NOVEMBER 21:

Halloween. Anything goes 

and suddenly a circumstance becomes a disguise, I guess 

3'10 ghosts 

and power rangers 

a couple of jedi fighters, too

but I, alone, am the street noise

shoe heels meeting gritty concrete 

hips gliding in their sockets held together tightly with a pair of old jeans 

cobra lights pour their cloudy rivers of tungsten down my hair

crowning me with a Botticelli halo made of shadows and untamed flyaways and moon glow

OCTOBER 21:

corrugated steel and concrete;

construction, though, specifically,

construction as it relates to growth

dear dogwood tree, the one your family planted,

dug it all up and everything: the works

dirt and fertilizer situated

down in the yard, the five of you; me, imagining the scene far away, crying

delicate

even really strong roots break in big storms like that

enough becomes enough

eventually

enveloped in a ritual of land and atmosphere;

endoscopic purging

entropy endured

engraved in each layer of crust and bedrock like fossils

erratic patterns of a temporal dance; an earthly ballet

for what it’s worth,

forrest in a garden,

fear only for the badness of parts in the past;

future moments exist so we have voidious grips on potential kisses,

fun to look forward to, 

fucks to give,

friends to check on and more dogwoods to plant;

fences to hit with the bumper of your car backing in at 11:30pm

fluttering hands like swallowtail wings: featherlight

far less graceful and more erratic

forced to think about what you leave behind when you make it home 

from a long day

for a terrible night

finding small frogs hidden in the doorframe 

good morning to the early foglight of dawn glow

great blue herons and seagulls and pigeons and barn sparrows, 

ghoulish raccoons, too, 

greet me on a walk down the street at 4am

gone,

grounded into the headphone zone, a place for galactic melodies and poems

graffiti scratching into whitewashed brick, it's my name ...or

goofy words or… your name

grinding teeth subconsciously; the kind of stuff my dentist says is really bad;

grit stained shoe soles slipping over dewy bits of weeds sprouted in pavement

growing,

green, 

gone;

gruesomely smeared, my tread: a butter knife; the doormat: sentimental toast;

gaudy and obsolescent, a shower of steaming drops does what it can to clean;

grafting around the fridge

grab the ritual, enjoy breakfast

grateful for the list of things I wrote down the other night and I start reading it out loud

glamorous party of reasons,

grand lullaby;

goodnight 

OCTOBER 21:

afterlife (3 years and today I'm really missing you)

two years

and another year

still

so here's a pipette full of phantoms and deconstructed coasters

ripping into dust

on a hightop

and a stool

wooden, no frills

no leather

no studs

only a phone call from a friend I wish I didn’t pick up 

still

and still’s opposite

erosion of time folded back into time and out of time 

and back 

god's big hands shaking you like a carton of Florida's Best orange juice 

distributing the pulp

still

inside the aluminum megalodon

a southbound amtrack ne regional 

and still's opposite 

mom picking you up

pejorative sympathies

and soup

and candles

and baths 

fat joints before eulogies 

and then two years 

then another year

still 

and still's opposite

SEPTEMBER 21: back with the boys on our special diamond island

castaways in our parents' old sweatshirts. 

these days, home is a runny cocktail of humid nights and early morning smoke 

an echoing reminder to measure twice and cut once;

a moveable feast of healthy alternatives: 

mom's turkey meatballs

instant wild rice

a bag of steamed green beans.

you're a big old kid in a little house

surrounded by the pieces of a life you packed away

neatly

and left aside to grow away from.

your room is a confusing vessel

a built-to-scale diorama of 7th and 8th grade 

souped together with the light wash of high school nights spent texting high school crushes things like full sentences of just "hahaha."

you're home, again

JANUARY 21: Make square pegs fit into round holes because it's emotionally convenient, more than a mantra, a romantic lifestyle bought and sold with each contrived message-transaction. Names on screens, a nebulous galaxy of Helvetica font telling me why Chanler S. and Maggie N. are worthy of love and deserve attention. There you are and here I am, floating in and around bright white frames on high resolution gadget glass, fuzzy moths looking for candle light, settling for the tungsten glow of dimmable overhead fixtures.

The first big rain storm of the new year brings sounds and smells of an unfamiliar January dampness through this one story house, into my room. The walls are painted a light green. It makes me feel like a girl-

NOVEMBER 20: Are you an illusion or an enchantment? Something to conjure up, stir around like a viscus soup of promises and half-truths or are you here, a person made from stars and Ponds Cold Cream and late night texts asking for touches and talking that only mean something because I can pretend.

Where I grew up it’s not loud like this but street noise lives here, with me now, in my apartment, a roommate who never vacuums but stays rent-free forever. You asked me about the conversations I overhear from this perch, about the “magic that happens when strangers don’t know you’re listening.” I tell you about two nights ago- the break up below. How the couple exchanged impassioned “HOW DARE YOU”s and “IT’S SO FUUUuuUUuUKING OVER”s until someone cried and the sound of clacking heels slapping against the sidewalks’s worn grey face faded into the Mission St midnight. Is this the magic to which you’re referring?

