poems & fragments

What's a dream to a dreamer? A habit, not a revolution; a path walked so often it turns to floor. If every night is flight, then flying is just moving; if her eyes always close to a world of gold, then gold is only light. The dreamer dreams because the dreamer is a dreamer; what else could she do but do what she does? What's a dream to a dreamer? What's water to the fish that questions while its gills drink their answer? What's song to the throat that asks while the note blooms in its hollow? Call it wonder, call it weather; the name changes nothing. The dream is ordinary to the one who wears it like skin. What's a dream to a dreamer? A tool to the hand that never stops gripping the handle. A hammer hammers nails by hitting them; hitting them proves it's a hammer. The dreamer dreams to become the dreamer. Because the dreamer is a dreamer, she will dream. The snake eats itself. What's a dream to a dreamer? Not a message, not a metric. Not a prophecy, just a pulse. If the heart keeps beating, the heart calls beating normal. If the mind keeps making lanterns, darkness simply waits its turn. When the clock never stops, the ticks become silence. What's a dream to a dreamer? Tomorrow's sleep will mirror tonight's; the pattern proves itself by pattern. Assume the dream, observe the dream, conclude the dreamer dreaming. Then the dream arrives, is counted, and filed with the rest. If you ask for the difference, the answer is more of the same. What's a dream to a dreamer? A mirror that mirrors a mirror, forever returning her face. Look long enough and her face forgets it is being reflected. Look longer and reflection forgets it is a reflection. Eventually, even wonder stops wondering. What's a dream to a dreamer? Nothing special, which is to say everything usual. Only to those who do not dream is a dream a dream. The dreamer dreams because the dreamer can, and since the dreamer can, the dreamer does, and since the dreamer does, there is nothing left to ask.

APERTURE KNIGHT YOUR RETINAS SPLIT LIKE RIPE FIGS BENEATH THE BLADE; A GEOMETRY OF LIGHT SPILLS OUT IN RIBBONS, VIOLET AND OCHRE THREADING THROUGH THE AIR LIKE SEVERED NERVES SEARCHING FOR THEIR SPINE THE TRAPPED SCREAMS TRY TO CLAW THEIR WAY OUT OF YOUR SEALED THROAT THE KNIFE CONTINUES ITS WRETCHED WORK: PEELING BACK THE MEMBRANE OF WHAT YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE SEEING, REVEALING THE STATIC UNDERNEATH, THE HUM OF FREQUENCIES YOUR PUPILS KEPT LOCKED IN THEIR DARK WELLS. YOUR HANDS GRASP AT NOTHING THE SOLID GROUND WAS ALWAYS JUST PAINTED CANVAS OVER VOID NOW; PHOSPHORESCENT GREENS ERUPTING FROM THE WOUND OF VISION, NOW; THE ARCHITECTURE OF SEEING COLLAPSES INTO A KALEIDOSCOPE OF BROKEN PRISMS, EACH SHARD SINGING ITS OWN SHRILL NOTE IN THE SYMPHONY OF UNDOING. YOU ASKED FOR THIS WHEN YOU CHOSE BLINDNESS OVER THE BLEEDING TRUTH YOUR CORNEAS PEEL BACK LIKE ORANGE RIND, SWEET AND BITTER, RELEASING CLOUDS OF CRIMSON AND GOLD THAT HANG IN THE CRACK BETWEEN YOUR LIES AND THE TRUTH; THAT PATHETIC SLIVER WHERE EVERYTHING YOU PRETENDED WAS REALITY TEARS ITSELF APART IN TECHNICOLOR AGONY. THE UNIVERSE CORRECTS YOUR ARROGANT ASSUMPTIONS WITH CRUEL, SURGICAL PRECISION THE BLADE RESTS. WHAT FLOODS OUT IS NOT BLOOD BUT THE ACCUMULATED WEIGHT; OF EVERY SUNSET YOU FORGOT TO NOTICE, EVERY COLOR YOU NAMED WRONG, POURING FORTH NOW IN ONE GLORIOUS, TERRIBLE CORRECTION.

