I change my skin like my stockings
run my fingers across a garden
of bent-necked hyacinths
from my elbows--
the barbed-wire fence--
cut my side and bleed 
into the tongue of my coffee mug.
Never felt a home in these bones
saran-wrapped in fiberglass--
I've made myself a vase.
In third grade my teacher asked me 
why I pull at the edges of my waist 
bands-- of my pants--
I wanted to tell her that no
matter what I feel I'm being constricted
restricted-- fat like pecan swirls--
like bear claws-- like sour cream--
fat like wrists-- like the tambourines
and nectarines inside my cheeks--
the cantaloupe curl of my belly--
like my like sun-ripe--
like fat mornings-- like the fat
vase that serves as my case--
my casket my skin--
my coroner and my cab
driver to a match stick
my melon rinds--  
my skin.
my skin.
my skin.

 

I hate shoes and I’ve been wrapping heels in callous slippers since I was old enough to steady myself on moss creek stones with out my father’s balance beam thighs.

I walk double-yellow lines– I walk corn husks– I walk raspberry scabbed toes– sun-rot blue berry mash– I walk thicket and thin twig– snap- glass– cracked china dishes from Thanksgiving dinner when we all ate less than we wanted– I walk in the space between Tuesday and Sunday– I walk on paper cut wounds and the resilience of winter and how it never really loved spring enough to let it breath, it likes to strangle daffodils and hang my pinky-toes from nooses like martyrs  or people at the wrong  bus stop at the wrong time

— I walk windowsills and ant trails– I walk melted ice cream concrete– I walk chlorine– I walk on quotes from people I don’t remember and the final lines of novels that trail off into the far corners of the room like vapor– I walk between the rail road tracks and pretend that they’re a ladder– I walk on the shadows of trees I have attempted to climb.

And someday I will walk if only to thin my souls– sing my skin free and forget the slippers by the front door like a Japanese tea house. I won’t wear shoes for the glass shards of beer bottles broken out of forgetfulness and useless laughter. I won’t wear them to cover the dewy hairs on the tops of my feet or the toes that reject nail polish.

I walk souls and the frosted widow’s peaks of daffodils. I build my heels from the syrup of over ripe fruit burrowing their own graves.

I hate shoes and I walk callous slippers.

 

I think of open windows
as lingering promises and
the denouement of days
that leave you hunger
blanketed in the flyleaf pages.
I have used open windows 
as televisions.
I have used them
as the back walls of closets.
I have stepped through
them like corridors--
listened to my flat silver shoes click
down the halls of their chipped-
paint lips. 
I've wanted to jump for so many
reasons-- but mostly
in an attempt to feel like
diving through a nebula would
feel like and
mostly because I can pretend
like a death is a suspended
moment in a stew of stars rather
than a noise like a suitcase 
being dropped at a front door.
I have thrown at least
three potted plants out windows--
I regret only not taking a moment
to appreciate their lives at the
hands of girl who forgets to
water more than just bonsai trees
and African violets.
I think of open windows like 
thresholds to both potted plant
graveyards.
and the sherbet broth of sky.
Like a diving board and 
a door bell that rings 
a our navy blue front door
with flakes of paint on
the welcome mat. 

 

We've all lived as beach house kingdoms--
On bare feet and cold floor boards
On sun humming like a harpsichord
or a heron or a watch face.
When I was seven
I had a watch that lit up glowworm green
and I felt like a spy.
I watched the military time blink
minutes into the obelisk of 1 a.m.
I was coiled on the percipience of a water bed 
with Aunt Joan who sprawled out
like a diner pancake from the morning 
yet to come. 
I held close her ruby-red teddy bear
to lit up it's face with the glow.
I'd learned that we all have birth stones.
I liked to make up legends for
myself that my birth stone was assigned wrong.
I have never felt like a ruby.
Maybe Onyx or Sapphire.
I told her that it was wrong--
and she told me she felt like that too sometimes
and that she was a ruby
but that she fell in love with pearls
and so she wore them around her neck.
She told me she fell in love with amethyst
before and so she wears it in earrings.
And that sometimes she could even love an onyx.
She told me that it's okay for us
because we could be accidental rubies together.
I woke her up six times that night
because I was convinced the lights
from the boats on the bay out
the window were emerald eyes, bobbing
like a Beatles tune.
Each time she put her hand on my forehead.
This was an uncomfortable and odd
gesture like holding the wings of a moth shut
or waking up in a beach house
and feeling like ghost in bare feet
or a spy with so many different
birth stones they forget what their real 
one is-- fade into onyx--
But know I'm sure were rubies there floating
on a water bed in Stone Harbor
waiting for sun to saunter in the window
with the herons and my mother's pancakes.

 

If I knew my body was a temple.
I wouldn't walk my skin like a graveyard
where sleeps the thinning bones of puckered 
match sticks and lips I didn't want
on my lips in a sloshed meeting
of skin like rain boots in sleet.
I've always been a topographer
of gravel paths and obelisks.
I peel away elbow scabs like hopscotch stones.
My hips are the sacristy if there was 
room for one-- I pray to them
like the sides of canoes or like 
see saws. I leave gas station roses
on my collar each morning. I tell it
that I'm sorry for everything.
I'm sorry I stretch my skin like an empty
canvas and I'm sorry that I only drop 
spoons in the collection basket.
I never meant to burn down my temple
each day and rise by night with the quiet
sway of the monks who dig graves
for unwritten men. 
But that's how I live.
Between kindling, words written in ash,
and headstones as pillows. 

