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.