Do angels ever disappear? I know about fallen angels; the ones that stray from the path of God. But do they ever just vanish? I have dreams where I have wings, but I never use them. I remember the sound of them. Not the graceful flapping one might expect from flight, just a kind of rustling, the feeling of feathers brushing my skin. When I'm awake, I hear buzzing. Incessant buzzing. I want to rip out the wires. The ones threaded through my jaw, my spine, the backs of my eyes. They're always buzzing. My therapist talks about grounding, but I'm already nailed here. Crucified. Tethered by wires to this earth. Feathers keep falling in the corners of my vision. I like to think I believe in God, just not the tangible kind. Not the kind that would come save me. Not one I could pray to. Just some cold, uncaring, incomprehensible thing loosely tied to my creation. I wasn't made for anything. And now I'm here, in front of this screen, talking about boundaries and breathing techniques when what I really, truly want is to dig into my back with both hands and pull the wires loose- coil by coil- until there's nothing left tethering me to this place. This body. I think angels should be allowed to disappear.

i have created senseless gods from the wreckage of my wanting, carved altars from my hollow ribs and prayed to everything that promised to keep me breathing one more day. the first god arrives with shoulders squared, hands stained with ambition's ink. "i am purpose," it declares, "let me fill your empty hours." so i bow and work and toil until my fingers bleed, until my spine curves and purpose grows thin as paper before crumbling into dust the second god comes with paint-stained robes, canvas skin and music for a heartbeat. "i am art," it sings to me, "let beauty be your salvation." so i create and craft and pour my soul into a thousand works until the colors turn to gray, until the words refuse to come, and art turns its face away before fading into silence. the third god arrives with gentle eyes, warm hands that promise forever. "i am love," it breathes against my neck, "let me be your reason." so i fall and soar and burn in the bright ache of devotion until the warmth becomes routine, until forever feels like never, and love becomes a stranger before walking away with someone else's name. the fourth god comes laughing, arms outstretched, a chorus of familiar voices. "i am friendship," its many voices call, "let us hold you up together." so i lean and share and trust in the comfort of connection until life pulls us different ways, until silence fills the spaces between, and friendship stretches out of reach like a tree climbing skyward. the fifth appears in the dead of night, wearing future's uncertain face. "i am tomorrow," it promises, "let hope be your anchor." so i wait and plan and dream of better days around the corner until today becomes a burden, until the future feels like fiction, and tomorrow loses its shape before disappearing into maybe. the sixth stands last, tiny, trembling, flesh and bone. "i am the body," it whispers meekly, "let survival be enough." but even fear of the final darkness cannot compete with the weight of watching every god abandon the temple of my desperation, and the body grows heavy with knowing that it, too, will falter. now i sit among the ruins of my homemade pantheon, wondering if the silence means i have run out of gods to make, or if perhaps the only divinity was the hand that shaped them knowing each would vanish.

i've found myself at times muttering your name feeling the shape of it on my tongue over and over like a tide that doesn't know how to stop returning you were here once, only briefly but long enough for the shoreline of me to shift and settle into new contours now the wind carries different scents now the waves drag your syllables back to me each time i forget to guard my mouth your name doesn't answer it just clings, the way salt crystallizes on driftwood on sea glass in the spaces where water retreats you are far so far the horizon swallows any trace of your voice but i still speak to you like sand holds the memory of each retreating wave there is no reply only your name your name your name and all this water between

i have tried to collect shadows like pressed flowers, each one slipping through my cupped palms before i could name it. the pause after your laugh. the weight of your glance; a glance that might have meant nothing- or everything. there is a kind of joy that arrives without permission a flicker in the chest when the light bends just right around someone who is looking elsewhere. always elsewhere. i am fluent in almosts; the humming of a song stopped mid chorus. a hand lifting towards mine then falling away. even the hurting is sacred. even the leaving feels like staying, in some strange unspoken way. to see without being seen is its own completeness. to love without being loved back is not emptiness; some love lives better in the marrow, singing its one note song. asking nothing, expecting less. i think of a place, nowhere in particular where it's enough to just be. to share breaths, not always words, not always touch. but to live alongside. a quiet kind of knowing. and if i've only just now become real- if the last few years have been the first ones i have lived- then let them be enough. even if you were only passing through. i loved the way the world shimmered with you in it.

