Writing

You have plastered my eyelids open 

Non contact tonometry

Force fed with gavage until I no longer awake 

at the smell of burning grease.

Burrowed into retinas like a small flaming needle,

My whole life I have been trying to tell a story so beautiful that the world would fall in love with me.

That is why I befriended words and stage lights.

That is why I watch the details of the world

Remember the girl?

She’s in second grade,

Maybe

Blond brown curls

Blue green eyes.

She’s sitting on the top metal pole of the fence

Chipped green paint

It's summertime in Montana, and because we ranch, because animals and plants and the weather are on their own time, I sit around and wait a lot.

As it turns out

humans always

always

learn the hard way,

can never take the safe route.

We're that stupid, yes

but without human stupidity we wouldn't know about the pineapple

The gears click

spin

twirl into place

the momentum of thousands of dreams

swinging

gliding

leaping

across the vast emptiness we call home.

The dreams

along with hopes

fears