Charcoal

is our preferred method

with which to sketch our days

thick, dark swaths of pigment

that smear and make their mark 

unapologetically

abstract, flowing, influential

or gashes across the page

like wounds that won't close

and neither are ugly

though we can't erase them

they are the foundations of your life

but details make the picture

the careful lines and smudges

noticing a twinkling eye

or smiling with all your teeth 

and everyone you meet

is drawing their own

conclusions and beginnings

unfinished works

marbled with messy, rushed greetings

and slow, agonizing goodbyes

strapped to our backs and worn on our sleeves are these masterpieces

everyday being dotted

with someone else's charcoal

our sketches are never finished

but always beautiful

but we forget, somehow:

we are all art. 

The wind brushed across her cheeks, tender. It fluttered her hair and made it stand upright, soft, as the sun caressed its fingers across her arm, both warm and compassionate.

The day felt hazy, perhaps magnified by the way her head lolled to the side in the field of green. Her vision was clear but her mind’s eye was half shut, only accepting sensory details like the tickle of the grass and the nipping of the breeze at her nose. 

She could hear voices behind where she lay, faint, calling her name. Her brothers, she was sure, who were much older but weren’t sick of home in the way she was. She liked to pretend, when she laid with her body pressed against the ground, that she was somewhere without palm trees and coastal weather and instead someplace out of her dreams, where trees turned orange in fall and it snowed and you didn’t have to drive 300 miles north to get deep into a forest. Played pretend that she was somewhere she didn’t feel trapped in some concrete jungle of metal skyscrapers and electronic billboards.

Something in the back of her mind nagged her, told her she was being unrealistic with her dreams. That she would miss the citrus trees hanging over the neighbor’s fences and the summer road trips to Death Valley. That she would miss smelling the sea salt from her bedroom window late at night, hearing the chittering of raccoons and the zip of ruby-throated hummingbirds in the summer. That she would regret all the choices she was considering making.

Enough. She breathed in deep, and let it out slowly until her lungs ached for air. And repeated, until her racing anxiety of the future quieted and it all fell away under the lull of the California sun.

The grass in her grandparents’ backyard was the one place where her visions were fueled, atop a hill where at a certain angle all she could see was the sky and the clouds that filled it. She greatly treasured the few weekends during the summer when she could be there for hours, alone, almost in a sort of trance. There it was easy to forget everything else existed, and she didn’t want to leave just yet.

“Mariana!” One of her brothers had wandered closer, sounding rather irked. “Come help set up for lunch, would you?”

She sighed, taking another calming breath before pushing herself up from her sanctuary, dirt finding its way beneath her nails and grass clinging to her shirt. The future hadn’t arrived yet, she had to remind herself. For now, she guessed she could wait a while longer.

It’s not really something I can share, is it? Because they feel it. Visible in their eyes, urgent text messages, twirling of the hair. How do you communicate an ache originating from the darkest depths of your soul? I can tell myself that it's the time, the place, not the right people– but who are the right people? I imagine they’re locked away in some version of the future, waiting for me to follow the right path, say the right things, all in order to unlock the privilege. 

The veins that go over the bones and push against the back of my hand pump blood to my heart so it can beat beat beat, but it is not thumping in the way I want it to. Need it to. The keyboard is the only place that knows the pain, the press of sorrowful fingers against fading keys. The only way out is to wait. Tick tick tick as I watch the clock. Waiting is my only option.

When I was very little, my Mom took me on a trip to Arizona. She was strong back then, a long-time hiker just like my dad was when the two still knew each other. When we climbed through Sedona National Park, she’d put me on her back when I got tired. I complained and moped the whole way up, but not when we got to the top of Wilson Mountain.

What happened next must have happened around midday because we started the hike in the morning, but for some reason, in all of my memories, the moment happened at golden hour. I climbed from her shoulders and looked out at the old, out at the red of the desert, and my mom reached up and held my hand, and the aching legs and moping stopped, and I was more than myself; I was not alone; I was other people.

Then we flew back home and respectively fell apart. But I am there now. After golden hour, after the sunset, I am standing alone in the chilly desert dark, higher than anyone else who might be hiding in the rocks below me.

The sand flashes, it is a windshield, then it is sand, then it is a mirror, then it is sand, and then it is a mirror again, and pulls me.

It pulls me so damn hard. Harder than it’s been pulling me. Harder than I’ve ever had to fight against in my life. Hard enough that I never ever want to fight again, but for some reason, I cannot stop fighting. Something won’t let me.

The mirror is wide below me, but the sand, and the rocks, and the stars are all still there. The night is a promise of sunrise, and that promise pours into a secret, red part of my brain sealed off from the rest of me. It makes me feel strong, and more than whole, like I am on my mom’s shoulders.

You can't rule with an imaginary crown,

we left the real ones on the shelf in Great Britain,

hundreds of years ago.

We left to be free,

we the people would love to be free.

And yes freedom entails the right to be as you please in some aspects,

but that doesn't mean you get to be king.

You can play pretend all you would like,

and you can put on your imaginary crown everyday,

sit in a throne that makes you feel at large,

as long as you do not expect us to play along.

We will not be the people who play your game,

we will be the people that have beliefs and passions,

not clones,

or followers,

I will not be brainwashed by the game of politics.

