slow motion thought

i've opened my eyes in the middle of the night catch my breath press my lips into each other inhale look at you and you tell me to smile and that is just the sweetest thing anyone could ask of me so i smile into the darkness and let the strange august coolness settle in my lower back and behind my ears and i listen to the streets outside and the lovers making excuses and laughing softly into the night over the pillows and comfort of the crook of your arm i peer at the world that i'm about to drown in once again and wonder why everything that is so simple and pure and appealing does not pull at me at all instead flushes me out into the night to try and stay bouyant and graceful and focused on what i want with all my heart what consumes my thoughts yet i wish it was you i was consumed with that reminded me to smile at the most pivotal moments of the day when the stripes of sunlights press themselves pasta-like against my walls and over the curve of a bare hip and milk and cereal and morning tv all seduce me out of bed into the day jealous of the night content in trading the spotlight of the moon for the blinding brightness of the sun.

words

when you speak out loud, the words tumble over the rim of your conscience, float before your face for a moment, and then pop like bubbles into the air around you, gone forever, they may have left without being heard by anyone else, or they may have been inhaled and tasted by everyone else in the room,
exhaled and swallowed.

when you write words, ink makes them eternal, paper catalyzes them into everything you meant them to be. they are felt by everyone, even if they are read by no one, and you carry them around in bursting pockets and huge baskets of lined paper and napkins soaked with moments and lovers and time. you keep them all, catalogues of loyalty or legitimacy that you pull through the day at your feet, or bluster out before you in a flurry of importance. written words are permanant and they have a heaviness to them, no matter how small the print or insignificant the writer.

here

what do you all expect me to do
from where you're standing
pick uphold onsit downstay
where bricks flood the streets
we're all too close phyicallycrammed
beside eachother
to ever really seebelieve the expression
on one another's facespalmprints
overlap and you can't really know me
at all.

disoriented

you know that feeling even before you open your eyes in the morning and you're somewhere you didn't expect. unfamiliar bedside table, light switch in a new place, different colors on the walls

its takes a dizzying moment to ground yourself, remember where you are and what you're doing and who you are.

it happens to me all the time, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the night.
when i look up from a book or a conversation
when i'm standing on the T and realize i could be on any public transportation anywhere in the world
when all i hear is a foreign language and i float in it like thick water
the waves are high and i can never touch

lungs full and throbbing and eager to exhale
heels pressing into sand
arms wide
eyes closed

somebody's blue on the walls every morning
and sweet hands at the light

soundless landing

soundless landing im back to the place i started
eyes closed, i need no explanation
but with my silence, i feel distinctly feminine
and i brush it from my skin with insistence.

that i dont care
is a lie through tight lips and averted eyes
its a burn that won't scatter with time
or fade with sun and its pattern is clear on my conscience.

but here all my pity has been swept into a pile
and then blown away by the cool night
and the pull on my collarbones drags everything down
to hardwood and concrete.