In the spring, the sky rips open.
Forget coats, forget shoes, we shriek like
chickens and scatter, running on the broken

grass that’s gray shale under our feet. A silent
ocean. We lived ten minutes away once, and

packed up the car daily. I wish I understood.
My sister and I ran to the waves. We burrowed

out tidepools with our small hands and
laid in the sand for hours, collecting shells,

watching them move from the animals inside.
The waves washed over us, warm and white.

A bubble bath, my sister said, and when
my mother looked away, we cupped the

water and drank it, choking on the salt.

Loving Your Skin is Never an Apology.

I will tell my daughter, this is
how you love your body:
you step deep into the earth,
and let your callouses line the ground.
Do not weep, tell your skin
you are a poem. Your veins blue
under your skin run like water,
do not break through the surface. You
cannot throw a stone into the center
of a lake and wonder why
the shoreline feels the echo. Love
the round slope of your hips,
and do not regret that you are
soft. If your ribs line your arched back,
a gate where there is no captive, you
protect them. They do
the same. Do not beg for a home
you weren’t born into, do not whittle
away at your frame like wood under
a carving knife. A tree grows,
do not pray for shrinking. Praise your
legs for carrying you,
for holding you when you dance
with a boy and he kisses your small
perfect mouth. A bud. I beg you understand
becoming is not perfection,
loving your skin is never an apology.

also shared on my tumblr

three stanza.

your fogged breath like
fingertips on cold glass.
flushed.

the woods slow like
trees reaching sore arms.
upwards.

this morning like
water swallowing sand.
released.

"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.

the tree that is not there.

I just need space to be sad,
lonely whispers into the gray rimmed room.
she turns her face to the window
that is not there and closes her eyes
to the tree that is not there and
touches the ground that is not there
and weeps. in her mind, it is summer.
in her mind, it only rains when
tight-lipped white-lipped women
sleep. water keeps company with moon,
dulling the pounding of rain on roof.
she breathes synonymous with the tide to the
ocean that is not there. and sleeps.
in her mind, there are seagulls.
when she wakes, there is a door.

you, of breath and sky, I call soar.
cradle the swallow of air in your lungs.
weave your song into ribbons you leave
marking presence. your wings tipped with
whispers someone will one day                             softly drop
in your ears. these steps and stones, bare bones
are a soft place to land. settle. here is
where you will find flight, gather foundation.
dusk deepens, do not be afraid of night. there
is a time for rest, in wild violet twilight where trees
grow tall from wondering. morning breaks soon
enough, still your beating, still. your eyes leave
petals in the dawn of the world. at length, the sun stretches.
take your flightless arms and reach. this is when you
take heart to sky and find home beating inside you,
light like stars. this is a song you alone sing.

three sisters.

i. Grace.

When it rains, she collects water in
wooden bowls. Makes soup with
dandelion greens. Down the road,
a boysenberry tree stains the
neighborhood. She gathers the fruit,
barefoot. Her fingers remember
green things.

ii. Beauty.

Inside, she unties string, weaves straw
into gold. She plaits forgiveness into
her roots and drinks moon in her
mother's china. Her laughter
crystallizes the air. When she moves,
it shatters. She slips from the room,
running from the remnants.

iii. Truth.

They had a sister with a voice full
of sun. In the morning, her words
sprouted leaves. She gave the sprouts to
anyone who asked, forgetting people
lost earth. Weeds swelled between
sentences. Her hair faded. She fractured
on thorns. In her hand was a seed.

tomorrow, they collect time.

She carries secrets deep in her chest, braids maps into her hair. Her sleep yells.
Something about a kitchen. When the sun rises, he finds
her dresses flapping on branches, stitched with carrots. He smokes
the air, inhales questions through his teeth.

There is a wilting face, a snow falling voice.
He breaks earth to plant years, washes confusion from his fingers.
Still she weeps. Her heart shakes all summer, cradling
small seeds and spraining weeds.

