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Things I Need You to Know
Your skyline might look like the stars ignited
In the heat of a million beating hearts racing the dark
Becoming a brightness broken by buildings so tall they disappear
Your skyline might look like star shine on red rocks
So bright that when you stand before dawn and God with a camp mug in your hands,
The Milky Way can practically cream your coffee
I’m certain I don’t know
But I believe in imagination,
and sometimes believing is seeing.
Blooming like the blush of early skies
I sat cross-legged in the meadow we made
Bare feet and that old floral dress
I strung a necklace from the beads of dew
I painted my cheeks the sweet rose of skies
Played make believe that you were there
Poured a cup of tea in chipped china
Sipped slowly while daytime sunk soft behind the gloried green hills
In the sheer golden nonsense
Of falling suns and rising stars
Of beating hearts
Born from the fiery dust
Of that very same light,
I see you.
We let the wildflowers grow
Lace in soft mountain air
Sipping wine on the wooden swing
You leapt and laughed
Brassy brightness in old oak arms
Clinging to the creaking cicada songs
Auspicious and alight
Do you remember what happened next?
Palming and praying
Over bodies of broken bark
Perfect in growth and fractures
You were not so far away.
Light freckling in branches and breezes
Do you know how to pray?
This is how I say amen -
One foot in front of the other.
Steadily straying towards
Divergent threads parsing snowy pines
I saw the hearth
I saw the peak
I chose to climb
That’s what I love most about art. There is truth with no answers. It’s all in the seeking.
Abacus rings on the maples
Wishing years would just unwind
Sweet world and sun tea
Growing one in kind
I don't know who you are but you feel familiar
I would like to memorize each movement
Fold them into hazy happy days
Let them grow wild and slow in my palms with each melded moment
I don't know who you are but the space between us is lined with light
There is something here beaconing my footfalls forward
Coax me in and draw me close,
I want to fathom this flutter could be more than I've felt
It's nice to meet you.
The middle of nowhere is the center of joy
Climb the stairs on an honest day
Reach the roof and sit to stare
For just a little while, for just us two
The junipers and sagebrush mill about
Their soft sounds weaving canopies
Around the twinkle of crickets and birdsong
The sharp smell of soil, a circle of arms
Your warmth and these sunbeams soaking into my skin
Kiss the places I forgot to love today
The wild meadows and the whispering mountains
Draw each drop of caution clean from my blood
Simmering summer sunsets
Radiant and reckless
I’ll find myself here, lost in your gaze
You draw me in outside of the lines
I’ll find a flower from each field of forever
Softly sew their sweet stems
The petals of each pasture are butterfly wings
Far more fearless than fragile.
Take me to your hiding place
Where warm honey softly turns in trees
We are a golden grove of autumn aspen
Our braided roots some ancient arterial atlas
Trace these tributaries till you touch
Where sun spills sweet over me
The forests we have shouldered
Will alight in a daze of ardent reverie
When I hand you the light in my eyes
Will you hear each word I have whispered to yours?
Touch the gravity of always and old oak arms and dizzy tiger lily prayers
Here, we know this one by heart.
If tomorrow is a place I hope the sun shines sweet and gold
That your hands on my skin are as warm as the light
And your eyes are kind and bright and shining with love
If this house is a home
Let it be ours
I would like to hold your hand in the hallway
Any hallway
This polished tile, locker-laidened corridor of junior high school
The Louvre or the Taj Mahal
I would just like to hold your hand
Kiss you on the cheek
Or the lips if we’re feeling really gutsy
Wear your hoodie
Your baseball hat indoors
Backwards
Tipped to the side
Let’s slow dance
In the tarp-covered gymnasium, your hands on my shoulders, mine on your waist
Because we don’t know how to slow dance
I want to let you steal my sketchbook as if it wasn’t the one thing I wanted most in the world
To tell you how frustrated I am with the boy that I love when that boy is really you and all that I want is so desperately for you to heed your own advice
Touch my hand under the armrest of a movie theater seat
Because making out is so seventies or so high school or so grownup or so gross or so…
Touch my hand
Because I know the static electricity that will pass between us could ricochet off the moon,
I want to wait to really know you.
You are far too precious to hold before we know what we are worth.
Before we understand the gravity of letting go and dismiss the mere suggestion of that idea as lunacy
I want to go to the third floor of a building, the restricted area
The basement, the roof
Shout in the library
Be late for class
Miss the bell
I mean bus, I mean train.
