now, another home (1st draft)

i once stood in a field of whatever fruit, or

legume you can think of; i am back to this

place where i wrote all summer long about

quiet, and everywhere i found it's fingers

wrapped in to. i don't know where i am

without orange trees, or wondering without

hope. i could never wonder these thoughts

away in any other place except where my mind

is made up. the more my mind becomes set,

like tablecloth to bowl, like cloud to air

and planes, like fingers to the palm of that

other hand, it becomes unset even more. as

if there is only raveling with this unravelling.

the unravelling supersedes movement, voice,

the things that force you to change. it seems

this way: those who hurt you have inexplicable

power to break through your woven life. you

can drown them, push them under tidepools,

fight their strengths with so much weakness

you have grown into. you can cause them

pain, too. but it's like your mother used to say

when you came home with tears fighting the

dirt on your face and what had been done

was over; they changed some part of your

delicate weave. then i am left to wonder:

how do i use oxygen and twine and water

like i used to? how do i start fresh with my

lungs grown used to this breath? i used to

have a love with everything my weave could

hold; it bore his weight and my own. now

i am left to grow cotton where there was

once love. grow strength in order to be soft.

when loss comes towards your body,

like the slowest moving cloud of fog, it

masks you, hides your self while you

grow underneath it. you are only free

by using your fingers and pulling it

away. you are free only when your

pain has moved slowly into new waters.

on going away (draft)

you came back to my house once

and unpacked all of our belongings,

just for the day. my house used to

hold limestone, crimson, satin, the

more that comes out of more. so

many objects desired by ourselves.

packed into tiny packs of our home.

we shared it all without names. we

woke up late, we were surrounded,

we drank out of mugs that wrapped

into our hands easily, we were in the

middle of our house, we were between

winter and spring, we chewed, gnawed

at life. it is one of those homes you can

feel the space held by what it iself holds;

when the walls have unrolled off the

pillars, the sofas removed of their sitting

places and their sitters, i can feel you

in the air of the home we had. i feel the

place in all of this space.

sloughing rust that made us (draft)

That house we all knew and

fell into on our feet and hands,

always dragging our wrists in,

soaking wood, linoleum, rust

into our skin and becoming

one thing--one family. We

were the color of drawings

of noon, shinier and bruised,

harsh in shades so bright

against who we were becoming.

We all decided in unison, in the

quiet way of decisions spent

with much time, to use soft

cloths, soft anything to

null the rust that made us,

scrub off each other, sloughing

years of birthday cakes, time

spent staring at so many yellow

walls, words, so many words,

taken with our own hands

to describe a thing like home.

All of it, falling perpendicular to

the land, leaving stains

on it and us in the shape of

small animals, butterflies

inching across and up our skin,

and underneath, through,

they moved, skipping our new

eyes, staggering across the

slippery, sure plains of our

hearts, with urgency.

Dust is always for later; it

comes into our new spaces

from the stains we bring,

with a vengeance, reminding

us that what can tbe brought

back will leave itself and

will stay in us.

samantha, building land plots

trains hold ribbons to their backs,

drag them through your scoured-out

city, trailing their wax and filament

into arcs, because trains don’t move

obtuse. arcs that collect, like families,

families that are just shapes you can

use to make chairs face every person

in a room. your family told me they

always wanted a creek—as if it could

be cut by the topographer into some

portioned slices, hopefully as fair as a

tangerine, with tags hung to note that

it was "Their Name’s Creek." but I

know it’s normal to make home into

that which will only ever be yours,

like the yellow-throated warbler who

somehow eats small blue moths at

the edge of your pool, or the train that

never really comes back, just endlessly

east. it moves smoothly behind the

grey walls, past the cherry laurels, away

from your bed and into a small arc of

sound that could fill a bowl but not a

plate, a river bed but not a river, a house

but not a house that is only ever yours.

thick water

wake to the water turning slowly west for at least

a while on it's tips--edges do lean away,

then turn around. i was born from water people

who had given me coral to be salmon in

my head; they made pictures of waterways to be

heavy. after awhile, the waterway brings

you in, feeds you a small, particular dinner, and

tells you the stories of breathing wood chips

and baritones from the porches that watch the

waterways--the porches watch them to

see they're watching you--see you feel the sick

that even nostalgia has for the patience

of a bay in waiting to turn around, waiting to

take it's hand out from it's pockets.

swift crystals

i've taken your arms from loose water,

moved your hips from oblique

angles into mine, handed you syllables

for eight years that were full of

all the glitter i could find. i waited for

you to see how one hundred

rocks thrown at once will make water

pull itself apart, or that most

peculiar shores are born in silver and

wax. i waited because glitter

is only cut once. we pour it into our

palms and unravel it into thin

air; nothing that sits still can explain

light, so i ran to give you the

white birthday candles, drew a quick

coral sky to cut out and place

over your eyes in winter, tore vellum

fog from your eyes in strips.

fremont in umber

you're taught by way of small homes, ones that

dig into the ground; make room for new weather

systems, or children looking for gold, but finding

turquoise. you know japanese plums, threads,

poppies--you were taught by way of small parts:

oval skies, bedroom doors, geometric kites you

wanted to set to the wind of your cousin's songs;

or umber waxwings to the top of Mission Peak

to learn how summer sews edges to storm clouds.