They say write a poem in ten words,
And I think that I can’t pour out my soul in such a small space
I think that my mind is worth 15 words at least
But I think
And I try
I crumble up paper like it’s love letters from the people I hate
And I write a poem
Write my heart and soul out in thin black ink
And then I pick the ten words that I can’t set free
And they are: small, trees, alone, forest, love, flashlight on a broken sea
And I sigh
Because I was never good with stories

I love looking at highways from airplanes,
They snake across the blotchy, flat earth
And slither into the endless blue haze,

I wonder what they find there,
Is it love or death?
Or old friends?
Or happiness?

Perhaps, their happiness
Is in the curly-q designs
They scrawl like ancient script

I trace it,
Running my fingers over three-pane glass,
Until they disappear

And the clouds look like fingers and hands,
Reaching out to touch me,
Expanding with every breath I take,
Calling me down to the river,
Calling me down to the trees

But my happiness is in the single, breathless moment of take-off,
The moment I feel my heart lurch,
And bang into the something inside me pushing me forward,
Into the illusory blue

It’s funny
You broke my heart so badly I thought I would die.
I came home from the hospital two days post operation after open heart surgery to put it all back together.
And I died of an infected wound.

I’m driving past the school that I went back to for five, six, seven years straight—

The place that grew up around me like a dessert oasis— or Rapunzel’s tower.

I wonder if I should stop and put my hands on the old white bricks,

Like maybe touching the school will be like touching my childhood and it will heal my broken heart.

But I’m already past the turnoff going 45 miles an hour, so I turn my wandering eyes back to the road ahead.

And at the green light ahead, my unrequited love is riding a bicycle across the street one-handed and smoking a cigarette,

Wearing a shirt that says “please hit me with your car, so that I can just stop feeling”

But I swerve, and he slowly pedals on

Her messy hands make magic pencil
Like holy Gods make worlds
And I know she will someday draw my universe--
My universe
All stars and no suns,
Always so far-- too far
Too cold
My cold hands on her warm chest
Cold hands, warm heart
But my love keeps me warm
Warmer than goose-down coats and wool socks
So much static
So much friction
So many sparks--electricity, zapping
And I am patchwork-quilted memories in her creators' hands

My childhood was sunshine,
summer days,
pool,
book,
trees,
It was yellow dandelion, carpet lawn
and endless blue and green
as far as I could see
standing on my tiptoes
on a swing in the backyard
jumping down onto smooth soft summer grass
in the flat calm ivy-colored sea

It was stars on the night sky
like stars on my ceiling,
hair floating up around me with my dreams,
pulling me out the open window
into air,
into indigo,
into midnight blue, nail-polish painted sky
on the sweet-smelling cedar easel,
in the dark room,
where I come sometimes
to touch the beginning with butterfly-soft fingers

My childhood was hide and seek,
shut up in closets,
smiling,
laughing,
giggling,
yelling tag you’re it,
as it touched board game movers
and pushed them
one
two
three
around boards colored like rainbows
that I rode around the world
and into the universe

Now my childhood is two yellow foam blocks
asking me,
“Why?”
“Where?”
but I don’t know why it’s gone
or where it’s gone to,
all I know is that I’m not ready,
but here I come