There are so many things to say
The admiration
And the adoration
But I can only give myself time
To take
The love you give me
You break me
And rebuild me
In an instant
You're a somber ocean in the summer
Even a gleeful spring in the coldest winter
Alive and flowing
With the free flowing breeze
You're a wildflower, too
Popping up out of the blue

THE ONE ABOUT...

"Did you hear the one about..."
Death's
already laughing

"...a fireman, a butcher & a janitor
walked into a War..."
Death loves to tell this joke

Sometimes Death changes the details
"...a guy from Omaha, Ohio & Nebraska
walked into a War..."

"...and the shell fell into
the hole they were cowering in..."
Death cracks up

"...an 18 year old & two guys of twenty
walked into a War. . ."
"Wot's yer poison?" Death snickers

"...some guys called Sam, Hank & Frank
walked into a bar in a War and
they don't ever ever walk out..."

August, the Red Line,
connected tanks
of bolted plastic vertebrae.

Every seat gone except
five rows up, where a sea lion
sprawls across two,
stuffed backpack, jacket
spread like barbed wire.
His breath reeks of salt and rot,
his grunt a wet bark
at the glow of his screen.

Middle-school deer slip into the aisle,
chatter clipped when the sheriff drifts past,
their ears flicking, smiles bitten shut.

Not a predator- just a gelded ox,
chest puffed, badge sagging, glass-eyed,
chest rig clattering with blanks.

Two lemur-children cling to their tortoise elder,
her shell steady against the sway of the car.

She filters them from the surge of riders:
loud Dodger blue parrots in cholo socks,
moth-women with painted lashes beating the stale air,
a stray dog, gutter musk dragging at its haunches.

And one gray bear

muttering alone,
arguing with her reflection.

Between Koreatown and MacArthur Park
I feel feathers forcing through my skin-
an alley gull knifing into this clamour,
scavenging inside its exhaust.

The car rattles, its ribs plated with blistered posters:
museum wings open to no one,
‘register to vote’ fading into graffiti script,
flu shots promised by smiling ghosts.

A bruised hatchling staring out beside the words
See something, say something.

The warning lights glow
like eyes hunting in the dark.

From its flanks the train
unfurls iron claws.

They rake
the tunnel walls,
the city’s bones,
the dark itself.

They said I drowned,
but the truth is softer:
I laid myself down like an offering.

I spit river into their open mouths.
I bit the lilies in half.

Silk turned cathedral.
I let my dress balloon with river light.

The earth had nowhere else for me.

If you pressed your ear to the surface,
you would have heard me humming.
They didn’t write that part.

When they pulled me out,
I still had violets in my teeth.
I still had the nerve to look alive.

If ruin was the crown they gave me,
I wore it dripping.
I wore it bright.

You think you know the story:
girl, river, grief.

But the water was warm that day.
The sky was a soft ache.
I was tired of carrying everyone else’s ending.

So I wrote my own.

Not drowned.
Not tragic.
Not accepting their ending.

The right person, the wrong time.
The right script, the wrong line.
The right poem, the wrong rhyme.
And a piece of you that was never mine.