Wrap your head with this material...

Lollipops, loop-de-loops, scooters and light sabers, sparklers and skipping. Bubbles abound amid summer sounds. Sprinklers on the hose and crystalized sweat all over us like we're churros, and we crawl under just the sheet for a few stolen minutes as we read, sweat-dried and our food settled. It's afternoon as the clouds thicken and consider whether there's enough there for rain. I hope there is so we can read longer, so we can play music or paint, but I also hope for sun so we can try out new binoculars. Summer is this energizing time when all of the minutes can be filled. We can hang a hammock and swim until the sun bakes us into submission. The songs lope and bop, filled with horchata and new best friends with lipgloss that glints from within like that connection you feel with a friend your soul has met again and again, tumbled together repeatedly through the drum of time, colliding and recognizing each other quicker each time. Man, that one friend you make is as exc...

Do you ever suddenly scent someone? I mean someone not near you physically but you sense them like your own arm, and know their soul brushes yours? Distances or worlds are irrelevant. He could be right here or hundreds of miles away. I wonder if that is another reality so close, truth permeates this place. The ripples of the worlds atop one another, folded, creased together closest when I am about to drift off. It's right there, isn't it? I can smell it. I am hope, floating wispy and secret across a darkened night sky. No guiding stars, only a scent. And I release into a fecund night, my strings cut quick and off I float as a kite. Clouds that conjoin and dissipate, reform and streak, filmy advancing across a shadowy sky. The sensation of my nose gently grazing your neck, the laugh lines of my checks against your stubble. But aren't I asleep? Aren't you elsewhere? Yet, I feel the length of your body fit a crescent line against the back of mine, a support beam, a f...

Do we need to debrief? Is it the same as bitching and moaning and generally degrading the quality of our conversation? Or is it a necessary process after going through something together. And I mean, in some sense we didn't even go through it together. After all, you were in your living room, and I in mine. Or your bed and my wingback chair. Or my kitchen table and your couch. Maybe we were so the same, and not; and so together, and yet not; that we've forgotten. We've survived a scary near-apocalypse. Don't get me wrong, I realize it could still happen. The virus is by no means over. I'm aware that in six months when the weather makes outdoor time more challenging, this may be a different world. But I was afraid I could catch it by running through a place someone had breathed hours before just ten weeks ago. So didn't we survive something? You and me. You in your Jeep and me hiking up a trail. Me in my barren Aspen grove and you in a waders in a stream? ...

In the quiet before everyone wakes, when all the options are not yet selected and the day is empty fill-in-the-blanks, I taste time, a sip at a time from my mug, cream, the dregs reheated, the last sip has three granules in it and I can swallow past them, ignore the grit of my life, or I can bite down into the bitter. I reheated it in the microwave and the cup didn't get too hot, nor did the coffee have swirls of too-cool. The day wasn't bright enough to call me to move yet. The keyboard made me want to clack clack. I didn't want to share the disgust of my nights, dreadful fits of near-strangers entering my dreams, trying to pry their way into today's storyline. By night when I give up the blanks and fall to sleep, I'm occasionally stabby with self-destruction. It's not that I want to hurt myself, exactly, as much as I want the oily black guck of the day and all that has gotten on my soul by then out, off, drained, emptied. The muck= the story of a jogger at...

While I have no peaches and cream view of this pandemic, I am enjoying being home. I love being home for long periods of time. I love reading and playing piano and being reminded of the adventure that's immediately outside my door. I know in time this will wear on me and on everyone else. As the hill we've been hiking every day to get our yayas out turns muddy and slick in the coming weeks, we will be challenged to find ways to get exercise. Today we made snow angels and my son prayed for the elderly and healthcare workers. Today we made banana bread and didn't fight about who does what jobs. Today was good. My kids won't be satisfied with seeing their friends on video calls forever and only each other and us as companions. And I won't even touch the ways in which I can make myself crazy with fearful conjecture into the future. It's not all warm bread and books. But today was good. When I first got the news that we would be in our houses for such a length of...