Now the back of her dresses shed dirt, her palms home for
petals. Rain cuts the ground to streamers and
the sky coughs up gray as they hang pebbles out to dry. The
sun, clattering. The strings she plucks like a harp.

In the backyard they tack maps onto the fence, chart their
dreams with blue ink. Bleeding, snaking rivers through rows of seeds.
Two weeks later, the tips of the carrots are blue and he runs laps between
the shoots. The hanging maps rain white ash and she forgets forests.

Sunday, she gives him white stones for a cup of
moon. The stars, smooth and gray. The sky,
rumpled into the trees. Across the galaxy, they
flicker and she paints Orion onto Russia with watercolors,
what does it mean? His question a pit.

Like a nymph, she slips into trees holding the earth down
with all their might. Her friends are wolves. Her feet
are bare. In the yellow kitchen, he watches the light shatter on, off.
She twists the diamond on her finger and chokes on stones. In the
morning, her smile petrifies.

Sun crumbles on her pillow, burning the
edges where she used to sleep. On his back is a tattoo
saying, I love you in Greek. He cranes his neck
to read what's written in green and his shoulders are
leaves, bending. The bathroom smells sour from dye.

She leaves a ball of yarn by his shoes,
unraveling, and a photograph. I just remembered,
I hate carrots. Her hair is blue. Someday she will learn to tie.

A lightning storm slices the air black. Hail, he thinks.
Later, he watches the pebbles slip out of their string
wings. When she comes in the morning to gather her
dresses, the ground is taped shut.

eyes full of moon.

Sorrow, I think is not
an old man with gnarled fingers.
Rather, she is a young woman
with a beautiful face,
and eyes full of moon,
and hands burned red.
She wears white gloves and
bracelets that jangle to say,
look at me,
look at my loneliness full
in the face.
You need be gentle, when
gentleness is not called for.
Take her aside and bandage her hands when
they bleed.
Wash each and every finger with water
from the white basin sink,
in the bathroom with the
milk green tiles.
Do not fear your reflection.
Sorrow has many names, but always
the same eyes.

Colorblind, it's still red

My love is color
blind, a specialist said there's hopeful
possibility he can see some shades,
maybe yellow.
we left brimming and
I bought marigolds
for three months, hoping he would
say, I see.

My love is color
blind, is that a new sweater
he asks. I nod, I watch his
lips move, his eyes narrow. He
licks his lips, what color is it?
A game we play, trading
a question for a question, I answer
what does it look like?

He squints again at the
cords pulled into rows of
gray, to him, pale, to him
licking his lips and pulling his forehead
into a frown, I relent.
I relent, mustard yellow, I say, because
we've never quite given up.

My love is color
blind, his shoulders relax.
Ah, I can see it now,
if his words were a color
if his words were a shade he
could see, I would not
wish it.

And what is yellow again,
I ask, hoping he will remember.

The color of the taste of
soft bananas, not the
green of ones unready? I nod, he settles down
with his bowl of cereal and the
paper. It's a yellow bowl,
I want to say.

In my dreams we swim off the
coast, get caught under
a rainbow. Is this what you see all the
time? He asks me, and I cannot
taste anything but the hollow
swelling and curving out of
my heart. Too long I had forgotten
it had a hue.

His chair squeaks. We
move on pretending, tomorrow, maybe.
My love is colorblind, the heart -
it's still red, the flowers on the
table, are still
marigolds.

poetic fiction.

where the answer is no longer a question

in the evenings when slowness grows in the cracks
under the table,we drop crumbs for what
will, load wood down
with our worries, we lick the backs of spoons where
sweet potatoes once sat, how is it going?
is it good?
is it good?

creak, around, back there is a loose hinge
on that chair be careful ;
creak, around, back there is a sorrow
howling under a laugh,

four places where apples
waited, plucked there is a pie: one
tree at a time i will say to you,
your hands in mine, whether they are smooth or
rough like woodsy bark, deep smell oak,
the fragile white saplings who know
to grow,

(we are seedlings learning; uprooting does
not always lead lonely lives, branches
bow low)

I hope you are ;
brave
with all the i hope fluttering
fragile bursts of a seed
breaking breathe (it is not easy it) is
best

you are welcome any day to leave
your worries at the door, sit at the table,
where the answer is no longer a question,
but a yes.

sun yellow and chlorine.

