Forest

All your thoughts are glass Twisting shapes and screaming cries Wishes and should-dos Now only cold hard glass remains Scrape it out of the dark sky and onto the floor It crushes beneath your feet Into sand with crashing waves Beneath a gentle breathing sun.

Free Pass She picked it up off the floor Goldenrod paper between brown fingers. Name, excuse, and signature. It’s all you really need. “Look guys! A free pass!” She said. How strange, to me. That’s not where my free passes come from. Hard work, goodwill, and privilege I take my free passes for granted.

My emotions flee like naughty children before their mother I would rationalize away their fear So they hide and nurse their wounds. They hide in pages and screens and notes and lines... Wounds fester. Pain builds. And when I least expect it My little darlings Burst into tears that roll down my cheeks in hot rivers.

Only Just I wake up. Dim lights. As I fell asleep The house popped And ached And echoed Awake, now, only just. Something is different. A new breath. A little breath Almost the sigh of the house - the home But layered above Unique. I recognize it.

Our dog died. We got rabbits. I spread their shit over the dog's grave And flowers grow.

  Rain Today, someone in the sky Is spinning the clouds into thin white threads That are falling from the sky. I reach out and try to twist The silky strings around my finger. My hand gets wet.

My Trusty Bag I picked it to stand out Yellow But I forgot about mud... My fingers trace The zipper Remembering that broken pull tab I skip lightly over it Running over teeth, my fingers land And pull And slide in My fingers know The outline of every pen The creases and lines The sound the blue one makes When you click it The feel of the red one's cap As you roll it across the table The chairs may change Rolling Cushioned Hard But my fingers leave the desktop And reach (I do not need to look) And find the chapstick Short and smooth and round I wiggle off the cap The feel on my lips Familiar. My fingers search for every buckle When I walk They slip into the loops And pull at the straps Anxious Always Mostly. With practiced motion I swing and hold And the bag lands in my arms with a twist My water bottle comes out, My ring finger supports the cap And my thumb presses. The water cooler bubbles. Some fill quickly The one in G building is slow. I sip, the cold in my mouth Sweet. I ...