I always come back to

the synchrony I find in the wild 

The insignificance I feel

when the rain pours down

Giving breath to growth

The birds are all singing, differently

from one another

but they are together all the same: chaotic in the perfect way

that only they can be,

a choir conducted singularly by the earth that tilts towards the sun each spring.

One of those birds could fall to the ground in the middle of the forest

and it would leave your life unchanged

yet at the same time, it holds all the importance in the world

as it gives rise to something beautiful, a legacy that will continue and go on

Life is a cycle, they say, and this is true- yet it is also something that rises and falls, and brings love and grief, and is wholly a journey worth walking.

I need no other bible than the wild,

and crave no feeling more than the spring rain upon my face. 

There's a dog that sits at the end of my street, 
He snarls his teeth when we walk, 
He barks with his eyes wide open, 
With his eyes full of rage and love. 

There's a dog that sits at the end of my street, 
He's tied to a chain that leaves marks on his neck, 
I think this dog knows me, 
He knows the same rage and love in my eyes. 

There's a dog that sits at the end of my street, 
His eyes turn red while his mouth foams, 
And his heart just begs for forgiveness. 

There's a dog that sits at the end of my street,
He's not too different from me, 
He knows my pain and my sorrow, 
But also my laughter and joy, 

He loves the cool summer nights, 
And the cold and warm of the fall, 
He wants to be heard but his voice isn't there.

There's a dog that sits at the end of my street, 
And sometimes I sit with him. 
He knows the story of my life, 
The rage and love of my soul, 
He gets the ups and the downs, 
And deep inside I know he understands my life 
Better than anyone else could.

I have a pen 

By my bed 

Stuck up with 

A pad of empty sticky notes 

And behind 

A drawing my mother gave me 

Are sticky notes 

Upon sticky notes 

Full of words 

And ideas 

When I fall asleep 

I’ll grab one

And write a word

Or two

And in the morning

I’ll turn them into poems

Cause sometimes

The dreams turn in to magic

And I want to be there to write it down.

Today I watched a child smile 
small, easy, innocent. 

A face that has not yet learned 
what the world can take and give. 

No shadow of loss, 
not the unbearable grief 
of losing a world’s fair goldfish 
and finding the hard truths of heaven and hell. 

No weight of numbers, 
no whisper of bills or burdens 
passed between tired hands. 

Just sweetness
melting ice cream
and a reason enough to be happy.

He smiled
as if nothing could interrupt it,
as if the world
had not yet introduced itself.

Chase the deer, the red-stained pavement, 

Chase the Ford F-150, white and black and silver, tires screech, 

and suddenly the concrete is scattered with glass stars and 

the car is upside down or maybe the world is 

and you think maybe you can see the moon 

or headlights 

or maybe it’s just the looming shadows of the sleeping oaks 

or the tumble, tumble, tumble down the hill off that rural road 

and maybe that deer, dead, decomposing 

on the side of the lonely highway was picked apart by the vultures 

before it even died and 

maybe you are that deer now, totaled and lying in a ditch, 

hair crusted to your scalp and hair defying the pull of gravity 

[or maybe complying with it, You still don’t know if you are upside down]

and there are birds, circling, or maybe that is a cloud 

and you feel trapped, you are trapped

warped metal digging into your palms, into your scalp, 

into your warm, pale skin and in the moonlight you think about

how beautiful it is, the stark contrast 

of the scarlet against the white of the metal 

[the white of your skin]

 the contrast of your mangled body 

against the ink-dark night sky, and 

maybe this is fine, 

maybe this is where you will die, in a ditch on the side of route 50,

and maybe that's a good thing:

joining the deer you passed by at mile marker 75

and the possum that met the grille of your truck not long ago 

and you have been here for hours, dangling from that front seat, 

[you have been here for 5 minutes]

you have been here for your whole life and the car's engine died 

not long ago [strange, you didn’t notice it went quiet]

and your ears feel stuffed with cotton and your mouth is dry

and you realize that blood is dripping into your eyes

[you hadn’t realized how much you were bleeding]

and maybe you should try to move, try to reach for your phone 

and call for help, 

but the seat-belt is cutting sharply into your chest 

and the blood obscures your vision 

and the pull of the center of the earth 

[the pull of the fatigue calling for your muscles to release]

and thinking is getting harder and you stop trying to move now 

and something falls and suddenly the twisted body of the car 

is filled with static, 

then music and now you know it is the end, 

and you are okay with that, you had a good drive. 