I learned how to swim
in a small pool with yellow bars peeling
locking inside from out,
when I was enough, old,
we
lived in california
where it was always brown,
always burnt, the earth continually
freckled.

in between I sat on the
edge of the drenched sun
pool,
shifting on the
itchy concrete sandy from
use.

once, I dove
my breath somewhere between
the ladder and the
unbroken surface,
I jumped shaking reluctant,
and almost slapped the depths
with my toes.

there was water up my nose that
I didn't plug
and my eyes burned from pool water, my
throat tasted raw, my tongue
licked with chlorine.

despite the California sun I huddled
in my new bathtowel
done,
and watched the rest of the kids jump.

it seems like that a lot.
first, I dive headlong,
right away
my stomach lurches, I
go. then I sit on
the sidelines wet from
bare feet and watch.

we are surprised ;

we are surprised ; by
by and by, joy seeps in our
crevices

we are surprised ; honey
trails on the counter
rivers for ants. we are

surprised ; there
is no question leaving
doesn't press into our
faces.

day wears the
questions: on, in, around,
(eyes) my we

are cracked ; there is
room, by and by, rivers and lakes,
for light.

scurry along, home to
where the ;
questions aren't for
answers(answers

don't demand
a word)

for you I wish.

i.
for you I wish
cups of coffee clinking
weekly maybe daily, but only
with a friend.
the
type that understands
your reasons for
refusing sugar, refusing cream, drinking
black.

ii.
for you I wish
days when the marrow
of life sprouts flowers,
little green things that
insist on growing.
smelling wet under gray
skies split at the
seams.

iii.
for you I wish
slowness, the ability to sit
watching birds, sunsets,
the lulling strands of
conversation. promises of stillness on
warm spring evenings,
when
your soul leaps, fits breathes, over
what is
small.


hannah nicole

dandelions.

you stand in the middle of the kitchen

because your mother said it was easier,

said it was lighter without the weight of

a braid thick as the bread your

grandma used to knead back and forth

on her wooden table. your grandpa

made that table when your mother

still ran around in long

hair tangled with weeds she still

believed were flowers. there

were five chairs then, she tells you they

were crooked.

misshapen like the scar on your arm

from falling off the willow the

seventh summer you lived. the branches

pulled the sky to the earth,

dirt cracked your wrist, but

you were lucky. you were lucky,

your daddy said

to only have the breath stolen from

your lungs for a moment. that

moment of grasping for

air never left you, still, and

you

stand in the middle of the kitchen

crying as, in one snip, the past your

waist strands of your hair swish.

near your bare feet and she's wrong

it's not

lighter.

you finger the sudden cut and peek

in the chipped mirror, you look older.

and now

it's too late to pretend you won't

ever grow up, too

late to still call dandelions

flowers.

coffee shop.

I am alone but not lonely. tell me,
how can i be? i am a part
of the passing glances of strangers, grabbing
coffee cups in four sizes for fifty eight
kinds of heartbreak, (number three:
a sun setting suddenly on familiar
red wind fields come autumn, the
same, every year, the difference, every year.
number eighteen and a half: the first laugh of your baby,
the last word before a goodbye. inexplicably
intertwined with how your face feels creases)
every hello, i manage to slip
my hand into, i find a way to whisper
my name into lapses of conversation, if
only to say, "I am
here."
the door opens and closes for people,
friends, lovers, strangers, all
saying good day, and i am somewhere
no where, now here, a part
of the dust in the air from
boots treading dirty roads, a single
fluttering breath in these
minute exchanges meaning
everything and yet nothing at once.
this, you spill accidentally, not unlike,
the stains leaving rings in your journal,
still bitter when the smell leaves your
fingers. i stay long
after the doors have shut, and always
choose the oldest leather chair
to unravel my worries into, spilling
them alongside sips of
a lattee foamed with milk. is
there anything lovelier? my name is written
in sharpie on the side. i read between
the lines of every letter and write
a poem for each barista that
scribbles the h in my name with a swoop,
for the ones who scrawl the letters tightly,
a love song. there are white pages
before me bound in the third journal
i've used in two years. look, do you see the
blue sky, washed clean after rain?
outside. if you wait, it will ring gold and
how can i (you) be lonely, when you
sit next to a window?