I want to love
How they always told us not to love in the student handbook,
the right way.
I missed a lot of bells, busses, and trains, to reach you,
I was late for a lot more than class
Late to say “I love you” to all the wrong hearts
But that hesitancy was all just the pause between the prayer and the amen
Waiting.
For here,
for you,
and now.
I will love the way your flannels feel against my summer skin, hiding me from the window’s soft breeze
The way I gently pull your glasses from where they’ve slipped on the bridge of your nose, after you’ve fallen asleep on the sofa to the drone of NPR
The way you bring me coffee in bed on lazy Sundays, just enough cream to turn it the color of my childhood room’s walls
How I will make dinner with you, sipping white wine and kissing by the counter
Our little breakfast table with the yellow cotton cover, and the mason jar of wildflowers I refuse to let go stale
Our bookshelf full of creaky bookshop treasures
The way you will dip me upside down, Dirty Dancing style, as you kiss me hello after work
How you won’t mind my incessant singing as if no one can hear
I will love the sunlight bathing our window seat in the bedroom
The old record player’s putter when the vinyl is through
Our trips to the market and the bouquet you slip into the basket while I’m counting coupons
The way our dog’s feet will pad softly across our aching wooden floors
The box of old letters in our dresser drawer, from times both oceans and little living rooms apart
The mingling of our handwriting on our grocery list by the fridge
How you still send me a postcard every time you travel
The way I will pull all of the covers to my side every night in my sleep, but how you will forgive me time and time again
I will love kissing your shoulders, running my lips over the freckles sprinkled on the nape of your neck
Our bathtub with the clawed feet and my organic lilac soap that you refuse to admit you use
My Hunter boots towering over your loafers beside the door
The tree house we’ll build together in the old oak tree and the nights we’ll spend there, counting falling stars
I will love Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong—dancing barefoot across the kitchen, my cheek to your shoulder
The farmer’s stand on the corner of the street, and the carton of strawberries that won’t make it the walk home
Christmastime strolling the avenues with breathy snow drifts settling in our hair, Vince Guaraldi flavoring every moment and our little tree with the crooked star
The chalkboard by the door where I’ll leave you sweet thoughts
Our jar of pennies for a rainy day
The sound your keys make in the door when you return home
The notes you slip into my work-bag while I’m in the shower
I will love the quiet rain stuttering against the bedroom window on soft nights, while jazz pours from the speakers in the corner
The whistle of the kettle, two cups waiting nearby
The way you drift off with a book draped across your chest
Our collection of photographs, scattered across every surface in mismatched frames
How your beard will turn my chin rosy, but I’ll keep on kissing you
Pressing our palms together and watching your fingers fold over mine
I will love the sweet strum of your guitar from the den as I sit down to write
The way your eyes light up when you laugh
The way I light up when you laugh
Our wicker basket of laundry after doing the wash, our linens tangled together
The bouquet of dried lavender from the fields near our home, hung over the stove
The night in the middle of winter when we built a castle of quilts and cushions
My grandfather’s apron that I’ll wear as I cook, and your banter of domesticity that will earn you a light-hearted swing from the wooden spoon in my hand
My little green seedlings growing by our open window, waiting to be planted in the window box on the balcony
I will love the days when we get into the car with a map, a collection of music, and a camera—setting off with an undetermined location in mind
I will,
love,
You.
I used to watch stars and wait for them to fall
But that isn’t how the world works,
or the sky.
Dear love
Dear sun and moon and wooden spoons
Here are the stars in my curled palm
For you alone
Stay there and don’t say a word
Ethereally, eternally I watch you lift the floor boards
Hush and hide
Some strange melody tickles at the back of my throat
A prayer or a promise or what is anything at all
The bigness of opening
So peculiar in its allure
She tumbles down the hillside
Brambles and brush thorns biting her legs
I see you sometimes there
Your arms outstretched and those hickory hazel eyes
I see you sometimes there
Beg you to let me through
To break open the humid haze between us
Let me sink into some kind of certainty
What are you so afraid of, child?
Light cannot be held or fractured
You are a mirror
Look up and light the sky
There is nothing here to lose.
