ladenlush

heartbeat blurring to a hot hum
buzzing between ribs
my palm hears all of the crackling of your heart
the sweetest beauty of the day
is curled up beside my eardrums
and exhales, filling me to my fingertips
inflating every bit of my lungs
until even the pores of my bones are full
and saturated with your love
and i feel ladenlush and lazy with the weight of it.

preservation and promises

I think promises to one's self shouldn't be reserved for the new year. Every day is an opportunity to start again, to resolve to change, or bolster behavior that we already strive for. So as I approach a time in my life that promises to be taxing and challenging and threatening to all the things I'm trying to save in myself but thrillingly exciting all at once - I'm making some promises to myself.

To start each day fresh
with a clear and focused gaze
with determination, diligence, and an open mind
To hold humility and compassion above all else
and to pursue a sense of self, broader purpose, and excellence.

To strive to prove the hopeless wrong - to stay buoyant, peaceful, and happy.

To take time each day to nurture self
To reflect a strong mind in a strong body
To love completely: be open to receiving joy, generous in adoration, and nurturing to the hope that two imperfect people can help each other grow and see the world in a more beautiful way because they stand beside each other.

heaps

i was pressing along with my eyes on my toes
and i missed the great shudder that shook down below
i steadied and readied and kept down low
and you trembled and tumbled and overflowed

now i've waited and wept with my ear to the earth
while you pondered and probed and summed up my worth
i'll bind up my hope in great bursting sacks
and add it to heaps we all heave on our backs

taste so bitter

to know that there is a taste so bitter
that I cannot steal it off your lips
is to feel the most binding kind of incapacity

to know there is a time at night
when no touch can move you from torment
is to feel the dullest sort of inertia

to see that there is no volume of want
that can be bartered for your happiness
is to know the most complete way of poverty

with razorrunning precision
I navigate a precipice peering
at the fall on either side
slowly calculating the likelihood
that the fruity flesh in the arches of my feet
will deliver me towards an expedient decision
like long division on my fingers
my insides feel as though a sudden conference had been called
and it has been decided that any excess be efficiently swept away
to make room in case emotional acrobatics become necessary
like a deer, I have almost convinced myself that if I stand still enough
breath the shallowest whisperbreaths
cease the flutter of eyelashes, flyaways, and anticipation
that everything might go unnoticed
and yet it seems like the aching antithesis of what I am
to let motion and thought fade from my skin like snow in sun

remembering Florence

I thought of Florence yesterday, listening to a song I must have listened to a hundred times while I was there, walking in the February street before they flooded with eager springtime audiences. Walking by the lumbering silence of the duomo, I remember every shop that filled the arches of Michelangelo's workshops. I remember every turn of the walk, the placement of every curb, step, gypsy, and haphazardly placed masterpiece. I remembered how alive it all made me feel, how wonderfully alone. How each footstep felt as though I was sinking deeper into the cobblestones, how each footstep seemed to irreversibly change some part of me. I remembered the way the cold white marble felt in my hands, the weight of its fragile opportunity. I remember how aware I was of the river no matter where I was, and how easily a bridge over its waters went unnoticed as an ordinary street. I remembered feeling lucky every single day and thinking endlessly about how I could feel that way everyday from then on. Yesterday for a moment I wished I had written every second down. But I remember every heartbeat, every brushstroke, every turn of the wheel, every chip of marble that hit the soil.

street walkers

in the shadow of the sun
I walk into the city's symphonies
a purple coat a broken window
a sky lost on too many busy people
a girl walks, without looking
mind blank of a destination
void of purpose or parameters
in her eyes there exist no curbs, nor walks
nor streets, nor racing cars
only forward motion
noise is endless, watchfulness leaks into every corner
tainting nay pocket of silence that boils up
out of unbearable frustration
the winter noon sun sits distractedly on the shoulder blades of the buildings
nudging the chimneys in boredom
the sky is the color of dirty ice
its spittle settles in every crevice
a man with no name pulls his collar over his jaw
and he cries for the cold
in the long game of dress up, this woman runs in every race
and her cashmere tissues float to the ground behind her
in chronic dramatic finales
the stories are endless and they float around each person
possessing the qualities of smoke, wind, tentacles, and cacophony
the stories breed disillusion, chivalry, intimacy, luxury, and isolation