an empty net.

when you're seven you
spend a week fishing for
crayfish in the harbor.
it's the promise of boiling them
later, in butter that keeps
you lying on the hot wood
of the dock. "I got one!" your
cousins cry and you jump
from your stomach, breaking
the rule of not-running near
the boats just this once, to see.
in bare feet, you're more likely to catch
splinters than your net a
swimmer, but you keep scooping
the mesh in and out of the
murky water. the day slips
past, darting from the sun's travel
like the minnows hiding in
the shadows and you spend half
of it trying to avoid tripping
the rest of the cabiners. they go out to
catch a fish perpetually growing
from spinning lines, a story
more tangled than the poles sitting
on the side of grandma's cabin.
when you're seven you eat crayfish with
your fingers and collect
freckles like lucky stones from
sprawling in the sun all day, and
promise yourself each summer
will stay the same.

...

is there anything
that sits better
on your skin than
the feeling after
a good run?
it's contradictory
to what vogue
says, yes, but
i alway feel
beautiful after
finishing one.

and even now.

the morning air barely crept from the
dew and i thought, how early it
must be, little did i know what a
secret pleasure to be awake
before the rest of the world decides dreaming
is not enough.

i slipped from my house
and forgot to leave a note,
i forgot to say where i was going,
because when you are young
enough to forget, you are young enough
to not worry about leaving.

we went for a walk,
together and i was happy, maybe
more so than i can remember.
one foot in front of the
other, and deep breaths in summer
woods, my grandparents and
i.

once, i drank ginger ale
and i accidentally sliced my finger on the tab,
it was just a small cut barely worth
mentioning, but
i cried as my grandma and
aunt and i, crammed into
the bathroom to get the antiseptics
and i cried as they dabbed
it on my finger.

it shouldn't have happened
but that does little to change
things, besides, i was a big girl,
even then.

now i find myself
watching the sunset and watching the sunrise
almost simultaneously.
now i find myself crying
over spilled milk more than
i should and do you know,
i can't drink
ginger ale without tasting the
sky from that afternoon.

i remember the trees
spread their green canopy
blocking out the sky and my
feet were dirty from running
barefoot all summer.

and even now,
i still love
long walks by myself more
than i should.

we walk into winter's daybreak.

we walk into winter’s daybreak.

and it's these simple things that i will miss
though i hold them close in hands already
forgetting how to let go.
(i’m a conundrum) a riddle caught;
in the joy of the chase and the trap,
the home of a heart steeped too far in nostalgia.

i will not go bitter into the day because of
moments no longer mine.
i will not crouch in fear on my step, for
lack of familiarity. how much longer will
we live in togetherness not really seeing, to
simply be in the understanding of what
we need is
here?

four hundred and forty eight days, i pretend
not to count on my fingers but i am
too slow to hide. please don’t mistake this
for happiness, because i am
tangled tangled tangled in what is to
come. direction is different than destination and
there are roads
and paths
and places in between yet, my head hurts
because i cannot find the roadmarks to home
on any map.

these days are the songs i could
never sing of birds i could never keep and already
autumn has ended. composed of what i will miss
the most, no matter how hard i try,
i can only play broken notes on a piano too
old to stay properly in tune.

it will be the same,
it's easy to say, but a packed suitcase and a
room no longer called my own
put me as a traveler.

in the end,
birds are meant
to leave their nests and spring
does not hide her face forever though
it is changed,
each time.