I have a memory of a version of myself I've never been. It is a classic ski, sliding dimly beneath the surface of snow, a remnant of another life climbing uphill. I feel the drive to find that person. I know I am that person, though she has never been me. She is bold and risky. She stays up all night dancing; at dawn she considers the feel of words in her mouth, like melting creamy moonlit ice cream fellated on a layered spoon. She is selfsame purity I cannot reach. An essence, a true name. You know me too. I feel it. "Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along." Rumi, remember? You're in me. We've met in this never-place of sleptover castle walls. You've climbed to me a thousand lifetimes already. And yet, tonight, I worry you've forgotten. Perhaps I've grown over with moss and you don't recognize me this lifetime. "I'm trapped within you" a dream pebble in your palm. Clench your fist and you'l...

Feet of snow,  waves of it over days Pelting windows Sniffing graves A big enough storm stops everyone  Opportunities are mounds next to every walkway The experience of a snow storm is all the days you’ve ever spent, all the chances to be your full self...  but you stoked the fire of nevernever Perhaps hid under bridges from the one-time chance Or admitted you’d never felt Snow Grow wet Drenching an inner troll Surprising you when you thought life was softer  than the fairlane on a five-star course And instead it hurt impact shocked bare feet The blizzard soaked your carefully laid plans Spoiled your coiled coif And left you feeling less than Less than what anticipation prepared you to be. The experience of a snow storm is all the days you’ve ever spent, all the chances to be your full self... In its face, you boasted To know it all Spewed false information Defended your view like a cat who never did admit she’d...

How are you? The people I can deliver full and complete answers to this question are not the ones I have time to give full and complete answers to. Last night Gavin unexpectedly threw a toddler-level tantrum over finding out it wasn't his night for snuggles. That was all. And he FREAKED and it scared me because he never loses it like that but he was throwing his pillows on the ground and when he realized the consequences of having no more time to read, he hit himself in the head with a closed fist and I tried to hold him to keep my heart from breaking but it didn't work. My heart cracked open like a raw egg and hurt dripped down everywhere. He hurt and all I could do was hold him but I was so much better at it with him than I ever was with Magnus. I didn't feel triggered or frustrated, just terribly sad and like I wanted to heal all his cracks with love. What will I do one day when someone hurts him and he won't let me hold him? All the seams in my sewn-up places i...

If I didn't Ski OR Run this New Year's There's shit on my skis and snow on the sidewalk I don't want to ski through shit and I don't want to run through snow I want to press my fingers into keys and my muscles into action and not to think but for greatness to flow In magical times, there's a tide an artist rides but more often there's hard work hours upon hours building chops sculpting muscles, readying for challenge and how do I prepare my words for writing? by obsessing about love or worrying... these calistenics don't work i should be running or skiing even if my feet have to pound through even if my skis have to glide through shit But if I were loving? in the sense of the verb... What then? An inciting incident & a rush there would be flow my breath--raspy, fast and low My typing would pulsate the inside of my wrist gently brushed by your lips Rising action inside of my thigh pressed by the jut of your hip ...

The nightmare collector arrives on a snakeskin collar he's the only one invited to dreams like this one he'll tell me later, my terrors are just the same as those of my ancestors but with bigger guns, scarier villians still he promises to take my dream back with him Skin it alive file it away but I know he can't take the entrails the nightmare leaves a bit of itself with you a party favor that can't be lost or tossed aside

In the morning dim, the lake is glass at the trailhead completely transparent friends/families hiking, that's all fools you into a clear surface, clear waters, clear roles and goals mere nature, a hike, an endeaver a clear path, a deep lake, a cool morning. Dawn, fiery, rusts the sky to life like slapped skin I look up Feel breezes across craggy raw iron spines a moth dances on ideas I luciddream into the blue, blue, blue sky the current picks up, flicks its wrist the moth flits a dance on the wind sparkles, glitter-mysteries on the lid of the lake Translucent, the light tossed around I don't want the moth to land I can't see beneath the lid There's more to it Pika skitter up preening their soft stuffed cheeks whistling hare yips and screeches somnolent thoughts, wispy and thinning from attention and focus to sounds and shapes. and eventually words. Hips, feet, quads awaken to a rhythm and progress. Hours blow by. Fully alert we reach ...

