The whole damn moon

 I'm not embarrassed by the ladder I built

Swaying and soaring into the sky

And the way I climbed hand-over-hand

Until my palms were as tender as my heart

And then the way I reached for her broad face

And stretched and still didn't wrap my arms around her

She was gray and radiant and I'm not embarrassed

That I lay her at your feet because I thought 

She might bring you joy. 

I'm not embarrassed by the butterflies

Preforming ariels in my guts

I'm not embarrassed that I want to spilt belly

And spill my lepidopteran insides across the the glass table of your gaze

And let you judge them, moths and monarchs both.

The princess bride and other cliches

 Filled with the bubbles of champagne

And the memory of your lips

If you want I could fly

Here I am, flaying my heart open--

Begging to rend my ribcage so you can see the tender color 

Of scarlet that is my blood

What is life but the rejoicing in 

The opportunity

To be broken again?

Winter's nearly here

 Winter is nearly here. So you know it's time for....

More poems abut Orion!

Orion my first love is always high

When the days stoop short and crooked. When night

Paints itself in deepest blue across the sky

I look to the south for his three twinkling lights.

Things fall apart, the center cannot hold,

But the only rage left in me is soft

And shivering. Braced against the growing cold

Until star boy reminds me: not all is lost.

He is the utterly gut-wrenching feeling

Of my first love. He is the emptiness

Of the after. He's the captive appeal 

Of my love's lips before we never kiss

I look south past the horizon to find

Three gleaming stars and all I've left behind

It's been an elliptical time

 CW: sickness, covid

I measure my time with covid in cups of tea. 

Not food, for I have no appetite. 

When a body is used to biking sixty miles

To hiking mountains and wrestling trees 

And it finally finds itsself stilled--food seems uninteresting 

(my body is uninterested)

And not with sleep--the fickle friend

I stay up long hours into the night, thrashing and sweaty under the covers

And nap fitfully throughout the day time

My sleep losing the careful meter I have come to enjoy

A broken metronome swinging wildly and without reason

I work the same: in fits and starts, sloppy unedited emails from my phone

Maybe in the afternoon, maybe at 2am

(I have nothing else to do)

But I carefully measure out the tea--I know my body needs the liquid

Hot and minty, or sometimes green

I boil the whole kettle and slowly drip it into myself

My body takes it more easily on some days then others

And like this, as the tea disappears and becomes me

I know some time has passed. 

Fuck your septum ring

Fuck your septum piercing and your rattlesnake tattoo

Fuck the essays you read about object/subject metaphor

Fuck your hair and fuck your eyes, especially when they sparkle blue

Fuck that I'm just "not exactly that which you've been searching for"

Fuck that you think you're still straight even though you dated me

Fuck when you get angry over losing simple games

Fuck that road trip we took through Rhode Island to "gaze at the sea"

Fuck that all your friends never learned how to say my name

Fuck that I was only ever ends to your self-realized means

Fuck that time you stood me up at the movie Encanto

Fuck the way I felt in my chest when you said you're leaving

Fuck the way these tears rained down to soil far below

The fall ground is soaked and cold rain flows and drips below the tree roots

 The sky at sunset is painted a glowing scarlet rose

The trees shed their all leaves and I think that I must follow suit

Naked and washed clean, my branches bare, my heart exposed

 

Summer turns to autumn and I know my form belongs 

Among the trees (I hate that you rejoice in metaphor)

Fuck that I still think of your approval etched across this song

Maybe when the season turns I'll think of you no more. 

To the scarecrow

[inspired by howl's moving castle]

I found you in a hedgerow, looking mighty tattered

I found you in a hedgerow looking tired and worn

Turnip head was wilted, straw filthy and matted

Wooden spine was broken, burlap clothing torn

I set you right as best I could and let you know I loved you

I set you right as best I could before I walked away

You stood a little straighter in the slanting autumn sunshine

A shaggy, battered figure on a chilly, sunny day.

I think of you just sometimes while down these roads I ramble

Ambulating leisurely, not keeping any time

I took your memory, the color of your eyes, your crooked smile

I think of that just when I stop to look at what's behind

The power of the rib cage

 "I'll take you to New York." He said.

"Don't make promises you can't keep." I said.

"I won't." He promised. 

And I let myself believe him. 

I'm not mad at him, I just

feel like he cracked open his ribs, offered up the marrow in his chest and said

"Eat."

And I didn't even know I was hungry;

When I was eighteen, I was friends with a girl named Danielle and she was always falling in love and having her heart broken.

When I was nineteen, I listened to a podcast that suggested vulnerability could be a form of power

It has taken me twenty-five years of my life to figure out how to unlock the hard cage of my ribs and let the rare bird of my heart out

When I was eighteen I watched Danielle lay herself open to her lovers, spread herself out on the table and say "I am a full damn meal."

She would have heard him say "I will take you to New York." and believed him without a second thought.

I don't think she ever made it to New York but she always thought she might be on her way.

I was made of weaker stuff. 

I depended on the wall of my rib cage to keep out the wolves. 

I was never the meal for others until I had fed myself first.

I took myself to New York.

There was nothing wrong with this.

It happened so slowly, the change in my chest

At first just eggs, robin blue, barely more then a little oblong toy

Then tiny birds, gasping for breath. Crying out for their mother.

The day they learned to fly, I was so scared for them. I had never seen such

Delicate things take on the air.

Tiny, perfect fighters of gravity. 

And so I taught myself to put the key in the lock and open the cage and let the birds fly away.

I taught myself to lay bare and sit still and let others enjoy the meal of me. 

I learned to let someone else take me to New York.

He wasn't the first. (He was among the first.)

I won't let him be the last.