wedding train

i have accepted that i already have brain rot.
we go to the park to harvest acorns alongside
the squirrels who are working on getting
as fat as they can for the snow globe. 
some of the acorns have little white worms inside. 
i let them loose on the compost 
so they can have a disco. i have become addicted 
to wedding content. drama is best 
when someone is dressed all in white. 
i bought a wedding dress at a thrift store once. 
it smelled like an attic but i loved it. 
i took wedding pictures in the forest. knit a train
out of cities i had left. the stoplights dragging
on my heels. everywhere is beautiful at 9pm at night
no matter the time of year. a fallen light. animals singing,
"good bye good bye good bye." i don't know
where the dress ended up. i think i remember it
standing up one sunset & running towards
the turkey hill gas station at the bottom
of the mountain. i think she wanted to get
a really wild stain. blue raspberry. i scroll & 
the videos turn into jump rope. i don't want
to lose myself but i am not sure what is left anyway.
a bride on a video complains about her
wooden bouquet of flowers. i did not know
until this moment that wooden bouquets existed.
the tree inside a rose inside fist inside 
tongues that butter the porch light. i saw
an article that said the color of the year is 
a pale yellow. i think of the bellies of the acorns' worms.
my skull full of them. i am sure of this. 
who do i go to for help? the mirror is bursting
with alarms. a fire starts elsewhere & drowns the sky red. 
the worms scroll of their phones too & so do
their worms. a chain of rot deep into the guts
of our autumn. one bridge on a video advises 
her followers, "never do what i did."
i have already forgotten what she did. 
my wedding dress tries to forget that she
was mine. goes to a diner & orders bottomless coffee
until the whole world is dressed in white
& the sky wriggles. we jar the acorn meat. 

anomaly 

a pair of shoes in the 24 hour pawnshop window 
has a dream of running to your face.
my favorite part about new cities 
is the weightlessness.
tonight i am in dayton eating 
red curry in a window with
broken blinds. everyone has a cold
& the air coughs up feathers. 
at a corner store i buy chia pudding 
that makes me feel like i’m eating 
frog eggs. spring is as far away 
as it can get & at night i can taste 
the mushrooms beneath the bark.
you miss me more than you usually do
& i wonder if you know more
or less about me than when we first met.
on the way to the airport the world 
is dark as grass jelly & there are
somehow police everywhere. you text me
that you left your ringer on 
in case i need you. when we first met
i used to call you whenever we were 
apart even though neither of us 
can hear well enough to have 
a conversation. our voices like
butter planes in the dark. 
is there still grapes in the fridge?
was someone in this city here
with as many shovels as me?
i waited for an uber in a square where
just a few years ago there was 
a mass shooting. artists had tried
to make sense of it. i don’t remember 
the title. something about seeds. 
flowers grew. i talked to them.
a little black-eyed susan, asked me,
“is this your face or mine?”
i did not answer. the sun was already 
washing her face. i rolled my eyes 
in sugar. bought a bag of cranberries. 
woke three times in the night 
to look for you.  

spider 

i have been talking too much 
to the spiders. i learn their webs 
& watch as their abdomens swell 
with buzzing lockets. we bounce 
from subject to subject. i never know 
what humans are supposed to talk about.
my partner says, “it’s like you fell
from the sky.” the spiders sometimes 
descend like gymnasts from the ceiling 
while i am hunched over a keyboard.
they mistake the screen for a fresh sun.
all the planets i know of are worn out.
i would be too if i were pulling rocks 
from the darkness. i don’t kill spiders 
instead i cradle them to elsewhere in our house.
i try to explain the cruelty that is 
a body. the light goes right through 
my spiders. the one i met yesterday 
could fit his whole life on
my thumb nail. the spiders rarely 
respond. when they do it’s in prophecies 
“soon we will knit” & “when the deer
get back to the moon.” 
those make more sense to me
than most of my life lately. 
sometimes i confide in them,
“i am unsure i have ever been 
where i should be.”
the needle-leg mother asks,
“could you weave?” i respond,
“yes.” she’s answers,
“then you have found a place.” 
in the morning i nearly walk into
a web with the precision of a
stained glass window. one panel missing 
no host. i too have left
a part of my sky unfinished. 

