all in a golden afternoon under the skies of cloudless blue, i search that azure for the moon, hoping it shows before its due

when day and night meet like a rhyme, the lunar white and solar bright, their faces shown at the same time and bathing me in stellar light

i crave the simultaneous, the line between the day and eve; i crave between the noon and dusk, i crave the visions it brings me.

i remember blue when i looked up into what appeared like heaven

white cotton-ball clouds drifting lazy on the breeze shaped like tumbleweeds

on the grey days, i fling my window open wide and oh, desperate

i open my arms to the sky, and beg for just a sliver of blue

sweetly scented milk-cream cleanses my skin as i rub it in circles over cheeks, forehead, chin; i rinse it and find myself anew, fresh from the water. from there i mix my potions: one to replenish the moisture cleansed away, one to smooth the redness around my nose and beneath my eyes, one to lock in the dewdrops to keep them in, keep the world out. the sun is blazing beautifully today, and i cannot bring myself to stay indoors; i apply my spf and run barefoot through the grass.

my great-great-great-great grandmother half-starved crossing the country, and she took a butcher’s knife to my great-great-great-great grandfather’s chest and broke him down like an animal. she cooked him into stew, along with the few beans, onions left among their stores.

her daughter held her up as a hero. without that sacrifice, she never would have lived, never would have felt the sun on her skin. she planted a desert willow in her mother’s honor, tending it with care, each year it lived a testament to survival.

if you had gone on the internet and taken advice strangers gave you, you would be long gone.

because i’m not easy to handle, and i will break down and have the cops called on us, and i will cease making sense to your mind — desperately grasping some word i’ve said or phrase i’ve uttered in a futile attempt to figure oht what i’m saying, what i mean

i’m sorry for the times the illness takes over. you are the last person i want to hurt, and i feel incredible taking steps not to hurt you.

thank you for not leaving, even when the strangers said you should. thank you for seeing the pain, and sticking by me all the same.

sand on my feet sun in my hair body exposed to the wide-open sky

i wade in

it’s a hot day and the water is cool a shock of turquoise so clear you can see the ocean floor underfoot

once you were a tsunami— receding from the shore just long enough for me to catch my breath

then crashing back into the city i built for myself progress crushed under water pressure, shops and roads flooded irreparable

so the next sea i found was placid and warm, gentle waves lapping at my toes, sun in the sky whispering as it caresses me:

dive in, it says wash free the previous sea

and the previous sea was no match for me

so it comes off easy, oil slick exchanged for the salt-clean feeling of emerging from the brigjt blue sea.

here it is: the longest and shortest period of my life. i stand in the wings, ballgown braced against the torrent of energy awaiting me within, and catch my breath as the groom walks down the aisle, just out of my sight.

i can’t see him. all i can see is the way forward.

they cue up my song and my feet move forward trained by wicked dance teachers to go with the rhythm but i can’t hear them in my ears, not now not when my song is playing and there are safe arms waiting to wrap me up at the end of the aisle.

i was thirteen when you died and i saw it on the news dining at a pizza place where i wept in the bathroom wiped my eyes with one-ply then drowned my sorrows in cinnamon sticks

i felt a little less numb destroying my brother at the pinball machine by the door but the pall hung over me as thick as the smell of garlic in the air

wherever you are i hope you’re making art and eating pizza and i hope you know you were loved

i was born on the second day of spring daffodil child with eyes like the sky breaking through the snow and reaching for the sun

march, they say, comes in like a lion and out like a lamb

now in my late youth i’m caught somewhere in between a creature made for the hunt who craves the peace of the pasture a walking contradiction

a day that feels like summer even though it’s months away

we start, grinning, on opposite sides of the mat green, yellow, blue, red polka dots ready to twist us into a pretzel twiddling us into one being

the spinner is spun and my left hand goes on red

the spinner is spun and your right foot goes on yellow

and so we continue until your arm brushes mine and my cheeks turn as red as the circle beneath my hand

we curve and writhe against each other muscles straining limbs all twisted

until you fall bringing me down with you with a laugh on your lips and your hand on my heart

i won the game and i think i won even more