spring house
still keeping the milk-
snakes cool
the view from my childhood
bedroom window
I live in it now
that walnut sprout
we tried to kill with a frisbee
eating in its shade
cattails
overwhelmed by tearthumb
the purpose-driven life
ghostly dock leaves
pressed against the window
old chicken house
gone but for their grins
our childhood collection
of mummified rats
once my best
climbing teacher
broken-limbed maple
stone wall
all the times
I’ve rebuilt it
touch-me-not
the invasive stiltgrass stops
just short of it
glasswort
jumpseed
enchanter’s nightshade
a distant rooster
that gurgle we dug
this pit to reach as kids
it’s still down there
wingstem
at the old dump site
the bumblebee’s long tongue
The sky lacked
the thinnest
whisker of cloud.
Jets untethered by contrails
hardly seemed to roar,
lost in all that blue.
This was the sky I labored at
with crayons,
having given up on the sun.
The blue plastic eyecup
of my mote-ridden boyhood
still sits on the top shelf
behind the bathroom mirror,
at eye-level now.
I remember how good
cool tap water felt
after the hot tears,
tilting my head all
the way back & willing
my eyelid to open,
& afterwards feeling
the scar & the scare recede
from that bit of grit,
but also a lingering sense
of guilt for letting
One day when I was 14
I found a ground
beetle under my bed—
glossy black,
fast & furtive.
I grabbed a thick book
& beat it to death.
I liked beetles but
this one frightened me.
It belonged under rocks
in the forest, not two feet
below my pillow,
burrowing through the carpet
while I slept.
My voice was changing.
The beetle disposed of,
I have no mouth but
I must scream,
says the wind.
My tongue knows its
own taste: the half-
frozen stream.
You draw me & I’ll
draw you, I tell
my childhood self.
We lean like ladders
against the clouds.
With one listening foot I feel
for the next rung down.
not knowing
what’s around the next bend
five-year-old me
the headless hunter’s
lantern on moonless nights
in her quavery voice
more frightening
than our neighbor’s ghost stories
those wooden legs
I still look for her house
but there’s just the red privy
its vacant hole
I like to write about you.
I think it's because I'm the only one who knows you.
Maybe I'm not, and you're just not telling me,
But I don't mind.
Your voice is one of your best traits.
(Actually, no. Not really. They all are.)
But my favorite?
Well...
My favorite thing about you
Is that you're not afraid to be a kid.
Everyone chose to grow up in middle school,
But you and me? We never did.
Too bad we aren't neighbors,
Or I'd play soccer with you.
Perhaps some day I'll come over,
And we can be kids for a bit together.
my hands ache to be calloused from monkey bars once again
those old frenemies of mine
cold hard metal that turns slick beneath sweating palms
excited
to move to the next bar and the next and the next
turning around once you've finished and going again
proud
egged on by the cheers of kids who marvel at your strength
heart thumping from something other than
fear
but i am grown
and grownups cannot play on playgrounds anymore
in the dead of night
under a black-blue-purple sky
she ripped me away from my home
the only thing i ever knew
she smothered me with her shirt to stop the cries
bound my hands to end my desperate scratches
held up that ragged rabbit i kept beside my bed
and told me i was safe
that she was my hero
no matter what anyone else said
i really wish that i thought my parents were superheroes
that they were good and invincible and
would save the day no matter what
but they've always just been people
civilians who gawk at evil plots and then go home
just to act like villains themselves