the window doesn't open cleanly.
it drags and resists against the frame,
like it remembers being shut for a reason,
like it knows what happens when things are left open too long.

when it finally gives,
the sound is too loud for morning.
it splits the quiet in a way that doesn't settle back.

the air that comes in isn't new.
it smells like thawed ground,
like something that's been buried
deciding it isn't finished.

and i keep thinking,
something is being let out.

and it's not just air.

the light drags itself across the floor,
and it isn't soft.
it presses in, on everything,
finding corners, pulling shapes out of things
i stopped looking at.
dust lifts, briefly alive.
there's a glass on the table with a fingerprint dried into it,
a small, cloudy spiral i don't remember making.

i don't wipe it away.

outside,
the ground is soft in the wrong places.
my foot sinks slightly
muddy water rising around it
like it's been waiting.
the grass isn't green yet,
it's a dull, almost-something,
like a thought you can't finish.

nothing looks ready.
the trees are still holding back,
branches tight,
as if they don't trust what's coming.

and i keep thinking,
something is being let out.

a bird tears across the sky and disappears too quickly,
like it changed its mind mid-flight.
a door somewhere slams, 
and no one rushes to question it.

i realize 
i've been standing still too long.
like i'm waiting for permission.
like i've always been waiting.

the air moves again.
sharper this time,
and it slips under my clothes
and across my skin,
as if it's looking for a way in.

and i keep thinking,
something is being let out.

but now it feels wrong.
like i've been saying it backwards.
because nothing is opening out there that wasn't already trying to.

i don't feel free.
not in the way people say it,
like open skies and running wild.

it feels closer to the moment before you say something 
you can't take back.

it isn't the world that's changing.

it's just that
i can't hold it the same way anymore.

something is being let out.

and this time,
i recognize it.

Poems are birds in the kingdoms of languages

Always flying towards each other and paradise

***

Together, perhaps

We hear the sound of the universe

***

The sunlight comes in

From outdoors, touching the wood

On your floor: it is holy.

***

And I’m thankful for the privilege

Of a memory and thought

***

Under the delicate rose-colored sun

Which never lifted above the horizon

Circling all day like a dim lamp

Along the gray edge of heaven.

***

It’s good, he said, the way memory

Sometimes slips a gauzy film

Between then and now.

***

they                       went                           farther

than everything 

we know of

farther than their families farther than their garden beds farther than their porch lights farther than their neighbors' garbage cans farther than the grand canyon's reddish-brown sunsets farther than the freaking sunsets farther than the robins farther than the graveyards farther than the stars you can see from the rocks they are so far away from farther than the mangoes ripe on the trees farther than everything that was ever taken farther than all the bones farther than the people farther than every single person in the whole entire world         farther than the whole entire world

farther than anyone else ever made it

farther than anything their great-great-grandmothers ever dreamed was out there

farther than their tiny planet,

a swirly blue marble where the sky sometimes falls and the earth sometimes shakes and the inhabitants love each other so hard that sometimes they kiss and sometimes they kill and sometimes they send each other

f     a     r     t     h     e     r

than we ever thought we'd go 

if i ever own an orange car i will be delighted in being other people's

delight; playing the rainbow car game

on long drives without ever making it past red

is never a good idea.

we pass roads with names like winding brook and settlement,

civilization dwindling behind us like the chill

in the springtime air. real brooks & rivers gurgle through

the greening properties, rushing with the 

newfound melted snow. 

when we arrive, my friend is dividing

herself into two in the air,

dangling like some sun-drunk summer bird from silks

the color of the sky outside. she spins

and every sweet thing in the world

comes out of its burrow

to listen like the melodies of the highway listen

to the cars, and so far at least,

they hear.

some people say that every time you make a choice, an alternate dimension is created where you made a different one

this may or may not be true in the real world, we might never know

it's certainly true in my mind

i don't know that i will ever be able to stop wondering what my life would look like or where it would go if i had done something differently

but that's not really the point

because this moment right here is a combination of every decision i've ever made

and i made it all by myself

so that's what i'd like to focus on today.