So enjoy your time,

Enjoy it before the people rise,

because we will rise,

we will over come.

Without needing a paper crown,

or a throne to look out upon.

We will rise from where we stand,

As one nation,

Under God,

Indivisible with liberty and justice for All.

The pressure on your chest weakens as the craft gradually decelerates to a halt, and you find all the mass has been pulled out of you, leaving only your volume. The growl of the engines quiets to a hum followed by silence, viscous and expansive.  You float in the quiet, timeless emptiness. It appears out of your window. Your home and all you know. The Blue Marble. “The most magnificent thing you'll ever see,” said something you read back home. And there it is: A perfect blue and green sphere painted with patches of white, emitting a gentle sapphire light. And there you are. But you are unchanged. Shocked by the beauty, but the same person. The sameness crushes you. You command your craft to face away from the earth and retreat to the emptiness.

Tears are cakey. They're extreme. Maybe that's why nobody wants to see them. It feels like you're seeing somebody nude. Can I tell you what I love? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. How many times do I have to say that before it becomes true. Sometimes I want someone to save me. To uproot me from this Earth and bring me home. But what is home? Do I belong anywhere. The world says you do. But I don't. How does it feel to have roots that aren't recognized? To be shunned from every house because you don't have the same stripes. How does it feel. You and I, we're like rugs. Made for people to step on. But it's not all bad. You see, you get to experience people's lives. You get to listen in on their secrets. You get to be the surface where a shitty boyfriend cheats on his girlfriend. I want to be you. But that would be mean. That would mean uprooting you when you had roots to begin with. I wanna love you. I do. But that doesn't mean I don't want to hate you.

vermont is a half-finished poem with all the lines scratched out.

grandfathers who’ve lived here their whole lives still talk of leaving,

of turquoise florida gulfs and california summer sun. they swear

up and down they’ll move next winter, fiddlehead beer cans sloshing, 

fingers crossed behind their back.

vermont is a faded jam jar label that used to know the meaning of it all.

we’ve learnt about our lake in every science class we’ve ever had because it’s

half in new york but all of vermont really. it’s been seven years of that

but somehow we still like to watch the autumn sunsets sparkle 

& disappear behind the deep curtains of blue.

vermont is hissing static on the radio.

the temperatures always seem to drop

before we can notice it’s november and the trees are bare

and the geese are gone and that probably ought to mean something

but i’m not sure what it is. it’s dark in the mornings, goodbye fall.

vermont is a buckling highway overgrown with goldenrod.

at five the only worlds i knew were my grandparents’ house

(five and a half hours down the road), vermont,

and the grocery store. at twelve i’ve leaped clear over the atlantic

twice but this earth is still shaped like home.

vermont is thrush-song in summer meadows.

the rain wanders gaily through the marshes, trailing his fingers

through the sounds the reeds make in the downpour. when

he hears the leaves are changing he rushes north

to camel’s hump where the view is indeed a burnished bronze.

vermont is a picture colored in bright green crayon.

we are the green mountain state & proud

of it but when the sun peeks above the horizon cerulean

(not sage) radiates across the peaks,

soft rolling hills bluer than the lake champlain-shaped sky.

vermont is a maple-black raspberry twist in a big waffle cone.

my cousins don’t understand vermonter logic, pointing

at menus saying isn’t that just soft serve? & while they contain 

reddish-gold multitudes too they are not from here and i have to ask:

since when does soft serve taste anything like this?

vermont is maple sugaring season.

and while march grows ever more indecisive,

a restless lover who can’t decide between snow & the crocuses out in the woods,

we fall head over heels for the blue lines crisscrossing

our heart/state, plastic arteries pumping out our sticky-sweet lifeblood.

vermont is the end of october and the beginning of spring.

coming home to vermont is like having the landscape remember you

for the person you were in the first moment you ever returned –

a child, restless in the back seat, eyes wide at the

soft green & suddenly familiar view.

vermont is the truth of small towns.

i live in the biggest city in the state and i am still from the middle of nowhere.

i went to a stadium once that seated more than the population 

of burlington and i felt very small. i am like the country mouse in that old fairytale: 

this is enough for me.

vermont is the pause between the phrase and the chorus.

somehow we talk fast and slow here, like a waterfall

tumbling against the rocks, rushing & beautiful & sounding like southern mass.

we leave our t’s behind in our haste; we have no need for them.

vermont is stick season.

and you’re not really from here if you don’t know all the words –

scream them out the bus windows when it comes on the radio, the only song

that mentions us, get excited, november sun

slanting through the blinds like a guitar-heavy tune.

vermont is the very first snow.

it whispers down from the thick clouds, settling on the cornfields 

& the rooftops like a cobweb blanket. pure white & it returns every year.

let’s make snow angels, let’s go skiing, let’s be childish today

as the world goes to bed. we’re vermonters, our world is the snow.

vermont is nature poetry.

vermont is church street cobblestones.

vermont is protesting at the street corners.

vermont is golden sunlight.

vermont is public libraries & community theater.

vermont is dairy farming.

vermont is the white tips of the green mountains.

vermont is half my head and all my heart.

vermont is my sixty-four-year-old house.

vermont is the build-up and the fading away.

vermont is a commitment to the small and the genuine.

vermont is a place where the dirt roads lead to not just a destination but a home.

vermont is my home.

vermont is itself

and we are vermont.