heather bloom

my mother's room is full
of heather. when i was a child
i would go & pick handfuls. 
try to fill my own room too.
i am a creature of mimicry. i put mirrors
in the mouths of loved ones. i ask,
"can you see your blood in me?"
once i bought a plaid shirt to match
a boy who was using me for fireworks.
or i guess maybe we were filling each other's
rooms with heather. i dropped him off
once at the foot of a mountain 
like a dog toy. another time i pretended 
to be a gender. okay, actually it was
several. there is a celtic myth
that heather would bloom on battlefields,
the softened red color, the remnants of blood. 
my heather grows bright red. the blood,
still here & swelling. the battle, not a battle
but a ladder into a wound. i try to 
find an ex on facebook. i want to see
if there is heather where they live
or if this is just my botany. i visit my mother.
her room is unchanged from when
i was small & too curious. we talk
about the same things. the tomatoes.
the bathroom. my father laying in the yard
waiting for heather to sprout from 
his eyes. the ghost of a car in the driveway
with a cockpit full of those flowers. 
some heather is white. the legend says
that these should bring good luck because
they are untouched by battle. 
i do not believe in white heather. as if there is
a flower that does not remember anything
about blood. i try to explain myself sometimes.
i say, "my parents are like this too." by which
i mean prone to too-much-ness. likely to 
speak a language without doors. sit in
the bathtub at night with one ear to the wall
listening to the roots twisting in the earth. 

deep sleep for horses 

i too sleep standing up. the sun 
turns me into a kickball & we eat 
the feed corn until we have no teeth left.
i call a doctor to ask if they have
any treatments for being a horse.
he laughs & rides his own horse through
a thicket. in my hometown there are
hitching posts all over for the mennonites 
& me. i wait outside for my dad to be done
at the knife shop. the old beer store 
burnt down & there were horses running everywhere.
a horse only needs about 30 minutes 
of rem sleep. to do so, they have to lay down.
they have to take off their legs & 
become a tunnel in their own heads.
the doctor tells me i am late on feeding
my blood to the ghosts. i am late to
the color white. i am not sleeping
as much as i should even for a horse. 
the truth is that sleep has always been
a sand box for me. dig & dig for dinosaurs 
& only find lamp light. i remember waking
in the donut hole of the night 
to stare out the window at the roads 
full of horses. if i could be summer forever
then maybe everything would be okay.
i need berries & the sound of thunderous rain.
horses to make a herd of me. my sleep,
seldom thick like sap scabs on the tree roots
at the edge of the field. my lover begs me 
to stop sleeping standing up. on my worst days
i end up on the ceiling, somehow still standing. 
with a bridle he tries to pull me down. 
brush my mane. tells me stories about 
riding a train into the marrow of 
this sleepless place. when we first got together
we stayed up all night over & over until
there was nothing left of us. 
just horses in the wild dusk. orange 
& glowing. eyes like hoof-prints. 

skin care routine

i take my skin out of the closet &
brush the seal fur in noon-time light.
golden sun. my body is ancient.
is a pray from the water to the sky. 
there is no ocean near where i live
so it is hard to keep the selkie in me alive.
i feed her mussels & clams. i feed her 
gold stolen for neighbor's jewelry boxes. 
the body is not hungry, it is made of hungers.
give me wind & salt. give me a language 
without gods.
i lay in the bath with my body inside
my body. once you almost caught me. 
you jiggled the door handle to the bathroom.
the only rule of being a selkie is that
no one can know you're a selkie. 
i am not sure what would have happened
if you had intruded. found me there,
half boy-girl half seal-creature. maybe 
that is how selkies are born. maybe you
would have become one too. a parable 
of loneliness. to be seen is to 
be swallowed or else to become
a part of the other's eye. a piece of your spirit
leaving as a flock in the water. i managed
to slip out of my skin though 
& you waited until i opened the door.
the skin was wet as a sopping towel
wadding up in the corner. how did you 
not see it? i was so afraid. how could i explain
all the years of my hiding. 
you were furious. understandable. 
i am prone to secrets. the room smelled animal.
you asked if i was alone. i said "yes" 
of course. you knew i was lying but about what you
were not sure. i offered for you to join me
in the bath, knowing you would not
instead, you shut the door slowly.
i lowered myself in my human skin
into the water. waited still for a long time
before i pulled the seal back on. 
when i am done i always pat the flesh dry. 
i have learned i start to smell if i leave the skin
all brine & bath. i fold my seal skin
as if it's just a coat & not a whole part 
of my body. 