advents 

we kick open doors to find
chocolate on the other side. i know
the year is rapidly coming
to a carnival because every store
is selling advent calendars. 
all day i have been fantasizing about 
disobedience. do you think we can
make the powerful feel the fear we do?
is it worth it? or am i just supposed
to open doors until there are 
no doors left? until the year is slippery 
& done? i have become less & less sure
what i want to happen. as a child,
i craved the advent calendar. my mother,
cunning as always, bought calendars
with bible verses beneath the flaps.
she would read them aloud as 
i chewed the sweet treasure. a brief
breath of milk chocolate. each shaped
like an angel or a star or some other
symbol for glory. i don't remember
any of the verses but i remember exactly
how a piece of milk chocolate melts
on your tongue. the days when my brother
got the piece instead of me. the way cold wind
moved through the old house. then, in the 
creaky last days of the year, how the calendar
sat vacant. nowhere else for us 
to burst into. i don't buy the calendars anymore.
i do not even track the moon like
i probably should. i feel like doors are
something that happens to me 
rather than that which i open. i see a picture
of a local slumlord's house online. it is huge &
i imagine it as an advent calendar. 
what do they count down? i am looking
for hope in bites. in windows. in doors. 
in holding on to autumn. i open a door.
the bathroom light like a star or an angel. 

killer

sometimes we end up in a horror movie.
the killer is outside painted by the mango light
from the neighbor's porch. when i feel up to it,
i invite the killer inside. he is confused. 
used to chasing. designed to chase. i feed him
beans & rice & we talk about the moon.
he lays his knife down on his thigh & removes
his face. nothing but a void beneath. 
to be kind on occasion i will agreed to playing
out the scene. he will give me a running start
& i will burst from the front door. try to start
the car. he is in the back seat. on the radio
there is a story about another dictator & 
the killer thinks it ruins the mood. he believes
there is honor is his kind of horror. the big burning kind
he is opposed to. he has strong morals. fears
should be earned. chased for. not massive. 
a replacement of the sun. he never leaves before sunrise.
always over stays his welcome. wants to talk
politics. wants to get me riled up. i ask him,
"why are you a killer?" which makes his laugh.
he always responds the same, "why are you a victim?"
this is when i kick him out. when i lock the doors.
when i look at my own kitchen knives & try
to decide which one would be best for defending myself.
i saw a sticker on a trashcan that read,
"those who believe violence is never
the answer have never had to fight for their life."
i wonder who we are to each other, me & the killer
& the big movie that i never get to see. 
my attention span is not what it used to be.
i think i have lost the desire to get it back. i have accepted
that i will live my life in clips. the running.
the eggplant night. the persistence of the killer.
on the nights when i don't let him in, 
he sometimes falls asleep. asleep, he is nothing more
than a phone flashlight. a star on the ground. 
moths dance around him until he's replaced by morning.
sun full of ants. the knife stuck in the dirt.  

fake watermelon 

sell me something that makes
my mouth water. for the most part,
i prefer the fake fruit tastes to the real ones.
something uniform & expected 
in a world of roulette sundays. 
banana candy & a grape soda dark. 
i scroll in the highway video
& every other oracle is a girl who is
hoping you will buy her tongue
from her mouth. 
i put peach rings on my fingers & go to
a job interview at the dead people place.
my partner makes fun of me
for wanting to go back to wage labor
after living off of a golden goose. 
the interviewer is a woman i have met before
who is thinking, "how easy will they
be to hurt?" she asks me what kind
of ghost i would be. i am the poltergeist always. 
i took karate as a kid & i remember nothing
but the smell of sweat & those gymnastics mats. 
don't tell my dad though, he's always been
really invested in me becoming a killing
machine & not the state-sanctioned kind.
once i save a bird from the tall grass. 
his wing was hurt & he was begging
for some sour patch watermelon candies.
i told him we should find him a real fruit.
i taught him how to fly again. he stole
a strand of my hair as a memento. i hope he
was just being sentimental & not planning
on some witchcraft but you know,
if he is i'm flattered. i might as well 
collect another hex. the fake watermelons
knock on the doors at night. my partner says,
"please don't let them in." i usually do 
& just hope he doesn't notice. i am not good
at being a wife. i am also not good at being
a husband. i enjoy most just being
something kept. a door inside a door.
i don't buy candy most of the time. i don't have
a reasonable hunger. i put off my cravings
so long that i just want to eat through
the day & into the midnight. juice down 
my face. the fake watermelons with their 
almost laughter. the sandpaper sugar
of a good sour dream. it is hard to be full
in a place like this. 

