Coffee and Cigarettes.

She sat atop layers of messy blankets, sheets

And watched him with hands curled behind her knees, tightly

To try and harness heat and sweat inside of her palms

To prove to herself that she wasn't dying as he

Stuffed records, ties, a few books, clothing into a laundry basket

Laid a wrinkled grey suit on a hanger over the top.
Paused at the Otis Record. Left it.

I'm disappearing he said. Like you asked.

She laughed. 

Don't pretend you're a magician.

You never disappear.

He slung his orange bag over his shoulder, and she believed him.

She's been dreaming of strange days

Back when it was possible to really disappear.

To become something new, while you become nothing of what you were.

Ancient times, when a man would journey to prove his character.
Return with beast slung over his shoulder, conquered.

No one is patient enough, anymore.
Including her.

Last known Photo

17 years ago
In an attempt at bribery
My parents bought me a puppy.
A motivation to stop screwing up.
The first night,
I slept on the linoleum floor of our New York kitchen with him, and we both whimpered a little--
He because he missed his mom, surely.
At the time, I didn't know why I was sad, but in 8th grade, who does?
That night we made a deal:
If I would hold him, he would listen.
This morning, all of my secrets died with my loyal confidant.

There is nothing poetic about endings.
There is only the scraping sound of unraveling twisted metal cable.

Location:Seaview Ave,Jamestown,United States

Warning reduced to Watch

Despite warnings, there was no flood.
No damage, save for a twinge of sadness,
mourning only the wasted time spent unwisely
on a heart not worth loving.
I will, as always, be the one dancing, smiling, being brave.
You will forever be standing still on a dance floor in my mind
Avoiding my eyes, and letting your fear stop you
From living a life you won't regret.
That's why I left you, after all.

When I attempt to rise higher,
I think about what I have learned since we parted.
I have had my heart torn apart,
And I was so filled with anger...
Until I did the same to someone else.
It was then that I realized
That sometimes people are the casualty,
when we need someone to care about us.
Empathy comes only from life experience, and that is actually what they mean,
when they say
that time heals all wounds.
It is not the distance in the rear view mirror that allows forgiveness,
but a shared experience of humanity, of flaws, of mistakes.
I don't think you've ever hurt anyone.

I hope you get the chance
to break someone's heart.
So that when you're 80,
and taking inventory of your heart, you realize what matters-
Here's hoping I'm still alive.

Here Comes the Flood - Part Two

Here i am now, in cooler, unfamiliar climate --
With calmer winds that no longer have the strength to lift me off my feet,
carry me away to something new,
again and again.
With all valuable things tethered to something unmoving,
and thus protected,
I find myself, again, preparing for the rush of water that comes with impending flood.
The lines of such constant rising, receding
show clearly in the space between my eye and ear -
 permanent marks of change, that cannot be scrubbed away.
Evidence of brackish tide  strong current survived, if barely.

 On shore, as the water rises slowly, nodding to the filling moon,
I lick the back of my salty palm, remove a layer of white.
As if to travel backward to a place
where I did not have this protective coating 
where skin was young, more vulnerable, but braver.
 The veins present and protruding are new, though.
This is not the same hand that shakes
at the thought of your silence
where it meets my attempt at a proper ending.
 And so two years later,
at another wedding of friends,
where I will once again stand facing the crowd that you occupy,
I will do things differently.
Show myself what I have learned. 
Stand straightened, knowing in my heart that it is right to want endings, and peace. 
Send you nothing but a message of kindness,
that one day you may be able to stand tall enough to want that, too.

R.I.P.

Terrible penpal and a hopeless packrat, but I mean well?

Each time it's summer
I want to toss all of my belongings out of open windows
And make the active decision
To allow each thing inside again.
To feel the weight of these things-
To feel the consequence of keeping.

I am a better editor now, it is true.
In my 10 years of adulthood
I have unpacked
11 different times.
I have bought and sold a home. I am 28.
I have seen things fall apart,
And I knew which things could be salvaged.

I have control over my sentimentality,
Somewhat.
I still have every letter ever sent to me, though.
And I'm terrible at writing back.

We change.

