(i feel the weight like a) pendulum
I am thinking about SUNLIGHT with a certain hunger,
which is to say vehemently, which is to be bathed in it fully and
forgiving. I hate his softness and my talons which scratch in
uneven stripes down his back like angelfish. It feels tactile
and skin-and-bone and so tender it hurts. He is LUSTING (in a way
that is carnal and I want to untangle like cat's cradle.) there are
bumper cars in my brain. I'm standing at the edge of the sun and
at the end of the bed, where he has not touched.
I wrap my arms around my body and coat my neck in a
velvet blanket and the little grass that remains. I wish my hands
were big enough to play a g sharp minor. Every summer is
like a whole game of Jenga pulling blocks out from the bottom first.
this soil is dewy and pulpy and MELTS at the roots. Every time I feel
like this, I recite my times tables – 2, 4, 6, 8– and arbitrarily
SORT my shoes, cherry cores, letters, candle wicks in twos, fours,
sixes, eights. It takes 10 years to grow an apple tree and I want to
grow and do it all over again, too. I want to become ground, too,
decompose and treasure the way it ROTS. And water. and wind,
and love, again. One that would make the ice caps melt.
When I tell my mother not to worry, I remember she's a
mother, and she will always worry. She makes my tea milky and tapes
up holes in the flour bags I have poked through and it's
raining again in Humboldt Park ,,maybe I was hopeless and let in
the first offer of kindness gifted to me and maybe I will be kinder to
myself I may diverge and slice fruit and find moonlight makes
great company. I learn that this year and will relearn every June
afterwards
The lanterns sound like so many things now.
Toy pianos and bluebell meringue peach (can you tell I am
making up sounds? Can you hear them at my reach?) (There are a
million eyes turned to me. They want to know the biggest hill I've
climbed and the hottest temperatures I've SMELT into solid, under
lakes and coves and quarries, and how much I miss my mother.) I
meet you somewhere in the junction of one screaming wave.
There will be swords named after you, I'm sure. I turn off
the LAMP light when you fall asleep. I want to hold you in the
PALM of my calloused hand, in the shell of a train, in the belly of
the ocean, in the burning of an airship.