loading screen morning

everything was tropical 
in the sweet sense. or else
the backdrop for my life
had leaves big enough
to conceal all my wanting.
i should stay here all day
with beach balls over my head
& try to make sense
of where a soul is stored.
i collect the jam jars
after they are emptied of boldness.
the birds that knit nests 
of wires. hear the old telephone
in their calls. hello hello 
hello. i am not quit there yet.
i could sleep another slice.
drinking a bottle of ocean 
& hearing the whale calls.
so we don't get stuck 
the landscape becomes another 
photograph taken by someone who said
now now now. unearthing your
desire to become a hope chest.
the rings i want to wrap around you.
a knife i carved from soap. 
does no one else hold their whole day
in a cast iron pan. i look for grease
under every rock. soon my brothers & i
will have to reckon with 
who stole whose names. i had
a pocket knife i used only
for cutting out my own tongue.
waiting for it to grow back.
pinwheel sun. expectation for rain 
again & again until a flood 
is our neighbor. until another planet
hunches in the lake water 
drinking her fill. sometimes
i imagine driving my old volvo
up to a drive through window 
to the past. asking for polaroids
of the blue plastic swimming pool.
candy dream eyes tumbling.
the wickedest fruit. i pluck
another hour from beneath the pillow.
your body isn't a visitor quit yet.
instead, i have the graham cracker world
all to myself. i tell the future 
to collect only the smoothest rocks.
i am not sure what i will do with them.
standing by the drawn curtains
air full of spinning moth wings.