arrivals 

& just like that my hair is blue again;
electric & unmistakable. there is a fire 
on the ceiling. 
i live in a room of ice quickly melting.
the water is sweet over me. for the first time
in months i want it to snow. i want it to snow
so loud & so bright that everything tastes
like powdered sugar. i want a baptism of snow.
everyone will walk outside & dip their babies 
in snow--roll them into snowballs. 
my friends are all somewhere else 
& i'm showing them pictures of me in high school. 
they are telling me
i was so beautiful. i love the pictures of myself
as a girl. maybe i'm convinced 
she's still alive somewhere 
setting sticky notes on fire 
& soaking herself
in bleach. she dreams of warm snow.
i open a window to spit smoke out of my mouth.
the fire was started by remembering 
too viscerally. stick to images. slideshow.
take pictuers in your skull. 
maybe it's all aesthetics. she is pretty.
she has a round moon-like face. a place
to land a rocket or a match. 
a glow of fear & disappearances. 
she eats raspberry frozen yogurt 
from a measuring cup. 
then there's the problem
of what to do with the blue hair.
i could dye it red? i could 
dye it black. i could pray the brown
comes arrives again & that i return softly to my life. 
a lake forms on my head & people come to visit.
wade into the water. yes, those are my friends
in their bathing suites. i am a state park.
a frozen waterfall sharpens down my spine.
daggers of fallings. there is a roof to ignore.
the water catches fire impossibly. 
now my hair is a sky. 
i'm walking around with a whole sky in my hair. 
the migration of birds. fear of hurricanes. 
i crawl up into the real sky & ask it to take all my blue.
all my friends are gathered down on the sidewalk 
waiting for me to come back. 
sometimes i feel like 
i'm in a constant state of returning. 
was there a beginning? somewhere to return from?
yes, i was born with blue hair 
full of fish hooks. 
i tell myself if i could just 
if i could just. if i could what?
i'm not sure. i don't know what i want 
from my body anymore & that's wonderful & wrong.
i tell everyone she was nothing like me
which is to say she was me. her skin 
& her ceilings. her eyeliner running--
forming a black stream down the hallway.
she set the fire up there & she cries
before i help her back into my mouth.