head. Tangled bare feet, tangled in four years of laughter. Gulping sunshine together. My beautiful friends.

Watching winter from a window on Prospect St. Passing green smoke between fingers and eating scrambled eggs in bed and letting the snow fall and watching the orchids you loved to take care of grow tall. In those hazy days, the snow was always so sharp - I was always looking for it, those pieces of reality falling silently around me, cold and welcoming, breaking a high fever.

These are all snippets of various places I've known well, that resonate most vividly in my mind when I think of home. It's very nostalgic, I know. Too much so, and part of me wishes I'd just written a poem. In these, I found myself linking many of these "homes" with various important (& in some cases, unimportant) people in my life.

Brief moments from autumn, 2009.

drinking from the back seat
of a car, shivering
in October,
always.

then.
we scooped the moon beams off
that lake at midnight
held them
briefly for a moment.

argentina, the hills
and the orange houses
so far away.

We don't dive, we cannonball.

it sure does.

today i did manage to pour coffee all over myself. everywhere. down the front of my nice white shirt. spattering my arms. along my pants, my shoes. i didn't mind, not at all.

because i've come to realize how much i love this place. sure, i hate it the vast majority of the time. but with my new schedule, i'm only in two days a week, and well...i find myself looking forward to them. the cafe has become my space to breathe - to be myself. i realized this today as i crammed myself into a small spot inside of a cabinet (i can fit into tiny places & Really Clean) to wipe down some spilled espresso...i realized how at home i feel in this little place (the cafe - not the cabinet).

a lot of this is within the people - those regulars that i've come to look forward to so much. they've all remembered to ask me how my new job is going, and they even tell me that it's not the same without me there. there's comfort in still knowing that T will still have his large iced skim latte, that B will still have her french roast with a refill, that the three o'clockers will still come and that i still know all of this the way i know the street i grew up on, or the back of my hand.

this place has a heart and soul. as i clean out the floor of the fridge for the 1,000th time, lining the counter top with the cold milk steamers, wiping old milk to make room for more old milk, i feel part of it, for a brief moment. and because everyone, and everything, needs to be taken care of, in some way or another.

in other news, the Boy from Next Door has come in and we've exchanged e-mails for networking. it's nice to know that people are helpful, and that i can somehow manage to network (this is not the first e-mail i've exchanged regarding publishing/"real" work) from behind the counter of a cafe as the Coffee Girl. however, as enthralling as the Boy Next Door was to me for some time, life has once again proven to be very interesting and unexpected, in that you might find yourself driving with the windows down on a sunny winter day listening to Thao ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=966nqAtqWzE ) with a good friend who suddenly shines in a new light & makes your heart beat a bit faster.

job shifts. perspective shifts. the unexpected. some sunny days.

From a Freshly Scrubbed Floor

my good friend Olivia and I have started to find writing prompts in an attempt to save our creative writing habits from dying away forever (thank you, post graduate and non-inspirational life). This prompt was to write from the view of a freshly scrubbed floor. I ended up writing this brief (& pretty lousy) poem about the cafe...it can be read from the perspective of a floor, but it can also be read from my (the barista's!) perspective. here it goes, who knows:

they come and they go
the old woodwork rotting into
brown coffee in brown
mugs and brown counter tops,
the grit from important and
careless shoes that
walk

all over me on a daily basis,
these walls dripping orange
now, so dulled as i spill
coffee across my skin

it kills the pores
covers the dirt with grounds
hot grains of brief pain.

they come and they go.

in other news, a recent music suggestion is TV on the Radio - amazing! and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes. I will leave you with this song that I can't, for the life of me, stop listening to (warning, it's a strange song). It's just so...great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHKuB85EgnI

The Louvre, from a high school photograph.

I remember the birds. The way their wings sounded like fragile paper against the air. The way they used the air to elevate themselves high above my head.
A memory:

We stood in the square and examined the architecture, the way the angles of the buildings were so unique, so fresh, so frigid and unfamiliar. Our cameras snapped shots of the sight, preserving our moments of viewing this new and astounding place. Around us, people did the same, pointing, snapping photographs, preserving moments.

The Louvre is a maze of history, fingerprints, brush strokes - corridors of glimpses into artists' minds. Walking the halls is like winding through the centuries, a collage of evolving ideas, color schemes, faces.

And yet all I can really remember are the birds. Pigeons, to be exact. the way they would fly through the air outside in large flocks, as if to say We are here. We are now.
They made me want to lift myself into the air - their flapping so loud and ringing so clear above our heads, above the noise of our cameras, our minds, our busy, busy lives.