Artifact Fiction

writing about you is plagiarizing an essay the night before it’s due: the idea time-tested and perfect, & me looping over what everyone else has known all along, just changing the words.

if someone reads this and feels even half of what i do, even an iota, that’s just me taking credit for the way your mouth moves, sharp character arc of your hipbones, the perfect syntax of your skin.

(refurbished from a love note i wrote on the back of an index card)

for you

☐ Take a breath, like, one of the long, good, circular ones. As if beginning a meditation.

☐ Suspend judgment. Repeat as needed, but at least once for now.

☐  Think of me as a bird. What is my plumage, my silhouette? How would you know to look for me, despite my camouflage? I know you'd know where I was, that I was there, in the underbrush or in the rain gutter.

(If I were a bird, singing to you — you'd hear me in the treetops, on your walks, sogood-sogood-sogood. High-pitched, so you couldn't miss it. That's to remind you: )

☐  Remember you are good, though that's not the adjective you may have preferred.

☐  Become the bird. (You're so close, all light gentle bones, sharp eyes, flight in your heart. You don't even have to try.)

☐  And then: become the sky.

☐  Remember you are the sky (not the weather).

☐  Remember you and I are one in the same feather.

☐  Flock together.

for me

☐ Don't write the other poem, the one that hurts too much.

☐ Write the poem that's funny.

☐ Write the poem about not writing the poem.

☑ Write the poem that isn't a poem

☐ Become the bird.

☐ Become the sky.

☐ Try, try, try.

for me we

On my to-do list:

☐ You.

Part of the reason I love the frantic pace of NaPoWriMo is that one is forced to be thinking of poetry constantly. From the moment I wake up I’m rattling words in the mason jar of my brain, hoping something sweet like a good random jellybean combination falls out.

Grateful for every person who

you loved then didn’t

loved you then didn’t

for showing you how to love me.

I want to    kiss him

but

I can’t.

Global/National Poetry Writing Month, for un-short.