The last sound that graces your ears before you become a 

dark empty pit:

Take me home, country roads

Take me home

It was love. It was love and you were sure of it, dreadful of the blooming cavity in your heart, filling and sinking like an inconsistent tide. It washed over you, dragging in fragmented images of her.

 You savored each memory, forcing your brain to recall every scent or taste she led you towards. When you closed your eyes, you could see her dark hair swishing behind her as she sprinted towards a sassafras tree. From it, she plucked a glove-shaped leaf. She shook out her hands, causing her reddish-brown leather jacket to fall down her forearms, and she started to grind the leaf with pinched fingers. She smiled up at you and smeared the severed green onto her palm. Smell, she said, hovering her hands below your nostrils. 

Like Root Beer, you smiled, instantly transported back to high school, A&W with friends in your parents’ basement. You wanted to hold her root beer hands, wanted her to tell you that she loved you. Only you. All of you. You wanted to spend nights with her in bed, instead of just picturing her face as you fell asleep. When you closed your eyes, there she was waiting, smiling patiently. Yet, you never got her nose right. It was merely a blip in your memory, fuzzy as soon as you focused on it. It must have been striking, defining in her side profile, right? Or maybe it was small and soft, to not distract from her eyes. That’s what kept you up at night. 

Nights were the worst. From your apartment, there was a feeble view of the moon. Feeble, yet existent, contrasting her old apartment. She rented it from a widowed woman, and lived in the basement. The only windows were located at the very tops of the walls, long and rectangular, providing a distorted street-side view. She had a solitary outlook of the moon from her bed, and said goodnight to it each night. Her moon was always full, mostly because it was not the moon, but a streetlamp, fixed in the night sky. 

You liked the idea of a streetlamp moon, you liked the idea of If I Didn’t Know Better… a classic ignorance-is-bliss situation. You were fond of the escape, the relief of being an unemployed, unmarried, uninspired novelist. She told you that she liked the escape, escape was okay, she said. In fact, she claimed, she refuses to watch the movie if she read the book- a naive strategy to preserve her original ideas of characters.  

She made an exception for Harry Potter. One can’t just imagine all that magic. 

You disagreed. Not all magic can be seen, you said, that’s why you write. The reader must be able to picture everything inside their head; a teenage boy ridden with acne, a wet pant leg from kneeling in the dew, a redhead woman shaking her head No. 

No, love can’t be seen. One must picture it, you sighed. 

She reached out her hand in consolation, her slender fingers almost touching the hair on your arms, leaving you in goosebumps. You closed your eyes, desperately trying to feel her touch, then opened them, disgusted. Shutting the reddish-brown leather-bound notebook, you set down your pen. You were another Pygmalion, enamored by his own creation. Looking around at your barren apartment, at the fountain pen sketches of her. Dark, long hair, and big brown eyes. A different nose each time. Freckles. Clear skin. 

You held your tiny notebook close, cupping its spine with your fingers, its body supported by your forearm. The leather cover rested on a vein, listening in to your blood pumping, a weak attempt at a transfusion. You were called a hopeless romantic growing up, teased by your sister and mother. But not the flowers at your door, Say Anything kind of hopeless romantic, but the hopeful kind. Hopeful that maybe one day you would walk down the street and see your ink-woven figure in a coffee shop, sipping tea with her slender, sassafras-scented hands.