Nicole, I Remember You in Mud and Wood Chips - You loaned me a pencil before you knew my name. That was enough. By recess you were kicking gravel with me, and by the next week, you had bloodied a boy's nose under the slide because he held hands with someone else. I cried on the playground mulch, and you sat beside me like it was your heartbreak, too. You said nothing. Just stood up and went to find him. I still taste the rain in that plastic water bottle I left in the cubbies for days. It tasted like that for the entire rest of the school year. We drank from it anyway, you and me, after making soup from dirt and sticks, your blonde hair stuck to your cheeks. I still know your address. I wrote it on envelopes with lopsided hearts when I moved away in fourth grade. I don't remember if you ever wrote back, but I kept sending them anyway. Once, years later, I saw a girl with your same sun-bleached hair, same style, same lentgh, and my chest filled up like it knew something before my head did. She turned. It wasn't you. Of course it wasn't. The last time I saw you was the day of the classroom prize table. It was the end-of-week reward thing, do good, get tickets, spend them on junk. I always wasted mine. Stickers, gum, useless plastic rings. But on that last day, I saved them. All of them. For what, I don't know. Some kid bought a bear the size of a chair. You spent your tickets on candy, two slap bracelets, and a purple eraser shaped like a cat. You looked at me and laughed. "Why start saving now?" I didn't answer. I think I thought if I didn't spend the tickets, I wouldn't really have to leave. We didn't hug. I think I wanted to. But we'd already said everything we knew how to say.

The last perfect version of you is somewhere I've never been. You're gold back there. I know you are. Back there somewhere behind the - You're gold the way afternoon is gold when it comes through a window at the exact right angle and the whole room goes amber, goes warm, and you're in there like that. I'm sure of it. But the thing about light is that it changes what it touches and I have been shining light on you for two years and you are not - you're - You're different now than you were, you're my version of you, and my version of you has been revised and the original is back in that moment in that amber room that I can never go back to and I ruined it, I sunbleached you. I'm sorry I ruined you. The machine takes gold and makes it shinier than gold which sounds right but isn't, it's the difference between the real thing and the thing that wants to be the real thing, and the wanting changes it, and I have wanted so badly for so long that I don't know anymore what was real and what I wanted to be real which is its own kind of grief on top of the other kind which I am not going to think about right now. She was drinking something. Peppermint tea, I think, or, was it peppermint. It was tea at least, I'm positive. At least something warm. At least in a cup. That has to be it because her hands were around it the way you hold something you want to stay hot and the window was open and it was morning, I think it was morning, the light was doing the thing where it came in low rays and turned everything amber and illuminated the color of her eyes which were - hazel, yes, hazel, but what kind of hazel, the green kind or the gold kind, they kept changing, they kept catching the light and shifting and I can't - I'm not sure anymore if I remember the shifting or if I built the shifting out of the fact that I loved her and loving her meant she had to be the kind of person whose eyes shifted colors in the light. The room was amber. Was it sunrise. Was the light the kind that comes from the sunrise or sunset. Which direction did the window face. Was she laughing or was she just smiling, was it peppermint or lavender or something else, did the room smell like linen or did I add the linen later because linen felt right, because linen felt like her, because I have been curating her for two years into something that felt like her rather than something that was - the smoke. I can smell it. Not from the amber room. From the other thing. From the cold room and the flowers and the candle they lit and then the candle that blew out and the specific cold that comes after, the taste of salt, the taste of that whole day sitting on the back of my tongue where it has lived ever since. I'm killing her again. I can feel it happening, the image shifting, her eyes shifting, the light changing from morning to evening or evening to morning and I can't pin it down and every time I try to pin it down I change it and the changing is the killing and she already died once, she already did that, in the cold, in the real world, I was supposed to have said goodbye in the room that smelled like smoke and tasted like salt, and I was there for that too, and that was enough, that was already so much more than enough. So I'm going back out. I'm shutting the door. I'm slamming the door to the amber room shut. I'm leaving the steam and maybe peppermint tea and the eyes that were definitely hazel and the light that was morning or evening or both or neither, I'm leaving it all exactly where it is, unvisited, unrevised, unpinned. Because the amber holds things. That's what it does. It closes around something and holds it and nothing gets in and nothing gets touched and nothing gets slowly replaced with the shinier wrong version. She's in there and the amber is closing around her warm and gold and she's holding something hot and her eyes are doing something beautiful in some quality of light and there's a smell I'm not going to name because naming it is reaching for it and reaching is the machine starting up and I'm not doing that, I'm keeping my hands down, I'm letting the amber do what amber does. She'll be gold in there. She'll stay gold. The afternoon or the morning or whatever it was will hold, the amber will hold, the version of her that existed before I loved her so loudly and so repeatedly that I started wearing her down to a shine that was mine and not hers, that version is in there and the amber is around her now and it's warm, it's so warm, it's the color of her eyes in the light of a moment I'm no longer allowed to visit. I can still smell the smoke. I can still taste the salt. But that's out here. That's mine to carry. She gets the amber. She gets the gold. She gets the room where nothing degrades and the light doesn't shift and the tea is whatever it actually was and her eyes are whatever they actually were and she's laughing at something, or smiling, or just sitting there holding something warm, and it's real, the real one, the one I haven't touched in a long time now, the one I'm leaving alone. I can't keep killing you. You already had to do that once. Stay in the amber. Stay gold. Stay in the room I'm never going back to. I'm doing this for your own good. I mean it this time.