There comes a day
In the life of every slaughterhouse employee
Where she must decide whether hurting living things
Is something that she is still capable of.

She calls in sick a few times that month.
A migraine.
A sunburn.

Eventually, she picks up the want-ads.

Years later, she will laugh over a meal with friends -- make light of it.
It's what she's known for.
But later, in the quiet of her attic apartment,
She will say out loud:

How very far I've come.

And all the while, the earth is spinning beneath her feet.

Location:Governor John Davis Lodge Turnpike,Westport,United States

cataract.

The cataracts of winter
Which had so firmly threatened permanence
on the eyeballs of the citizens of the great white north
are dissolving, now.

Our paces quicken, and yet we linger in the rain
...because this is a new kind of precipitation.
One that does not shock the skin,
But jogs the memory.

And when feet find each other beneath blankets
There is warmth.
And in warmth, softening of skin, lengthening of muscle.

These muscles, which had wrapped themselves so tightly around my bones
To keep the frigid air out,
to protect the heat of the coil in the middle of me.
These muscles loosen, now.

The ragweed and I, we are taller.
We wave at each other, on highways
From opposite sides of a car window,
And we point our shaggy heads southward, smiling and golden.

Blood garnet.

Covered in paint, as always,
I was re-assembling my dressertop after a day of
sweet-fruited labor -
Carefully hanging jewelry on the ends of cigar boxes,
When I discovered the necklace.
It had been invisible to me since the day that it broke,
When I hid it away beneath more pleasant memories.

The necklace you gave me for my first gallery opening.
A dark garnet, surrounded by marcasite,
Gleaming then, but far more beautiful now in it's tarnish.

After you wouldn't take me back two summers ago
I wore that necklace every day
Like a totem - I am romantic - I believe.
I wore it until it broke one night,
In bed with a man who wasn't you -
When I woke up I realized that my life was something different.
I didn't try to fix it.
Or the necklace.

...And so when I found it again, yesterday
And rolled it between my fingers, I said out loud
To the man in the next room,
Who is a romantic,
That it is funny, how old people can tell stories
About simple objects from their past
That are so loaded with meaning, that you don't know how they survived
Under the weight of all of it.
And that every day, as we inhale, exhale, cope, flourish,
We are building those stories for ourselves.
When he came into our bedroom and found me holding the necklace,
He kissed my forehead,
Said, "Fair enough."

When I am old, longgreyhaired, calmed,
When I can stay in one place for more than a year,
When eager, young hands search through my jewelry box,
Asking for stories,
I will tell them of the life I lived before
With the man I didn't marry.

ice box plums.

This is just to say
That I threw your zippo in the Winooski River today:
The one you said your father used
In his coast guard days
When I heard the sharp words
That fell off of your tongue
In talking about me.

And if I had stolen your stuffed fox
like you think I did
I would have burned it's fucking nose off
And spit on it
And sent that down the river too.

I have never done a mean thing to you
In my life.
This is just to say that I regret that.

deringer, like the pistol.

for the purposes of clarity
and transparency
(which mean the same thing, when speaking of water,
but are different enough to list,
when speaking of words between lovers)

...so for those purposes, and so that we
can be in agreement about the kind of life this will be
i tell you this --
the moment I knew for sure
that you were the man I would grow old with
was across a table at biscuit world in west virginia
me wearing your giant wool hat, with my feet in your lap
and a strange meat platter in front of me
i was woozy, you were tired, and still we were grinning.

with a little biscuit in your mouth you said,
darlin, you're beautiful.
do you want to go to the taxidermy shop?

and if there had been a ring hidden
inside of my square hash browns
it would have been a done deal.

penniless.

...And isn't it lovely,
for once,
to have no desire for anything
but the ground beneath you
and the sun rays that lick at your shoulders
as you ride a borrowed motorcycle
down a long, empty road
and into fall's arms
spread wide, like a promise
that it won't get too cold this winter
and even if it does,
you know you can handle it, now.

A new name for everything.

It's in being cross-legged,
still,
that I find where I have changed.
The act of being here being enough.
The tracing of my own fingers
on my own skin
in my own home
on my own terms.
My own new reality
That I expand every day --
And contract to squeeze out those things
That don't seem to fit.
It's in the careful decisions,
the knowing.