Her awakening is slow in the low hours before dogs' whines or the sun squeaks through blinds Before showers are warm or chores checked off, Her awakening is a yawn. Dew has not yet evaporated, its drops hint at her dissatisfaction What could be less endearing that someone else's drool? What could be less inviting than wet socks stepping in his shower remnants? ignore it get ready Her awakening is a snooze button. His jokes weren't what she accepted when he came courting the chorelist of his status how short it would be how long the ledger of his properties and earnings as long as her social calendar her list of invitations to reply to. Her awakening is a reckoning. Then there was a summer when she found how crude his culture was Had they no decency? August, it ended September sand in her toes October she felt it under her fingernails when she wrote letters she never sent him HIM Her awakening is a rush of cold water. She dips into an Olympi...

I'm reading all this old writing and realizing how much I lie to myself about it all. I always believe I'm just around the corner from getting this writing stuff right. I think I've improved. But then I read the old stuff and there are pieces that have this quality of wandering like unfettered paint strokes, smeared and strewn. Like powder and blush in the hands of a toddler. Dust flying everywhere and joy upon cheeks. I've been living an unsuccessful suburban life. I don't live in a suburb but I have the third row seats to get there. The kids do activities that are anytown things and I do too. Grocery store. Sheets changed. Soccer games. No cubicle at least but a near-nonexistent retirement plan. Yawnfest. But I was shaken back to myself. Back to the person who has an impromptu dance party and takes the kids into the cave they want to check out. I was reminded that I like to make leaf rubbings for the feel of the friction. I couldn't say where a single colo...

I pollinate your idea my hand to your heart wresting palm, gentle dewy neckline your color to my canvas your pen to my page vision to reality

1. Male authors writing female characters who are beautiful but somehow have no inkling of this. Seriously, cut this shit out. I'm just so tired of "she threw on jeans and a sweatshirt, ran her fingers through her hair, and sprinted off to meet ______." Cut. It. Out. Girls who don't know they're beautiful are far more likely to be tripped up by trying to figure out what the fcuk to wear than this. They are concerned they don't look good enough. And if they're not, that's a very different character. And also, just stop it. It's been done. A. Lot. 2. Male authors writing female characters, especially YA and middle grade, who make the protagonist a tomboy, especially if they use the word "tomboy." Essentially this is saying that the girl is okay if she's like a male. Then using her as a mechanism to allow the male character to interact with a female who is cool because she's like a male. It's also license for the male chara...

Green is a four leafed fuck you Pink is a pretty please, Polly Wants no crackers in Belize She’s busy taking flight through the mangrove fleas Chopping at her feathers Crying at her flocks Are the her chics in their nests For it’s now lime o’clock

Sometimes writing a sentence is the biggest deal there ever was and getting from the bed to the shoes to the street while still breathing is the most desperately difficult act a person can muster. These holidays are hard some years. Some years I feel the pain of what I've lost so heavily, the family members that have died, the way my core has changed. And the years stack up and the things I didn't finish, the things I didn't accomplish, they stack up too. They're heavy to lift and I can't seem to always get up and do a single solitary worthwhile thing. This last year I lost my relationship with my brother. Fault doesn't matter. For this particular moment in time and my part, I'm not willing to repair it. That's not a light fact but it is one. He stopped being a good force in my life and I guess I didn't have anything to offer his either. And as that relationship dropped off of the precipice into a void, I felt and noticed others tha...

The morning is here for me to show you, you so young and fresh and not yet used to your bodies. Teeth just out of braces, I want you to clomp on the ideas, on greatness, but the sun, its rays are elusive, clouded. The whole world is a name on the tip of my tongue I so much want to share it with you if I can just remember how to say it.

I was devastated yesterday. I kept thinking of my friend who was raped at 13 by her best friend's brother and how this world would treat her if she told. I kept thinking of my friend who was molested until she had her boyfriend move in to protect her. My friend who didn't come back to herself until her senior year of college because of "date" rape. I kept thinking of all the beautiful powerful female souls who haven't told and what this world could do to them and how it could skip over their pain and the inconvenience of holding society to account. But then I got a text from this woman friend who is arguably the most successful of all of my friends. I'm so proud to call her my friend. And she was devastated too and it made me understand first why this hurts so much; that it hurts all of us who are thinking, caring people. It is insulting and painful. And secondly it made me consider a path forward where we move boldly and with the courage of our co...