grab the sink by both sides
and glance up, try not to
laugh or cry or take hold of
whatever ropes we reach for
in these moments, facing
our naked selves

and what if they’re right, the
ones who left, saw
our shaking, blistering
brokenness, ran, what if
all these fragments won’t
ever come together, no
matter our frantic
rearranging

what if they’re
right, voices that chase
us down in the darkness,
outrun them all day and
find them curled up
against us on
the sofa

what if they’re
right, drowning out
all the i love yous and
the friends who insist we’ve
got something worth
sticking around
for, what if we got it
all wrong when we
imagined things revealed
in the light, hidden
away in the dark

January in New York City, and the sun showed up and washed gold over everything. I’m standing in my apartment, palms at the edges of my window, peering not out but straight down. A hundred feet below, men are at work pulling down the scaffolding.

Steel beams punctuating the sidewalk, green panels linked and reinforced with wooden planks, scaffolds across the city signal humankind’s ongoing effort to hold its own in the fight against nature. For sidewalk travelers, however, scaffolding is a strange nuisance, narrowing the sidewalk and shrinking an often-claustrophobic city. When, at last, a project is completed and scaffolding disappears, city blocks are washed brand new. The time has come, finally, for the scaffolding in front of my building to come down.

Continue reading “sunday post: small rescue.” →

Hey. I’m not sure where to begin. I feel fragile, writing this, writing to you. It’s been a fragile few weeks, like all my bones are made out of glass, and I’ve been walking around with them, breathing and bracing and waiting to shatter and fall apart. But I’m here, and I’m healing, and I’m writing you a letter.

You asked me if I had any questions, and of course I do. On the night you left, they ripped themselves loose from me, involuntary. Roars against the tile, “why’d you go, why’d you go?”

Continue reading “tuesday post: third draft.” →

sketch myself down, roots
dug deep into Indiana
soil, brothers and sisters
fighting invisible
bad guys in the backyard,
whisking through cornfields
as fast as our legs would
carry us

etched into my sides are
scars and stories, so
careful with my steps
and reckless in my
loving, names carved
down to the muscle,
ancient aches in the
rainfall

and the branches,
deciduous, find them
clinging to yesterday’s
hopes, let them
go, fall free, farewell dances,
empty limbs reaching
in spite of their shivering

The sun stretches itself up over the horizon, pouring its earliest rays across the Kokiri Forest. The Deku Tree, revered guardian of these woods and the children who inhabit them, implores Navi the fairy to seek out Link, the boy without a fairy, and to bring him with haste. Footsteps away, in the hollow of a tree, the boy sleeps alone, his past a mystery, his destiny about to unfold before him.

Continue reading “sunday post: video games.” →

i woke to find my sternum, cracked
to fragments across my comforter, and
out spilled the everything, all the aches
i’d unwittingly tucked into hard-to-reach
dresser drawers, not just sorrow, but
joy, and hope, and burgeoning love,
all of it spilling, all of it
aching just the same, i

choked back tears as i
ran by the water
because i thought of
my sister, of how i’ve loved
her with such peculiar clarity,
the way she’s made my heart
see the same color in every
chapter of my life, i

felt my palms go gentle
at the coffeeshop, the
silver-haired girl not
waiting for coffee after all, just
being with her friend
at work, and the
homeless man sitting
outside, reaching to pet
a dog, reaching for
the only eyes for miles
willing to settle on him, i

glanced down and saw this
heart, for all its wide-eyed
optimism, its defiant
bravado, and discovered it
again to be tender, love
letter etched softly into
a napkin, handprint
against the skin of
someone we can’t bear
to lose

for months, i
came home to find somebody had
rearranged the living room, set
flowers up to live along the windowsill,
drink up the sun and exhale color,
cover up the words i scratched into
those grains myself, bare fingers,
nails worn down to the quick,
people who want to stay
stay and your palms cannot
remember the wind while
you’re clenching them shut, hidden
again beneath beautiful things

and some nights i
took them down right away,
set to work remembering you
with honest eyes, cracked
open the door and delivered
pretty lies to the concrete

and some nights i
saw them and set
my things down to
the floorboards, sat
there in it and
let myself listen
to faraway music

– 17 – 

The bus rolls into the city, hisses and roars from its underbelly as it acquaints with the pavement, a commotion all but ignored by the people on the streets. Michael glances up from his iPod, looks out at the blue-gray washing over everything. On his iPod, the All-American Rejects vow that It Ends Tonight, and his thoughts are pulled to a love that sifted through his hands before he was ready to let go.

Along with him for the ride are a few dozen high school students, all members of the marching band. In the summer, they don white shirts and sunburns, devoting the month of June to a parking lot under the Indiana sun. Brass melodies, staccato drumline exercises, jokes made covertly to one another while the band director watches overhead. Right now, though, it’s December, and they’re bundled beneath coats, Midwest kids preparing to explore the urban colossus.

Continue reading “sunday post: past selves.” →

I. Pulled to the Pavement

A disaster looks ridiculous in retrospect. Who the hell was he to wake up that day, eyes stupid and bright, and pull on running shoes? Such obstinate nonchalance, willful oblivion, as he stepped out under the sun. Perhaps if he’d listened, he’d have heard the wind whispering a warning. Surely the birds, perched on electrical wiring overhead, surely they braced in the watching.

He’d led a watchful life, all things considered. In the abstract, he knew the world was an unpredictable place, but he’d found that good things came to those who listened, learned, took off with confidence. If nothing else, running gave him this insight. The ridiculous courage of that first mile, discovering those walls to be of his own making. A lesson from the pavement, and he carried it with him to work, to life, to love –– he took that inch and stretch it for miles and miles.

Continue reading “monday post: fall & rise & build.” →

Ten. How on earth has it already been a year? How can a year feel like an eternity and a heartbeat at the same time? And what do we make of it, 2018? How do we summarize all these days stacked up, pains and hopes all scribbled together in the same handwriting, before we’re lost in the blur of 2019?

Nine. Shit, New Year’s kiss. I had 365 days to hold auditions for this part, and I’m coming up empty. In nine seconds, confetti flies in the air, everybody shouts ‘happy new year,’ and everybody lucky begins the year with a kiss. Love, promised in a wine-stained blur of cheer. What is wrong with me?

Eight. Okay, okay, but I’ve got things to show for myself in 2018. I moved to New York City, wrote and shared hundred of poems, ran a thousand miles and kept going. I traveled freely and loved wildly, and I’ve got the photos to prove it.

Continue reading “sunday post: gentle resolutions.” →