When I think of her eyes 
I start to long for two mirrors 
so she can stand between them 
and see all of herself at once. 

We try to fill ourselves 
with as much of anything as we can gather. 

We spend our days swallowing 
the pieces we want to hide. 
We eat ourselves from the inside out. 

She learned when she was young 
how to cross the street: 
hold a hand, look both ways, 
move quickly. 

She knows the danger of colliding.
She knows how to avoid 
unwanted attention and loose change 
and the inevitability of an empty page. 

She also knows the sky above her 
is not bule today, but empty. 
She knows her head is just as fragile 
in collapse as it is in observation. 

When I am asked about her I shrug, 
disregard her eyes, 
and the crosswalk 
and say nothing except 
to look deeply and turn away. 

Here is a spoken word video I created using WeVideo (also embedded above) 
Filmed (except for 2 clips that my sister filmed), read, written, and edited by me. 
Song credit: Holocene (Instrumental) by Bon Iver 


1. When the earth becomes flat enough 
for the non-believers we will go to 
its edge and sit on it and imagine 
all the ways we could fall off.

2. In peach season we fill a bowl 
and watch them ripen. Sometimes,
in the middle of the night,
when the dark bruises 
and the ceiling shudders 
I will slip down the stairs
to gnaw on their sweetness.

3. There are approximately 2,200 satellites
in earth's atmosphere. He looks at me 
with his honey brown eyes and refuses 
to admit that gravity is enough 
of a reason to stay in orbit. 

 

 

Last Saturday I made 
a carrot cake in a green glass 
pan with a chip out of the side. 

We are never really all here. 
We walk through days
with our heads in some
deserted cabin we once discovered 
on the rocky shore of Maine, 
or in the gutter beside a street lamp 
in a city we once longed for. 

What I mean to say is,
we are pieces. 
What I mean is,
we don't always have to know
what we want. 

The year I turned fifteen
I was determined to buy 
a Greyhound ticket and travel south. 
It didn't matter how far I got 
or how long it took,
only that I was moving
towards the light 
and not away from it. 

I never packed the bag.
I never bought the trip.

I am still sitting here, 
with a paper bag of broken glass 
and an unfinished poem 
on a Thursday night
that was never meant to come. 

 

"Sometimes I feel a little breathless." 

Occasionally, when the sky
gives way to smoke I am: spread starfish
on my bed, fingers tapping,
circulating something I should've said or done in my head.  

Is it always like this? 
Must I always pretend not to breathe?

Last night I gave myself to the Road to Nowhere. 
I flailed around my golden room — I let myself become warm with dancing. 

Sometimes, when I'm stuck the best thing to do is manufacture freedom. 
Sometimes, I feel like it will never come. 

Today, I met a boy. 
I wanted him to ask me my name.
I wanted him to look at me, really look –
and tell me what he saw. 

When was the last time you did that for yourself?
When was the last time you didn't need anyone else to tell you who you are? 

 

 

 

When, in The
morning, your eyes appear as an Apparition
above my bed, I am not afraid. I do not think Of
your hands or the weight These
thoughts hold. Faces
do not have to be our defining feature. In
spring once, you told me The
sound of my voice brought a Crowd:
you threw Petals
onto the pavement, On
the cold, round earth and A
broken old lady with a trail of Wet
tears knelt to pick the Black
off her shoe, next to a fallen, blooming Bough.