"broken up like blue bird shells..." | collective

"...often I wish to be another."

there’s a dance and she wasn’t invited,
but she goes anyways, august tasting red
like she’s smacking her cherry lips and it’s
still summer. the steps are new (it don’t matter),
she’s grown up side-stepping the issue all
her life, a little toe-tapping now (it don’t matter).
her dress swirls and everyone stares and she’s
spinning spinning spinning so fast no one can see her face.
the boys all ask her to dance, whispers floating
soft and shallow under pink and yellow lights, who
is that girl? and nobody knows. just yesterday, she
traded pencils and now she’s trading partners, her
fingers held tight in hand after hand but no one stops
long enough to stare her in the eyes. midnight hollers
and her curls are falling loose around her neck, she’s
barefoot now, and if all the world’s a stage, it’s hers
to claim, red dress shimmering like stars she can’t keep.

"My 15th nephew was just born and his eyes are the color of an undone sky."

there are a tumble of names and a litter of letters
tangling a town, making a people together, this
one we call our own. each of us carrying a piece
of family in the place we cry, safe. how
many hearts can you hold before it’s too many,
and that’s the thing about love they say, it
just keeps on growing. the shape changes, lengthens,
manifests and carries a string you find tied around
the beating parts of you. a house divided cannot fall,
and there’s something to be told about a string
woven into a web, a safe place to land on. this
thread starts and spreads and finds a softness with
eyes broken up like blue bird shells and hands grabbing
to be held, because even then in the deepest parts,
you’re born with a knot wrapped tight round home.

Sometimes, I write poems for people. These are a few.