I dreamed of a field of grey grass. White fog so thick you could hardly see. The birds, though I could not see them, were going about their business somewhere in it. Indifferent, both to the fog and the lack of trees. Just cheerful, chirping as birds do at morning. The air was cool. I found the deer in the low part of the field. She had been there long enough to lose her shape to it. The tendons, grey and fibrous, taut as cable, held the leg bones still, allowing for a clear view of her undoing. The flies had laid their whole lives into her and those lives were busy now, white and writhing, the surface of her moving the way water does when something large passes beneath it. Each one a little wet mouth working. Methodically giving her new purpose. The smell was not unpleasant, exactly. It was total. As I got close it was everywhere inside me before I had time to object. Sweet the way overripe fruit is sweet, which is to say: past the point of being for you. I saw before me red blood on pink flesh on grey tendon on white bone. Her viscera outlasting anything else about her. There was something in that Dignity, I thought. But the maggots did not care about dignity. They cared about the work, and the work was thorough, and the thoroughness was generous, in the way that total consumption is generous. Nothing wasted, nothing refused, her mass redistributed into the bodies of a thousand other hungers. When I stood, my knees were wet. I had not noticed kneeling. I did not look away. I thought: Oh, so that's where all of it goes. I thought: There's room for me here too.

i knew better than to want it. desire is the root. the buddha said it plainly. and yet still i plant. still i water. still i stand beneath the branches. a fool at harvest, holding out my hands. i come back to the river every time ive watched it dry. waited. watched it fill again. each time i gently cup my hands and drink from the stream. knowing it will dry again. i am not angry. i have no right to be. i saw the river dry. ive always known it was only passing through. so i will not blame you for being what all things are; impermanent. i will only blame the part of me that drank from the river and thought it might stay

barefoot - love is a word people use for the interval between meeting and betrayal. love is the heart buying time. i have learned it completely wrong. how do you love something without taking it apart? your voice arrives in pieces - some assembly required, batteries not included, choking hazard for children under three. i am the child. i am choking. i am holding five different instruction manuals written in coded language i was never taught. there was someone before you made of the same exact flowers. well, almost. her petals were plastic. she turned into someone else entirely - someone with a familiar jawline, someone with a birthname i'd known all along. so i've learned: beauty is forgery. hand me something beautiful - i'll hold it up to the light and check for seams. i notice everything. i notice nothing. i am the forensic scientist of affection, testing your laughter for fingerprints that match a crime scene i can't stop revisiting. i am contaminating evidence by breathing near it. i am the evidence. i am the crime. some days i think everyone is the same person wearing different clothes. some days i think i am taking a turing test and you are passing - i keep believing you're human because i want too badly for the bot to love me. some days i am the bot. some days i am just a girl who learned that people are magicians - and once you see the wires, the doves, the false-bottom hat, you can't unsee them. you just keep watching anyway. hoping the next magician won't use the same trick. but you're using the same trick. or i'm seeing tricks in trembling hands. or there is no difference. or I am the trick and you are the audience and we are both waiting for the other to disappear in a flash of red velvet. the worst part of all of this is that you have done nothing to earn my doubt. no one usually does. that's the worst indictment. i am prosecuting a future crime, building a case for something that won't ever happen. i want to stop. god, i want to stop this rosary of suspicion, this prayer i say with gritted teeth: they're lying they're lying they sound like glass they sound like machinery they sound too much like music and music was the last one's favorite trick - i am sorry. i am so sorry. i want to accept the room as it is. i want to stop tapping the walls to check for hollowness - but the past left glass everywhere. embedded in my palms. in my breath. i am still finding shards. so i'm here, barefoot. bleeding a little. looking at you and the open door and the height beneath me. i am still learning that trust is not a switch but a long and nauseating leap, and i'm standing at the edge, and you're beautiful, and i'm terrified, and i'm sorry, and i'm jumping anyway - or i'm trying to.

