so what if he's seen you
in a swimsuit before that first date—
you're friends after all, friends
who spent summers half a mile
from the big lake
and it would be a crime to be
so close and never
touch the stinging heat
of the sand and the ice
of the fresh lake water
so what if you retrieve the load
you forgot from the dryer
long after it's gone cold
and one thing you miss about
home is the smell of warm laundry
from the dryer downstairs—
when it was done, you sorted out
t-shirts and threw clean socks
at your brother's red hair
so what if you discover a sappy
old love letter long after it ends
and, curled up with a blanket at 1:30
She talks about her depression like it’s a bad knee: it comes and goes from day to day, and it acts up, but only sometimes, when the weather turns dour. In the winter, I find her among the clouds, dropping snowflakes she saved from last year. She lifts one at a time between forefinger and thumb. They were so beautiful, she says, it would be a pity not to use them again. She paints our reflections in watercolor on frozen ponds and lets them solidify overnight. I watch ice skaters salchow along the curve of her chin. One of them has a knee like hers, she observes from behind my shoulder. She can tell from the landing.
When he died, the world
shrank to the dining room table.
Our toys huddled around
his body, its back already arched
in manufactured rigor mortis,
plastic legs no longer standing
for the life they never had
and millimeter eyes forever
glazed over, transfixed and gazing
empty at the ceiling.
The night was over before
we had time
to bury him. I cried on
the way home and wondered
if this was why adults
stopped playing
pretend.
No one is ever
told what would
have happened, the lion said,
but I have to wonder
if I had known that if
I had opened the door
you would have come with
me and that we would have discovered
how close we were
to Narnia, would we
have become kings and queens
when we heard
the lion roar?
Her fingers have pressed trees
into precise, practiced creases,
branched out their long necks
and pushed their bright,
dainty leaves into flight.
Silence and stillness spin them ever
so slowly;
a mere breath
makes them tremble.
They dangle in their quiet world
above, my scarce fraction
of a senbazuru, my calm,
stately companions,
my ever-present paper peace
hovering overhead.
I have to wonder sometimes if you caught
just a snatch of the Orphean song
on your way past the hall. I admit
that I've omitted most of my other wonderings
until now, but then we don't often get the chance
to talk. As long as I'm admitting things,
I guess I'll confess that I miss the way
you used to reluctantly let the neighbor's cat
nuzzle against your ankles. I also miss
your uncanny ability to neutralize any
lingering uncertainty with your mere presence
and the old jokes you always used to make,
straight-faced, about the dihydrogen monoxide
that's getting into our water. I don't think I
realized how many of my habits had
merged with yours
I want to be a child again.
I want to sing as wildly as I run and to bundle myself up when I go outside to play – to play – to throw myself into pretend worlds with all the sureness of my being, to walk over the creek on stick bridges and make forts in the roots of long-fallen trees. I want stuffed animals to breathe and chatter like old friends. I want to laugh over things that are funny for no reason and cry over stupid things like stubbed toes and broken useless treasures and have it be okay.
I want to be small.
I want to sink into the wide warm comforter of the world, to feel it billow up around me and swaddle me in its vas
Plastic cup lemonade for a child would play right.
Now I drink tea and hunt for dragons to slay right.
They all wish they had turned left at Albuquerque.
I don't know — is it always so bad to stray right?
Sometimes I try to write poetry after dark,
when it's easier to think there's no one way right.
Long ago, the word sinister meant to the left.
Even then, not all the dexterous would weigh right.
It's hard to decide, especially when we must
differentiate between what is black, grey, right.
I don't always know what I am trying to say,
or if it's even worth saying. That's okay, right?