#draft poem

some days arrive too heavy to hold, with quiet aches you can't explain— it's okay to sit with the weight, to let yourself feel the rain.

you don't have to be sunshine always, or smile just to seem strong— even the sky falls apart sometimes, and still finds where it belongs.

I believed there were wolves in colorado as a child - Coulda sworn i heard them in the hills

Howling laughing crying joy

Dreamed about them so often I couldnt dream of a world in which they were not in the mountains

When i would hike through the aspens I imagined the eyes were not just on the trees but within them in the faces of wolves

The wolves the wolves are back in my birthplace running free.

Free

What a word, free. Some say the origin comes from the root word meaning to love.

I have a secret, just one

It’s small

A confession unuttered

A black umbrella on a yellow and blue day

Okay. So maybe not so small

And Stakes with people

A stake, high stakes, to kill vampires, build fences, burn witches with dry kindling

-- bundles of sticks

Faggots were used to start fires

No Stakes for them

Up two steps, three

Every Sunday

I stand before them, they sit before me: well-dressed sheep in matchstick pews 

Husbands and ties, wives and dresses

And chewing gum sticking the hymnals together

We sing

I sit

We pray

The youth walk

And feed the flock from glistening silver trays.

Peck, peck, peck.

The body of Christ is old and stale

He catches in my throat

Tap water in thimble-sized, plastic cups, too small a flood to wash away what was made

It’s not even wine. 

Such a bitter sacrament

And it's always up, my big black umbrella

Yet none see me weaving my hand to the music

I see only crowns

A 4/4, a 3/4, the warp and weft knocking thorns and brambles away

Oh, if only they knew

The men behind me, solemn, intone

Eyes and voices cast into their laps

Discordant, off-key, a dirge for the dying

And the sheep follow, bleating, twenty beats too slow

My hand flutters to match

A match to fit in

A match to light the fire

Starsign

with regards to Brenna Twohy

because I live too far away and my voice cannot be duplicated by phone.

because if I do not like your name, I will just call you by another name.  

because I will not stop talking about robots, and inviting robots over for dinner and sitting with them in the cafeteria and whispering secrets in their ears.

because I am already in love with you and no one likes to run a footrace with a cheater.

because I am too old, and I just keep getting younger, while everyone else gets older, and so we are like two trains on parallel tracks traveling in opposite directions. To love me is liking trying to leap between coaches without being able to see for sure if the other window is open.  

because I have so many toys in my room, and do not realize that they are toys.  

Because I write list poems and I do not ever intend to fix this about myself. 

Because I am probably smarter than you

because I am probably a better kisser than you.

because I am so, so much prettier than you.  

because you do not have to love me back to get me to stay.

because I am fat, and to love a fat human is to love a giant’s castle, it takes forever to walk from the dining room to the library, if you forget where you set down your keys they may be gone forever. 

because I am fat, and to love a fat person means the apartment is always too small, there is no privacy, you will always share the exact same room with the better version of me you could be loving, 

because my actual eyelids are made of actual fog and the lens flares are tacky and contrived

because I am this kind of a writer, and loving me means knowing that the story of how you loved me will be better than how you ever loved me.  

because loving me is to always be at the very tallest peak of the roller coaster, inching forward and inching forward and waiting for gravity to take hold and it never does

because to love me is to love a haunted house; the neighborhood kids tell stories and dare each other to knock on the door, but the door is already open, and inside it is just this, just an ordinary room with most of the furniture removed and all the paint faded and not even one ghost, just a porcelin vase on the kitchen counter, an ironing board in the upstairs closet,  things the previous owner had no room to carry, things they may even have wanted but did not pack for fear that it would break.  

I buy expensive meals

from wherever I have gone

and I bring them home, to you,

with you in mind, or left over

because you can't afford it yet

the taste of places we were born,

a taste of places we can't go,

tastes we have not learned to make

because we can't afford to sell our culture cheap

because the price of our time is worth more,

is more nourishing, is more life-giving,

than- than I will know for a long time.

And later on, when you are grown

when you make culture from your own

hands and flesh and blood

when you return to see both homes with ease-

and later on,

I will not be able to afford you

nor will I want to

I will not allow you sell yourself cheap

I will hope that you were nourished