ghost chicken coop 

in the grandfather yard i would collect
phantom chicken eggs. sometimes he was
standing there, hands on his cane.
inside the eggs were stories without walls. 
a nickel, hole in the middle. gun powder. coal. 
soft fruit of the jungle's hair. he would
help me find the eggs. ask me if we 
should go in for dinner yet. i always told him
"no" & we spent all the dark on each other.
when i draw my ancestors, i draw that
chicken coop. the one that stood as tall 
as a water tower in the yard before i was here.
my family is a series of befores. before 
the ocean. before the city. before horses.
before guns. the truth is the coop was empty
the whole time my grandfather lived 
at what is now my parents' house. still,
my grandfather fed them. took his ghost to be
with their ghost. so i did the same. often i feel
like the only one interested in tending this history.
maybe we all think this though. we keep
what we can. how do i know my father
didn't harvest too? didn't try to draw all our faces
like a rosary back into the water. still, it was only me
out plucking eggs from the moon's ringing light.
once i found an egg with a picture inside.
before i could swallow it, the frame emptied
just a small square of a night. i stuck it
behind a cloud. let the wave wash it into
the night's blue. i laid down, tried to remember
who it was. i thought it was a picture of myself
but maybe it was a girl he loved or maybe it was
just a future piece of land on which i can
build a coop. i raise chickens now. my grandfather
feds them. i find him only on the clear nights.
i ask him if he walked all the way here. 
he never answers. the chickens peck at the dark.
i do too, convinced i can hold the memories 
of other bodies. my blood, like a yolk. 
a pocket watch in the sink. 

morning glory

i grow bell telephones when
i'm thinking of you. in the old house
before we were all so serious & big,
my father talked to no one 
in a morning glory. his lips
like a duck bill. at the park we fed
all the fathers white bread we bought
at the gas station. a fire truck drove 
to fill the future. when we talk 
on the phone sometimes i am your father
& sometimes i am your son & sometimes
i am your best friend. i buy seeds
or maybe i invent them. press those kernels 
into my head where i lost a tooth.
the past & the future are more alike
than the present. the present is like
a ringing phone that won't stop
even when you pick it up. i had a garden
on the porch in this timeline. 
i buy the whole street. we sleep together
one more time & make everything better.
no one is angry. no one is a father
to anyone. i find you in the flowers 
often. you are there with pollen pants 
just like all the bees. we could
have a really easy time moving into 
a cardboard place. i'll be the door
if you be the bell. we can cut a hole
where a telephone would go. do you remember
when phones were a location & not
a traveling voice? the last pay phone in
my hometown attracted so many fathers.
they wanted to talk to themselves.
i get it, i mostly do that same only
i have flowers to feed. i have a father
to comfort when his basement fills
with flowers. he once grew a garden 
at the church but couldn't keep up with tending it.
the morning glories talked to me about
how i would become a boy. i told them
to hush. to please give me more time.  

money tree

i try planting anything i can.
the rain is coming wild now. 
this is the time for uncovered bones
& the old spirits to come & make 
themselves lush. i start with money.
limp bills from the bottom of
a panic. shoved into earth. a tree
inside a tree. then i try coins. 
anything is better than nothing.
the state quarters & the toothed-edged dimes.
we could make enough to be real 
& to sleep on the moon, right? we can
keep eating apples & paper towels?
i move on to greater sacrifices. 
the tip of my tongue. a finger. a laugh.
you have not ever laughed into a hole
in the wet soil unless you're poor too.
a burn pile in my heart that won't light.
once there was a car without windows.
we empty the cabinets. there must be
something else we can sell. i plant an eye. 
i am hoping that is the key. here 
we go with the plum pit. nothing grows.
the pawpaw trees are not even fruiting
gods i want a little shrub even. a wine berry
vine to open briefly for sweet red.
when i finally accept that none of this
is going to grow, i get my shovel out.
i want it back. i find my finger but not
my eye. use a black walnut instead.
see the scent of their green scripture. 
try to have a yard sale without a yard. 
the spirits ask what i am looking for
& i explain, "a way to sleep." everyone
i know is staying up all night with
the lights on. we buy coffee because
there is a window. all the trees apologize.
i count the ones i have. wash the dirt from
the bills i could find in the sink &
hang them up to dry like dish towels. 

sudoku for my uncle

these days, how do you keep
your numbers? i remember us
standing in squares like 
goldfish neighbors. everything
was pencils. we would sit
in your side of the house 
playing sudoku. newspaper smelling books.
i don't know 
where you went or when.
we would drive into a 6 like
a dinosaur throat. added our faces
together to get biology. sometimes
our kin words are not enough
to convey our griefs. you lived 
on the other side of a wall.
i put my ear there to hear
all your numbers. so many twos,
the number of teeth you had lost to 
fireworks. then seven, how old i was
when you said you would teach me
how to paint. i made just one flower
on a thin green neck. we drew
squares around it. captured the colors
& turned them into siblings.
these days you don't talk in anything
but eights. round towers. me,
the top bunk & you the bottom.
driving your car to my heel. 
i knock on your door. all those 0s. 
tell me we can play without 
adding anything. spill numbers
like words unspoken. open
the doors to our little cauldrons. 
a swimming pool without calculation.
i keep telling you to visit
& then i don't tell you where i live. 
i do not even remember 
how to do the puzzles. i think i want
to learn again but only if you promise
we are the same people as we were
ten years ago. i know you cannot promise.
instead, let's talk in numbers. 
a have been saving a seven 
in case it rains. a little awning. 
the sun, a 9's head in the clouds. 

