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.