i often dream about my death. it's usually the kind of thing you'd see in horror movies or some kind or stranger danger psa. i dream about shadowy hands reaching out to grab me in the night. i dream of my vocal cords being cut. i cannot scream. i can only gurgle pathetically until my consciousness finally slips away. this is a recurring nightmare for me. i wake up crying when it happens. sometimes i feel as if my brain is predicting the future, as if my fate is sealed - I AM THE SHAPE THAT MAN HAS MADE ME. SCUM CREATES SCUM. MADE TO BITE MY TONGUE UNTIL THE BLOOD POOLS IN MY MOUTH. I WILL NOT PUT UP A FIGHT, EVEN IN THE FACE OF DEATH. I WILL GO OUT - NOT AS A SCREAM, BUT AS A WHISPER; A QUIET APOLOGY

the air is the color of drowned paper, and the trees lean in as if they are listening for something. there's a hum beneath the soil, a faint and constant pulse like the ground is thinking of swallowing. you walk through it, the field that never changes, the sky stitched shut with gray thread, your breath tasting faintly of iron. your hair clinging to your face. far ahead, a house it was beautiful once, but the wood is now grey and the residents are gone. you could go there. you could knock. spiderwebs bloom in the corners like lace, catching the thin, gray light that drips through an old roof, each leak keeping its own slow time. the back seat of the car still smells of cigarettes, that warm, stale paper-smoke woven into the upholstery pine needles scatter across the porch, drifting in from the trees that lean too close, their resin scent mixing with rainwater. the floorboards creak like they know your step, and the wallpaper peels back in curls to watch you pass. but the dream is long, and the door has been waiting for years to open for you.

a summer afternoon in arkansas, the air thick and humming with heat. you and i wandered through the junkyard, dry grass brushing our ankles, the sound of wasps cries in the distance. we were exploring; picking our way through rusted remains, when we stumbled upon that old, rusty fridge. it seemed alluring, angelic in some way - as if promising a small, tight space to hide from the rest of the world, just for a bit. i crawled into the gutted-white box, lying on its side in the junkyard weeds with rust gnawing the edges, the weight of countless summers etched into its frame. i wanted to hide, to feel cool metal like a shield - like armor. until the door clicked shut and i lay still, held in sudden dark. then came the dread-a thick, slow creep as i pressed on the door, no give, my little fingers scrabbling at the smooth, unyielding surface, and my breath small in the cramped dark. i was swallowed, held in that hollowed-out thing with stale air sticking to my skin. i shouted, my voice quivering, a tremor of fear that echoed into the hollow silence you acted swiftly, and before i knew it i heard footsteps crunching fast, leaving me buried there, the metal walls a cold embrace as the heat grew thick. spider webs, like fine lace, brushed my face, the sensation made me shudder, but even so, their silk threads were my only company, weaving a quiet shroud around my frail limbs. i saw the faint glimmer of golden light escaping through cracks in the seal- i heard the hum of summer through the walls, the dry grass rustling, the wasps, their buzzing a distant, nagging reminder of the world beyond, relentless as a ticking clock. i was a buried thing, still and waiting, heart pounding. i listened for footsteps, felt sweat pool like ghosts' hands on my back, felt my every breath grow smaller as i sank into the thick, stale air. i spent thirty minutes in that coffin made of metal and rust, curled up into a ball and fighting back tears, wondering if you would ever come back, and what my fate would be if you didn't. when you returned with an adult in tow, prying and then lifting me out like a rediscovered relic, i stumbled back into the light, gasping for air, and i felt it-the way bones remember being buried, even in the sun.