there's a paradise in the way you say my name
   or she says my name or he says my name
syllables crashing like head on car collision or train wheels wrestling with the tracks
one time i brought back a starfish from the ocean
hiding it in my sweater pocket
it soaked all the way onto my pants into the upholstery of my father's old car and everyone pretended they didn't see
maybe it wasn't even there, maybe i wasn't there
sometimes ghosts would follow me i would end up breathing on the glass and leaving impressions as proof
of existing, of understanding what it meant to live with the living

getting home, unearthing my discovery in the bathtub
but there was only a thud, an ugly crash on the resin
the fiberglass making the death inhabitable
i wanted you so much you turned to stone
a hard shell of what i found so beautiful i could cry but there wasn't even a yell
ignore me and ill love you forever
i picked you up, cradled on both my palms but the keepsake was in the lesson
a memento of solitary moments waiting
shrivel up

my father found me or maybe it was my mother or maybe it was nobody and i picked myself up silent  
into the backyard where i dug until my fingers hurt, until my hands knew the brittleness of rhythm
i might have never stopped until i reached some kind of closure or maybe magma, a molten crust of hell i had missed before
my jeans dirt-stained and my face red from scratching bugs that weren't really there
maybe we met at the wrong time, maybe there's never a right time for anything
you reach certain points and then head back in the other direction
you bleed until it's time to reach for the band-aids in the medicine cabinet and call it healing
maybe i'll never know some things
never figure out questions that still tap on my windowsill demanding to be answered or asked in the first place
and i think i can fit comfortably in that, in this

when i was ten i discovered these books about summer
it seemed all the chapterbooks were filled with strange stories of girls finding their destiny by the sea as their whole life changed between boardwalk adventures and family urgency, like melodrama in small increments with too much sunscreen
something about one of them specifically stayed with me for years
the cover was of the shore and the sand dollars lined in a row as if waiting to be picked up or maybe had just been put down
something about them gave me the impression that this could be my life
an eternal summer that i didn't have to abandon, the book i didn't have to close, look into the sun and not have to pick my body up from the water
it seemed agreed upon that i could live in a continuous day
nighttime didn't exist and the moon was a name given to my mother's friend
everything was promised warm, my feet would touch pavement while my hair was permanently bleached
but the sunset came and shook my shoulders

2.
i stand in my bathroom
cold and harmless
the window is fragmented so no one can look at your naked body but it makes everything outside look like when you didn't realize you needed glasses and once you did every memory was post foggy
i could be a dying star or a sun brushing its' rays and you'd never know
sometimes my hands are so clean my nails taste like soap and there's no way to go about it but accepting that

3.
there used to be a fire
and if i had to give it a name it would be Frederick
i don't know when it disappeared or how it even started existing
one day someone asked me if i knew how much wholesale toothpaste cost and my feet curled, i bit my lip so hard in fear i would scream until my throat bled
but that didn't happen instead something burst, not a vein but a sentiment
there were theories i used to develop while i went on dinner dates
i remember thinking of what i now reference as the sangria theory
while we sat and ate pasta and i could feel my head drifting while his eyes sank into the bottom of my shirt
i thought maybe all the people that you meet have no chance but a say
all circumstantial until you find something that harvests your attention
until you slip past the underwear and then nothing feels important anymore
was it ever?
you go separate ways, separate directions
as if in fear of finding something too close to whatever it is you're trying to find because then what would be the point of looking?
there was a fire and now there's a glow and i can't tell which one i like more

Suppose I wrote a story
And told everyone it's true
I'd offer up a big reward
If you would say so too

But how could I deliver
On the promises I'd said?
Well here's the thing, you can't collect
'Til after you are dead

                  RC

i hope you revel in the normalcy
when you feel the sunrise on your skin
walking down a brick path
i hope you breathe in the morning
hold the ordinary close to you
like a life that almost didn’t happen

because for some of us
it didn’t happen

i have never felt the blissful repetition
in being surrounded by what is expected
standing in seasons and looking at skylines
that your mothers and fathers
have stood in and looked at
mothers and fathers who do your laundry
when you come home to a home
that has smelled the same
for the past twenty years

so i hope that you laugh and drink
a little too much
and kiss people who make you feel seen
i hope you listen to bad music
and hug your friends too tightly
and skip your eight a.m. just because
you need slowness and stillness
and a coffee from the corner
and a breath of fresh air
in the morning
on a brick path
with the midday sun
on your skin

I can find all the right words when i have nothing to say.
I arrange them in boxes and push them aside.
When I know the truth, I feel that I’ve lost
Something bigger than words, at a much greater price.
You always have the right words, and I bet that feels so good.

It's definitely easier to be creative than constructive.
I can plant the seeds and draw the plans,
But nothing will ever come to fruition.
I'm not a woman of action,
I'm a woman of movement and superstition.

I would press fast forward right about now.
No need to see how this one plays out,
Just to see if it does actually play out.


Funny enough, I've pressed play too many times before I realized I cannot slow this back down.