The safest place in the world is my front porch at 3 in the morning some hot July.

Where I’m from, the heat never has a chance to leave you. It curdles the starlight. You breathe it in like when you were 8 years old and stuck your face too close to an easy bake oven.

Out here, the world is only as quiet as it needs to be. You learn to recognize each streetlight by their own glow.

Soon enough, it will be time to walk back inside.

i like to imagine myself trekking across
a great desert, or tundra, or wasteland,
and it’s dark but the sky is glowing
with stars and the sun on the horizon
and everything is that beautiful natural violet.
there is nothing for miles and miles and miles
and in every direction is the same thing.
i walk over hills and through ditches
but in the hugeness of the landscape
they are nothing, and it’s still wide and flat.
i wonder and i dance and i shout at the sky
and i flail my arms around and trip over
and i yell and grin and shake to the stars
and to the space beyond them, that infinity.
i tip my head upwards and smile to
infinite amounts of infinite things up there.
i am confused and i am lost and i am scared
and in all of that i’ve found the most joy
that is even possible to be felt.
i scream at the infinity in a friendly way
as if i’ve figured out its secrets,
as if we’re on the same page.
i thank it and i laugh at it and i scold it
for everything that i feel and know and am
because one of the infinite things up there
must have given it to me,
whether it knows it or not,
and i feel safe and tiny and fleeting
and i am so happy to be the
tiny second of useless time and phenomena
that i am.

I'm reading over the notes
that my therapist jotted down
during one of our first sessions.

there is so much trauma
and so many diagnoses.

my therapist says that
I'm not alone, and that
so many people know
a similar type of pain.



she's right. I'm not alone,
because I'm not the only
person to have a therapist

and because I'm not the first
person to be diagnosed
with these conditions

and because right now,
at this very second,

there is someone who
is reading this poem and
relating to these words.



sometimes this thought
is upsetting to me.

it depresses me to think
that other children were
raised by parents who
were like my parents,

and that they've faced
the same type of pain.



other times, this thought
is oddly comforting.

it hurts to think about
the children who grew up
the same way that I did

but it also calms me
to know that there
are other people
who are just like me,



because that means
there are people who
have survived this.

that means that
this is survivable,

and that even if I
sometimes doubt it,

it is possible to thrive.

a mouse under a rock
she peers out to see the world
green! blue! white!
a stream, winding down the hillside
a lush forest full of life and breath
clouds that drift overhead
but the shadow of a predator falls
and sends chills down her spine
the mouse retreats.

a mouse under a rock
peeks out once again
sunlight! grass! wind!
the cascading of a falls not too far
a swimming hole, perhaps
surrounded in trees and mud
but the predator is back,
so the mouse hides again.

Outside it is snowing, just a bit.
Twelve years in and it still seems odd
Vermont, cold and with its ethereal light
feels more like home than the hills and mountains
you spent your first 54 years immersed in.

It seems odd that you were nearly sixty
before rediscovering the ocean,
Maine and Cape Cod, wild, often rugged,
nothing like the sprawling sands
where you were raised. And yet, it is these seas,
not the seas of your first half century
that calm your soul and raise it
from it’s gloom.

It seems odd that the place
that sings its siren song,
calls to you, makes you yearn like a lovesick boy,
lies in a foreign land,
with a foreign language,
nothing familiar, nothing, and yet
the first time you arrived,
sitting in Saint Mark’s square,
cappuccino in hand,
the Adriatic light and salt water filling your senses
you felt more at home
than you have ever felt in your long fractured life.

It seems odd, that you are so in love
with a woman so different than the southern sirens
that surrounded you most of your life.
Darker. More direct. Challenging, yet gentle,
Struggling strong, real.
She enflames you. She calms you.
She protects you. Even from yourself.
You have never known a woman like her.
And yet, in her arms, you feel that most unusual of things,
safe.

It seems odd that at this age, you look at the places
you called home, and the places you feel home,
that make your soul feel whole, complete, possible,
and you question so much of the place and time
and people who raised you.
But only for a few moments
before realizing home has never changed.
Truth has never changed.
You have.

I thought I knew your words
It was like knowing anybody out there  
A blank page in the book of Proverbs

Bait and switch without the wisdom
But you didn’t know what you brought
Soulless protection to fear
You called
me a scared little girl
Little did you know
I was my own savior

What is it you said I needed?
A so-called enlightenment?
But who knew your darkness wrapped *** magik
Could save vulnerability and attempt to destroy the authentic luxury of me
No. Only fake love in lust can do that
For lust is loss and I’m not gone

Then there was you and me again
That night unveiled me
The unevolved me
Still I knew
I was going to make it out alive

I am here.