sugar daddy 

i was trying really hard
to snag one that last year of college.
i lived alone & out the window
was always another boy.
i was doing all i could to stay
inside someone's mouth. rain & car windows.
the late spring heat, like a wet tongue across
my back. i used a few websites.
i can't remember how i pitched myself.
something like, "i'll be your
terrarium honey." none of them bit.
it is, for most of us, never enough
to just offer yourself. i didn't think
it would be easy. i imagined old men
& their pocketbook eyes. on grindr sometimes
guys in the 60s would hit me up & offer to host.
inside this one's house i told him i was
going to the bathroom when really
i had been starving. i took the last pear
from the fruit bowl & ate it wild,
licking the juice from my wrist. i learned to
always save the best parts for myself. 
that nectar is, for us, something to take.
i got one message months after i had
given up on becoming a baby. the man was
maybe  a spam bot or maybe a guy 
really interested. he said, "let me fly you out
to my teeth." he sent pictures of a house
with a sick green yard & a room he wanted
to keep me in. i actually got in the car to head
towards the airport but i ended up
in the parking lot of a target trying
to call my sibling. they didn't pick up.
i bought as much sugar as i could.
brown sugar & gummy sharks & agave.
i figured if i could get myself sweet enough i 
might stop looking for someone.
my teeth rung in the car like bells. 
i wept. summer was ruthless. hot asphalt 
& a broken ceiling. i can't remember
how i got home but the door was open.
the room was full of birds or was it men?
i wished it was just me. they watched my every move.
but they helped me eat the sugar so i
cannot be too mad about them coming uninvited. 
you can get so lonely you welcome 
an intruder. you can squeeze your gender
until all it wants is caramel. if i am being honest
there aren't any men who 
could have fed me enough.

when i was a boy scout

when i was a boy scout i wasn't 
a boy scout. instead, i was a girl
without a girlness in the middle of the woods.
i am an expert in being unfit
for the job. of not checking any 
of the boxes. my gender, like a badge
i carried in my hand instead of wearing. 
my uniform, whatever the closet 
refused to give me. i could name all the kinds 
of snakes in pennsylvania. water snake
& ribbon snake & the endangered massasauga.
we would take hikes, me & the boys
& their father's holding their leashes. 
i was a free-range kind of animal. ate from
anyone's hand. i couldn't earn badges 
because i was a not-boy. the boys 
moved on without me. i talked to
the snakes. i asked them, "if you had to grow up
what would you do with your heart?"
the snakes always responded by blending in
with the brush. i joined them. tried to shed
any of the gender stuck to me. only scales
& cool breath. the sun spilled through
the tree branches. my father was off elsewhere
standing in the water looking to catch
a bullfrog big enough to ride home.
i got to know one boy who told me,
"i don't understand why you can't just
blend in better." i told him i was trying.
that it wasn't easy. he said he knew. that he 
did not know the names of any snakes 
other than the copperhead which he had
never seen. i asked if he wanted to see one
& he said no so i went alone to visit 
my venomous brother. the snake said,
"do not try to be like them. get on your belly.
love the world." i did as i was told.
all the boy scouts went home from
the camping trip except for me. my father had
to buy a terrarium & catch me before
he took us back home. on the ride 
i felt triumphant. he sighed. opened his mouth
& closed it. what was he going to say?
i did not ask & now it is too late. my boyness
was maybe right that. something gifted?
no something layered. he fed me rats until
i gave in. sat at the table again 
'with a crooked-tooth fork.

trespassing in your boarded-up window haunting

if i don't believe in private property
do i have to let the ghosts in? there are so many lately.
i leave out a bowl of milk for them
on the stoop. when you weren't home for 
a week i wanted to do all the risky things
you won't let me do. climb over the fence.
visit the house in the corn fields with
its eye gouged out. slip past the seven
"no trespassing" signs into all those little portals.
around here, we leave a lot to rot. 
houses & corn corners & deer on the side
of the road. each of them, a haunted house.
ceiling ribs & my ghost-searching camera.
i tried to be good. sit on the sofa
& listen to crumbs. i am called to the bone 
places. find myself inside music boxes.
the ghosts, with their own feasts 
on a milky night. i sometimes open a door
in my own house & find the decapitated place.
worms & birds. i go inside. my house
is your house. your house is my skull.
i stopped telling people about my hallucinations
because it is easy to just say, "i am busy."
i am so busy if you know what i mean
though sometimes the mildew is real. sometimes
the mold is a pedestrian. when you come home
i will be disgraceful i am sorry. i am sitting
in your foyer playing with the not-dog.
i wasn't supposed to be in your house.
they want to build a money place here.
weeds grow. i name them like children. play
in their long hair. come on let's be ghosts
& own everything & nothing. let's shuck
your suitcases like clams. feed the coyotes
& the foxes. open all the doors & windows.
let all the ghosts in.