Little tricks

Look how we change shape
living through our generations:
my mother taught me,
from her mother,
how to iron a wet ribbon
across a hot lightbulb.
These little necessary tricks,
so short-lived --
there was a time before lightbulbs,
and who has need now
for a length of ribbon?
Even lightbulbs
have changed their shape.

July 2010

Pomegranate

Maybe not an onion,
layers peeling back layers
of the same;
maybe something webbed,
many-chambered.
My heart is a pomegranate.
Crimp and crenellation over
seeds bursting with secrets,
every wish wrapped in
tissue like skin, skin like
tissue.
Every fold a layer between
me and the world.
Me and myself.
Unwrap me and I unwrap
myself,
spilling secrets like seeds
into my hands.
I'll offer some to you.

~November 2009

Constellation

I turn out the lights
in my old room,
after packing up my things,
and the stars are lit up.
I remember the sky that night,
the grass sparkling at our feet,
the way our minds form
a constellation.
The brightest star has fallen
from the ceiling,
but that is you,
glowing steady at my door.

~November 28 2009

Dream

You write words of me,
of soft, and sliding
deep, like fish in your mind.
I read your words and
silence slips into me,
my eyelids closing like
a smile at you,
reaching you in my mind,
holding your hand in a dream.

~November 28, 2009

Resonance

I miss you in my bones.
Bones which, when you're near,
form a cradle to rock us both.
Bones which when you're near
resonate on a frequency
I've never felt before.
You are some substance,
pouring through me -
joy distilled, perhaps,
the better to fill my body.
Quench my thirst.
I miss that resonance
when we're apart,
that fulfillment...
but if I'm quiet, I find it there;
find that, even from a distance,
you are humming in my bones.

~October 2009

Petals

You held me up like a garden,
offering a place to take root,
and I felt a shift like petals
under the sun.

~October 4, 2009

Pack

Some nights I am a pack animal,
separated from the pack.
Even the crickets will not
keep me company.
The empty sounds of my apartment
make me too alert;
I can’t sleep
if no one is on watch.
My bed, my body, is restless.
My mind wanders,
lonely as a wolf.

September 18, 2009