I wonder

What I will write about these

Quiet years

In the mood to reevaluate my entire life

Why anyone would try to read my journal when this word-vomit tumblr is on the ~world~wide~web~ is a mystery to me

Tell me, 

how do you draw a rainstorm

the sound from inside your bedroom

the smell of home, or the road that leads you there

the threshold between the outside world and me

the moment pavement becomes gravel--no later or sooner--

the bit of lightning that always leaks in

when the air is too hot to touch and

too heavy to hold

how do you draw the way crying in a waterfall feels

the knot in your gut in the mountain dark--so black the moon

can’t find you, the

freedom of unfixable fear

how do you draw the valley from inside it

or outline the simultaneous longing to board overhead planes and

utter serenity in stasis

how do you draw a hometown with no

mayor or permanent residents,

the love you feel for humans that will never be yours

and grew before you anyways

draw me that

tattoo me that

it’s not that I care less

it’s the whirring sensation of everyone around me 

caring so differently and deeply

about futures I cannot see or touch or 

feel, the anxious fire I see in their

fingertips

it’s not that I am 

uninvolved in life--just their version of

gravity, pulling us in such different directions

they think I am floating of my own accord

unseeing of the constant pulling

myself back in the direction they’re already falling

every day, I wake up and 

talk myself back into the upside down

where everything takes twice as long and

gives half as much

every day, they smoke themselves into floating:

my version of gravity

and still we are talking to the wrong ends 

I cannot see the me they see--upended

they cannot see the me i see

it’s the lingering possibility

that even as the aching has gone and

the pink line fades pale and flat

the longing goes too

the seeking goes too

the burning goes too

that some things cannot be remade or

rediscovered, that the end was

just that and more

worse still--to be the only one who knows

Open Season

draw me a tattoo,

people

thin lines and open spaces

it won’t be better than 

the skin I’m in

I’ll take the change even so

I am nostalgic/homesick/longing for

a deja vu memory I never lived

Of morning muffins and wet air

strangers kitchens too early in the morning for

guests

the way people’s voices are still waking up--

tiptoeing across the room like they might

wake the grass up or

shake the dew out of the air prematurely

walking in darkness and golden air

when everyone is colder//closer

I can smell the wood of the kitchen table--

still sleeping

I am all sound and smell

words and the air 

between them

You are all eyes and action

letters and the sheets between them

If I could write in the dark

I would never open my eyes

just lie here listening and

smelling you

This is always the point in the 

night/semester/winter/struggle when I

miss you, darling

dearest

you who so have ruined me

with your wisdom granted and calm imbued

I didn’t intend this, you know

nor you, to build me into such an

unconventional being, who writhes under the 

walled gaze

We crafted this distance so amicably

intentionally, two purposeful and reasonable lovers or

something

like a foundation, to be built upon but not

within or of

And here we are, still, me begging for

a reason to drive south and out

of my own mind and plans

do good you whisper but I 

cannot find my way so far from the trail

nor fire so far from the wood

Her hair is always warm and

glowing, knotted between your

fingers over ears that smell of

the mountain floor 

remembering rain

even in the greying winter, they’re

the only bit of skin forgetting its 

perennial farm-lines

she never laughs the same way twice

those curling lips an ever-changing mountain 

road, unpaved and treacherous 

ever flooding and upending plans

it’s the sunshowers that get you, though

the sudden, torrential hail 

the hot buzz of just-missed lightning

that sends damp hairs searching the air down

neck and up cheeks

She is the distinction 

between heavy southern air and

the appalachian mist resting on the palm

of your open hand

Incognito

I google you to

make sure your heart’s still 

beating

I am homesick fofor the knowing the taste of coffee that lingers on my waking tongue the day-old expectations popping between fingers not-yet-stale I am homesick for the knowing the untethered turns I am home sick from the knowing

The problem is it’s not quite freedom.

Not quite the quiet release we were waiting for

not quite unledded feet and eyes

the problem is waiting for a lightness already past

realizing we only grow fatter with the days

that tomorrow will not bring (finally) cathartic release from gravity

we were not the tethers we blamed the other to be there was neither ball nor chain between us

I didn’t want to miss home so I burned her down

I didn’t  (want to), miss home  so I burned  (her) down

I didn’t want to miss home so I burned her  down

I didn’t (want)