good liar 

i wish i was a better liar. i think then
maybe i would have a basement full
of dinosaurs & a car without a light-bright dashboard. 
instead, when i lie everyone can tell.
they can smell my hesitation from churches away.
i got caught shoplifting in college. i had become 
so cocky. a backpack full of jello. i ended up
paying for the whole thing so that 
the manager wouldn't call the police. i sat by the creek after. 
i had five dollars left in my account & i imagined
all the teeth i could buy with that. i see money 
not like a hoard but like a pile of sugar. i ate
strawberry jello & stared into the creek. 
considered catching fish with my hands. carrying
them back to my dorm & keeping them
in a little pond beneath my throat. raising them
to be wonderful children. all of us, escaping
for a gilled life without the same hungers. 
then, thought about what i had done wrong.
too much. too quick. i did not feel bad. everyone
at that grocery store had a clenched face
& they smelled angry. i guess i was angry too.
i have been having a harder & harder time
lying & saying that i'm alright
when i'm really really not. i had the misfortune 
of talking to a politician recently & he bragged about
how much he loved homeless people, all while
he was evicting them from a shoulder of land
by the creek. some people use their tongues
for awful things. i guess i am jealous.
what kind of alchemy did he do in his head
to justify shoplifting hope from our dirt? 
i embrace the company of shoplifters. if i could
lie like him i am convinced i would try to use it
for good. maybe i could talk some money-handed 
people into buying us a stoplight to dance under.
maybe i could talk the winter into staying away 
for a few extra weeks to let us kiss the dandelions
goodnight. do not believe me though.
i am not a holy person & i never want to be. 
one of the people who lived in the encampment 
told a journalist covering the story,
"we are ghosts." i know tonight the man 
who loves homeless people is eating in 
the yellow light of house that could swallow 
thousands of tents. i ate all the jello. it was not
the last time i stole. i don't do that anymore. 
like i said, i am no good at lying & i think 
it might be too late for me to learn. 

little piles 

i live my life in 
small mountains. a pile
of fingers. a pile of letters that
for whatever reason we are unable
toss to the compost. my partner calls me
the architect of piles. this is sometimes
a compliment & sometimes a grievance. 
all the prophets these days are passing 
by in algorithm soup. i saw a post
a few days ago that read,
"i refuse to keep my house
looking as if we do not live there."
i do not even remember who wrote those words 
but suddenly, i am in love with our clutter. 
the piles of books & the piles of dried
corn husks. the piles of abandoned 
spider webs & the piles of shoes 
worn down to the earth. 
i do not want to have a life in which
my feet do not touch the ground 
& i do not ever track dirt into the hall. 
i want to live a life in which i sweep each night.
see in the dust pan a tiny night sky.
all the stars are lost marbles. beads from
a broken bracelet. i make another pile
& another. we go to sleep inside of one
& wake up in another. as a child,
i used tp be ashamed of our house's mess.
used to choose instead to meet friends
in the graveyard. piles of bones. piles of leaves.
now when visit my parents' house
i find a history of piles. the piles of tomatoes.
last of the season. piles of bills waiting
to turn back into moths. piles of 
our cut hair. year after year, falling as horses.
we live here. we live here. we live here. 

orchid keeper

i lose my head & live a tiny green life.
in my house-sitting days every place
had orchids. they liked to speak in parables.
once, i sat down & a white & blush orchid
told me, "there was a girl
without any parents. she emerged 
from the earth." i thought the flower
was talking about me so i ran away
& did not get to hear the end of the story.
what happened to her? is that why
there's always dirt under my fingernails?
i think politics are awful & i would rather
just sit with the orchids & try to not die. 
i hated caring for my clients' orchids. i was sure i was
watering them too much or too little. 
one woman had a husband with a whole room
of orchids. the chatter made it hard 
to sleep in that house. they talked all night,
repeating their stories to one another.
i spent the last dark of my stay, in their room
& let their voices wash over me. i craved an answer
to my wandering & thought maybe
that they had one. i lived on the cold side
of the sun. my bed was a staircase & 
the backseat of my grandmother's old car.
the orchids asked me, "do you want to become one of us?"
i turned them down. i was worried about
not being able to eat oatmeal anymore.
it's the small pleasures. an orchid spat off 
all her faces at me in a house with too many windows.
i harvested them. tried to put them back.
nothing left but big green shoulders
& a neck to the sky. the faces were of course
still talking. they promised me that 
on the other side of a bridge, there would be
a quiet place of syrup.  a story is sometimes the truth
& other times a comfort wagon. 
i do not think i am equipped to own orchids
maybe just to keep them. i know too well
how fickle they are. how easily a head is lost
& then we're in someone else's house
looking out the window at a night full of eyes. 

deer language 

i find a golden tongue
in the leaves. i put it in my mouth
& talk to the stars. their worries
are thick as squash soup. the deer come
because dusk taught them 
all the words they know. 
there is never enough time 
for sleep. i imagine hollowing out
a year with a wooden spoon. 
crawling inside & not having
to talk to any more fires. i crawl out of bed 
without wings again. i sew a pair of eyes
into the ground. bite the string.
once, as a child, a deer asked me,
"would you like a crown?" i felt
unworthy & so i denied it. the deer laughed
& said, "you cannot turn down
your antlers." i checked my head for weeks
terrified that i would wake up
with antlers budding from my head.
they never came but now i feel them.
the weight of holding a piece 
of the sky. each of us, little billboard painters.
i leave a puzzle with missing teeth. 
the deer, the same one that once visited me,
returns headless. he speaks using
the arms of the trees. his prophecy,
urgent now, is, "talk to all 
the colors you can before it is too late."