Happiness was once the kiss of monarch wings on little palms
A cup of milk warmed on the stove and sprinkled with cinnamon
Quiet corners where I would fold myself into the warmth of the world
Exchanging darkness for snow sparkle with each strong breath
Blessed is the place where the shining dust of yesterdays settled in sunbeams
Broken is the place where my mind tries to make roses of colored paper
Here is where I reach out to you and sing my little song
Where only I can hear the pulse of pavement beneath my feet
Tomorrow always comes too soon
The spaciousness of sunrises sweating softly into clouds
Peaks sweet as clementine rinds wrought brightly against blue
This is where I wonder, where I reach straight out to you.
This is a song
This is Joni Mitchell at midnight
Christmas music in September
Just to make your mind as quiet as those nights around the holiday tree
The little toy train tracks clattering beneath your feet like the pebbles
Slipping from your overflowing hands as you ran to the edge of the pond
To skip the flattest of stones
Towards the fairy house you built of leaves and twigs at the base of the old oak tree.
This is the wisps of steam arising from a cup of hot vanilla milk—taking you back to nights in the rocking chair, freshly bathed, freshly-brushed hair dripping down a nightgown as momma turned pages
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
The way the tired street lamp made the air sparkle when it snowed, made your breathy fog on the window pane glisten
Before your little fingers rubbed it away
Or wrote a secret message
To grandpa, so long gone, and watching you placidly from a nearby frame
Just to say hello.
This is quiet time.
The evenings when the world paused just to listen to the sound daddy’s newspaper made when he turned a page
The padding of sweet brother feet toddling across the wooden floors,
His bubbling laughter when the sticky bottoms of his pajama socks failed and he would slide
And the record player in the corner would echo a velvet put-put-put in response.
This is the space between the antique toolbox and the scalding old-fashioned heater
Where I would crawl and make myself small enough to fold into the sweet spot of a fictitious land
Spilling from the pages of a book thicker than the reverberation of mommy hitting the highest note of Ave Maria
From the kitchen where dinner simmered on the stove
As she quietly muttered about the deal she and daddy made when they married,
To each do half of the cooking, but the turn of her smile nonetheless
When the old wooden porch creaked to the tune of three thumping steps, and Wallace and Gromit keys jingled against a briefcase
Bringing a close to a long day apart.
This is my heart
And how it would ache for as long as I could recall.
The twisting of my stomach and the tears as “I’m sorry,” “I’m sorry,” “I’m sorry,” spilled from my lips
And “For what?” brought no answer--
No reprise, no relief, no remedy.
This is sharp words
And the sourness of your tongue as they crawled out of her lips
The bitter shame of knowing and letting go.
This is a hope to no longer rob air from the old oak trees at the sweet age of 9
Of tissue twisted in palms
Curling myself under the covers my parents tucked me within
Until I felt secure, until my irrationality said it was as exhausted as I,
I was now safe, and it was time for rest.
This is sitting on my desktop, my feet resting upon the chair,
Spinning, drawing fanciful lovelies on paper,
As I listened to his voice
Amen, amen, amen. A poem of sweet hope.
The sigh of the phone line after melancholily winning a game of “You hang up first,”
When he hung up first.
This is the secret that was really a room
A chair, a lamp, a cup of hot vanilla milk
A player piano, the tile in the entryway sweeping bare feet, the softness of Bailey’s sweet fur during thunderstorms,
The weightlessness of water, the hot of the green deck chairs against summered legs,
The little village on the windowsill with the chimney that really worked, the snapping of spearmint gum,
Watching thumbs tapping against a steering wheel from the backseat, tracing Noah’s Ark wallpaper with loving strokes,
Amen, amen, amen.
This is the room that had only one door
That can only be opened in the stillness of the world pausing just to listen to the sound daddy’s newspaper made when it turned a page
In the space between the antique toolbox and the old-fashioned heater
Where I would crawl and make myself small enough to fold into
The fairy house I built of leaves and twigs, like those that crinkled beneath soles at the edge of the pond
Your hands overflowing with pebbles as you ran
Clattering like the little toy train tracks
Around the holiday tree, on nights when your mind was quiet
Where I was now safe, and it was time for rest.
This is amen, amen, amen. A poem of prayers of sweet hope.
When “For what?” brought no answer--
No reprise, no relief, no remedy.
And how it would ache for as long as I could recall.
Until I felt secure, until my irrationality said it was as exhausted as I,
And let Joni Mitchell at 2 am play me home
To the room that had only one door
A window where you could see the tired street lamp make the air sparkle when it snowed, make your breathy fog glisten
Before your little fingers rubbed it away
Or wrote a secret message
And when the record player in the corner at quiet time
Would echo a velvet put-put-put in response
Just to say hello.
