The hole in the back of my mouth feels like a cavern, something you could hide a runaway in, someplace you could lose the enterance to.
The salad bowl on the top shelf in the kitchen cabinet is dark blue and reminds me to open a window in the middle of the night when my jaw is on the floor and I can't swallow on my side.
The freezer is now my friend. I want to shove my whole head in the gap between the frozen peas and ice cream, bring a blanket with me and sleep there, wake only when the week-long promise of healing arrives.
There is always time in the morning between galaxies and orange juice.
If you had a jar with a lid you would try to save it, give it to the girl with the pressed lips and the eyes that crinkle.
You’re not sure what to make of half-built cities except that when they haunt you in your dreams the streets overflow with possibility and the rooftop ridgelines are hunched, bent at the hip, against the skyline.
You’re still soft in the middle: both raw and burnt and never giving up.
I am mostly one for knots, broken strings, holding things I should’ve let off long ago.
I am not a poet. I still get lost looking for home and don’t mind much either.
I collect wandering words and release my own.
I found a notebook today. One that had surely been washed from its author many minutes ago, wet from some other’s toes, and probably, if I am completely honest, tears too.
I am told to find a map and come in from the rain without blue ink running down fingertips but
my feet are tied to this spot and maps are better upside-down, anyways.
I’m sure you have witnessed, in a downpour, birds that still sing and a young child pulled along by the wind, screaming into the sky.
