Status Updates From A Body Made of Weather: Col...

Some of the poems are pretty good, but most of them aren’t speaking to me. Although, I do suppose I’m not the hugest enjoyer of poetry in general.

Quiet Relief

I could live forever in
landscapes
that speak to me of
permanence,
of how we are but temporary
creatures in this breathing
globe:
I am small in my oneness,
and in that thought, I find
relief.

Hope

I can hear hands unclasping
in the night, the broken sigh
of prayers carrying on like
birds, sharp calls saying, "I'm here,
I'm here."

No Matter the Darkness

We are—
emblazoned in star dust,
boundless in the cosmos,
interminable beyond this life.
We are—
affixing our truth and
discovering meaning in
another’s limitless scribe.
We are—
everlasting star stuff,
fires of strength and light,
the spark which illuminates
no matter the darkness.
We are.

Try Again

funny, no matter how many
times
I have felt myself slip
(heart gone, brain gone, feeling
gone),
my eyes have closed,
and despite the end, have
opened
again to see a new morning
with this new life
cupped in my hands.

Origin

That ache with no origin
is felt while the earth strains,
needing to rest but forgetting
how.

We have stolen her memory
of peace
yet forever condemn her to be
the laborer.

We think ourselves gods
deserving of
immortality but do
nothing to outlast our own
damnation.

It is unfair to have to rely on
something as fragile
as memory to contain us.

Stargazing

I can gaze upward in the night
to find all the misunderstood
creatures
who have become etched into
the sky
as the constellations that we
seek, point at, and name.

They have spent lifetimes
casting their grief down
to our sights and yet all we
know them for is their light.
Their stories burn with
heartache
while we use their burdened
past to guide us home.

Nature Walks

Picture it:
a camouflaged moth
resting on a concrete wall.
I ask if she feels safe.
Her brown and tan wings
a stark reply to the white
surroundings.
When is the last time
someone asked her that?
The moth twitches.
She is not where she should
be,
(or) she is not blending in,
which says more about
us as neighbors than it does
about her ability to hide
in the plainest of sights.

Natural Pep Talk

we stood in awe of the fireflies
as they synchronized
around us,
constellations playing between
the trees and mirroring
the sky above,
a language made by nature,
a dark canvas
penetrated solely by their light,
reminding us there is such a
thing as magic,
bringing a piece of
otherworldliness
to our
needy,
tired
fingertips.

Take a Walk

Thoreau said he came out
of
the woods larger than the
trees,
but I emerged as them—
roots threading down
through
where my ribs had been,
bark settling slow over
the soft parts I used to
guard.

I did not conquer the
quiet.
I let it grow me instead,
ring by ring, season
folding into season,
until stillness was not
something I visited,
but something I was made
of.

Metaphor for Learning

Bottomless in depth,
the churn of the surface
breaks open and departs,
glimpsing into the vast,
the dark.

Sand rolls as though
breathing,
a deep sigh of preparation
as the rain rolls in.

Perpetual allusions—
luster, somber,
strength of the storm
competes heavily
with silence, the quiet of
an empty land.

Bathroom Therapy 
Slow things down, take
the time to listen to the
girl
who cries in the stall next
door, recall the way your
own chest heaves in
response, connected now,
neighbors,
and I understand her,
hear her, see her, and I tell
her
the love will come, the
ache will fade, the weight
will lift,
just hold on, even as I also
sit on toilet lids and stare
at my feet and wonder

We:

simultaneously distinct
and alike,
in sync like lightning bugs
blinking against
the engulfing dark, at
once illuminating
together
and at once participating
in one’s
own space—a generation
of voices to beat back the
tides,
telling stories,
tales to awaken the night
while carrying morning
in our sights.

We ponder and wonder,
since our own existence
surely means so much,
as we look directly
at it
for all answers that rest
beneath us.

In a capacity of minds
that only use a portion,
we expect so much
and act on so little.

What does it mean
when a smile grows
upon a face but
is never really felt,
like the thought that
the sun only existed
to blind us?

Speak

we wipe our feet
on grassy doormats
and stand at the threshold
in silence (wait, wait)
and wonder why we are
not heard.

Consequence

Beneath my right shoulder
blade is a wound. It pains
me from time to time, cause
unknown,
a fierce reminder that my
body
still has secrets. It does
not bleed,
this wound. Sometimes
what hurts
is not wrong after all. We
adapt.
I think about my mother
who
does not sleep, who
shuffles in the dark. She would say it is with
-out purpose.

She couldn’t breathe
while
dressed in a raven’s
corpse,
choking on feathers a she reached down her
own
throat to open passageways,
She ate a rock thinking
it was a pearl, a paperweight
made of guilt and
remorse.
This is the way it ends,
she thought, a small gulp
disguised as a breath,
the tiniest of sounds
from her open mouth
mistaken for a life birthed
of paper beaks, tiny bones
wrapped in skin

This Wait is Killing

She counted her days
like little white d o t s
above her head, lying
in bed, quiet and singular,
afraid of getting too far
ahead. So she held
her breath, waiting
for sleep, waiting for
someone to tell her
when it would be safe
to stop counting,
to finally
exhale.

There are two of me,
darlings circling
this man who watches,
and our fingers drip as we read his lips,
touch his face,
close his eyes.
He tries to sew us
to his feet like shadows,
but we cannot be kept,
our feet already frozen
in flight. He tells me
I am cold when I’m
burning
because he cannot tear
me open: cannot see me,
cannot trust me,
cannot know me.