I know things, it turns out.

Got more faults than the state of California, and the heart is a badly built bridge.

Last night, with the lovely Breeze of Earl's wake
Whipping my hair around at 3am
I perched, clawfooted on the fire escape
of my very own Birdhouse.
I held my dress to my knees with my elbows,
smoked, determinately, resolutely even.

My new neighbor, the tabby cat
Climbed up all 14 steps to tell me
in no uncertain terms:
It is not until you do to someone else
What someone has done to you
That you realize who you are, and who they are.
What we are all made of, and what color it is, what texture.
"And then", he said,
Wrapping his pipecleaner tail around my waist as he began his descent:
"And then, you have a decision to make."

I would have let him in to stay the night-
To keep me company as I remember myself.
But i'm allergic to cats, and anyway,
he was a little cocky.
So I'll get a dog.

Living alone in an attic
Has it's advantages.
The sun is so intentional about where it lands-
The perfect place to live
For someone who loves to draw conclusions.

rock the vote.

Having been deployed for some distant war
for some time now,
I feel cinematic, in my re-appearance on the horizon.
all blaze and smoke and colored haze
uniform (same dress, every day, a ragdoll costume)
soldiering for something unclear, foggy.
Fighting tooth and nail for freedom by day,
stubbornly and bravely,
and then nightly, tying my own binds
out of fear of moonlight mutiny.

My absentee-ballot, unfortunately, seems to have been lost,
and I haven't updated my address since I left the floodzone,
so I'll do that now.
And I'll take back my voice, my vote.
And I'll make some decisions.
Most of all I won't dwell on battlescars.
I will not submit to regret for lives lost,
it was all in the name of Freedom, after all.

((so you too, take up your sword.
Let's join forces with the foxes,
and read poetry as prayer,
and say thank you, thank you,
thank you to objects
that may not even breathe. -avm))

Aged glue should be an official color. I'm writing to my congressman. (Who makes those decisions?)

in a dream last night
the steering wheel of my car came off.
underneath, it was revealed to be sealed only with a dab of hot glue
which had yellowed, hardened, become like resin-
A place for insect skeletons.
i gave up on the car, and all of my belongings
followed a long trail of powerlines down a flat, long highway in the desert.
how did i get to the desert?

when I woke
still in a state of sleeplogic
I rolled over to my side,
pulled a pillow in to rest between elbows and ribs
and laughed at how simple the answer was:
shoulda just licked the glue, stuck it back on.

Who cares what you ate for breakfast, anyway? (melon)

The narrative of communication
Has become embarrassingly straight forward
And what room is there for metaphor?
For romance?
When we check in with everyone so frequently that there is no longing
Or deprivation of information
That creates desire?

Sometimes I think Best has it right
When she falls off of the map
For weeks at a time
Leaving a trail of question marks bouncing in her wake -
reigniting the idea of intrigue.
We are becoming creatures who want to know everything.
And once we do, what else will there be to learn?
How much time do we have to evolve,
really,
If we spend so much of it reporting where we are at?

A story:
I have never been good at balance, I know this.
An office job I held for three years (with two slippery fingers, by the end of it)
Asked for frequent reports of progress
And this, eventually was enough reason to leave
Because how can I move forward
And also tell you where I am going?
I know it's possible - I know.
But maybe not for me?

And are we still lovable, with nothing left to learn about us?

So many relationships begin
With the phrase:
"I'd like to get to know you better"
And then, there comes a point
Where we know each other too well.

Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars.

A dear friend lost a child today.

Full term, unexpected.

My ears echo with a terrible, tearing sound.

I found out while driving, stomach sunk.

Dropped into my boots, made the gas pedal heavy.

What is there to say?

And so we try to glean lessons of life and love

From all things, don't we?

And the lesson I glean today,

Or at least try to, with clenched jaw, watery eyes, pitted stomach,

Is that the entire world is a big, complicated ball of happenings

Beautiful and terrible,

Shining, gaping, everything in between.

And we are all trying to hold it in our hands.

And we need help.

And shit, that's okay.

Now.

Now, would be the appropriate time to say something is missing.

"Something is missing."