OCTOBER 20: I play the video of you laughing about Dr. White’s ponytail over and over. a futile conjuring but eventually the bedroom door creaks open on its own volition 

a ghost

maybe yours

coming in to say “I miss you” 

harmonizing with the 14r bus as it wheezes from stop to go outside

SEPTEMBER 20: if goodbye is a hug that becomes a kiss, I want it. you’ll be the bubble casts of d.c. humidity’s night dew and I’ll be the stop sign radiating moonlight off your glassy bead deposits, posted and receiving

AUGUST 20: the grand gesture manifests as a love song inside a wordless text, speaking voices with melodies like sine waves, and a carne asada platter for $13.50

sweet n’ low no sugar added until your hand’s together with mine in the 19th st moonlight. february’s rooftop mountain view can’t compete with the glow of what you won’t say, potential energy hovering like a blind firefly bumping into the carceral glass of an invisible bell jar. You, the maker, the keeper, the judge and the jury, the structure and the scrap, the unforgivable half-giver; you, still, everything, and the in-between

JULY 20: a phone is a hot potato; a text is a wish I made on an eyelash mutineer. Your name is an echo and my body is a bloodstain on grandma’s white rug. a voice is a dog whistle, undetected, the frying sound of crossed wires only perceivable by some alien communities far far away; the gadget of your dreams batteries not included with a lot separating you and some AAs

MAY 20: missed cumbia vibrations crawling up my walls at 1:00am, a car radio popping all the way off out on mission st. Missed overheard conversations about bitches and landlords and the fate of the 49ers. Missed low riders in procession, smelling fat blunts, the sound of bus brakes puffing out their shrill release. Window pane’s rattling as the tree outside brushes its stringy branches across the dusty glass

SEPTEMBER 21: NEW SONNETS

1.

& it’s in your tone, muted, eyes blinking slow 

where I know exactly how this ends 

a place with questions and hurt feelings 

popular recourse for bad lovers and the good music they put us on to

however, it’s also in the idealized, unrealized, kinetics because I understand you’re more than a memorized “Un Ciego” 

scratched on a recycled flashcard

a sacred valentine scored by Isao Tomita’s bulbous synthscape 

Clair de Lune No. 3

submerged in a human-sized fish bowl of prescribed processes

an underwater trap

Surrounded by clear visuals of world outside moving around you without him

it’s not the end credit scene

it’s a director’s roundtable and your mic’s off

2.

and I want a farm 

for horses and cats and goats and chickens

where I can paint and walk and draw and sing

my uncomplicated dream

as sisters we can open a cafe 

call it the shoppee 

serve food that tastes good 

show our love in the things we share

but we won’t have money for trips and the jewelry our grandparents buy 

our high school wont ask us to speak at assembly 

success won’t make sense to them

we’ll try not to let that bother us

a drop in a bucket 

the romantic idea of an impossible plan

3.

and I love you so

like how don mclean sings it

a lifeblood, the red and blue stuff that keeps things going

I cry a lot about this

talking over two charles mingus interviews and lingering middle school traumas

a perma crush 

a clock that doesn't tell time, it shares time

cool, residual, and blue like minor fourth notes 

semitones in undulating melodies  

however you are, I am too

and also I’m me

dual-function empathy and independence 

a hydroponic place to grow 

analogue lightbox

a playlist of rain sounds for sleepAPRIL 20: a version of happiness that comes when the carpenter bee sings his low rumbling buzz in the partly cloudy light of a mid 60s dc day, cold and warm at the same time, in love just enough to know I'll always care forever. find it on big walks, see it in the trees when rain makes leaves heavy and green

JULY 20: love letter to BreadSoda-

I want BreadSoda, last call, darts, Tom pretending to be on an invisible abacus tallying up everyone’s points from a game we’re playing with a just-as-drunk stranger we met buying our fifth round of guinness. I need late august, the three of us, pool sharks in brown light swimming around the carcass of a basement dive where our server is always about to end a shift and needs to close out the tab: our home, our very very very fine house. full volume lo-fi beats or grunge metal, no in between, the way we love it, the way we gotta have it. I could kiss the trivial pursuit game board and it’d taste sweet, glossed over with a beer blend marinade, heavy with ghosts of victories past and imminent, a trophy of moving parts in our discount cave

JANUARY 18: I think of you and my favorite song playing at the same time

your dark hair with a new inch trim —

it smells like spring in the middle of January and a bird died on the sidewalk. 

walking around with knuckles redder and rounder than the bumps on a big raspberry 

punchy and awkward, now it’s me and your mom by the kitchen sink 

while the morning continues slipping from 5:30 into a rainy 11:00