 

I carve

myself a

concave tomb where I

close the places where my eyes

should be. This cave fish

of locket

lipped sleep.

I feed

off perhaps

and someday -soons that

I will eat with plastic forks

on a tangle lawn in

August with

bare lips.

Ten times that I have asked you to
take a walk with me
on Autumn feet-- volcanic heals
between the leaves that blush
like boxes of raisins.
1.
I'm thinking about the creek
in September and crossing a field
with a backpack full of colored pencils.
2.
I'm thinking about how other kids
had soccer practice and teased that
you were my boyfriend.
3.
We played soccer with tangled-- 
twigs and rotted logs pulled
from the creek like Excalibur.
My brother was as competitive 
as a stone at the bottom
of the stream-- wrapped
as a talisman in thin Maple
leaves like grape leaved antipasto.  
4.
My neighbor was my brother.
My brother was my knees
and my toothpaste.
5.
We tried not to talk about death
but it always came up.
6.
We made up karate.
7.
We made a bridge
and it was gone after winter
so we lost our socks in the trees
like lingerie on teddy bears.
8.
It seemed like no one else knew
what melancholy was.
9.
We ate melon on the porch
from my mother's steel bowl
that my brother wore like
an army helmet
10.
We went to battle, juice heavy 
on our brows-- each morning. 

Littoral
1.
He formed my cheek bones from abalone,
untangled the sea grass ruffs clumped in my hair--
told me I was a creature of littoral zones.
2.
Necklace clasped cusp of waves
across the jagged cliffs of my 
toenails.
I'm painted with echinoderms.
3.
He formed me like a the space between
lips- wax paper between where mouths consume
each other and emerge 
for air.
4.
Form a colony with my in the crusty
eyelids of the rocks. Feel naked
wrapped in sea foam-- drop your
bra like a life raft. 
5.
Wait to be called a mermaid.
6.
Dress like a manatee.
7.
Tell you could have scales
and legs
and hips
of calcium carbonate. 
8.
Peel back your seal skin for the night
and sleep in the house by the ocean.
9.
They don't have to know 
that we live between the crock pot
of God and the ladle whose handle
is close to slipping into the pot.
10.
Call me by my name
at night when the moon
tucks the shore in for sleep
with each hesitant tug of waves.
10.
Call me Sarah.
10.
Take pictures of my foot prints.
10.
Call me Sarah.
10.
Cut your heels on littoral rocks.
Clean our wounds in the salt.

 

God writes me poets and nightlights.

Until I was in the sixth grade my parents waited for me to fall asleep. They read stories. They told stories. They answered questions. They lit nightlights like advent wreaths in the altar that has always been my windowsill. I have never understood why I had been so scared to fall asleep alone. Some nights when my parents lost patience I would go to my younger brother’s room and wake him up. I’d tell him that I’d heard something and that I was there to protect him. I’d sleep on the top of his bunk bed and check every few minutes to make sure he was still there.

My mother read from a Saint book and my father read from the Holy Gospel of fiction. One night I asked my mother if I had a guardian angel. I was thinking about how many there must be to take care of so many people and she had said that maybe they shared. I imagined angles taking shifts to look over me when I walked along the edge of the creek with the audacious bare feet of a seven-year-old who wasn’t worried about the way her jeans always wore away on the inside of her thighs and who ate peanut butter from porch spoons in the summer. I didn’t like that. I wanted one for myself. I didn’t want to be a shift or a nightlight or to fall asleep alone.

Sometimes I pretended to be asleep because I knew they were tired and I wanted them to get to sleep even if I was stuck counting cycles of noises on the sound machine by my bed.

My father read from all sorts of books. We read series but we never had a genre and I remember telling him “no one more, no please one more” I meant one more page or word or promise or minute that the air was still thick and creamy like peanut butter. The page was a wick, was a scripture, was a nightlight. The words poured themselves in late night cups of water procrastinating the loneliness of sleep. They were a stone in a river. They had always been a guardian.

What my mother didn’t tell me was guardian angels work at least three jobs—mine worked one for each of her three sons, they all had a different colored bruise on their forehead. She guarded so many children on the block and she was always really sorry— she bumped into things and knocked over lamps in the corner. She didn’t need to be sorry. We’re all too sorry. She couldn’t stay up all night—she had to sleep too. I just wanted her to read me something sometimes. She was trying. I know she was trying. We’re all trying—aren’t we though?

She’d drink coffee from sticky lips through sunsets and fell asleep like an apology.

And so we don’t sleep sometimes–

we rip skirts, we spill coffee on shoes and tables making mud puddles to fall into like drained swimming pools– we melt ice cream on our wrists next to scars–we burn holes in our skin with matches that light incense or the edges of scrap paper– we forget we have angels and we forget there were once people who waited for us to fall asleep — we don’t eat peanut butter– we eat moth-wing heart beats– we don’t remember what it was like to wear bare feet on porches and not think about on bellies full of sticky bun spiral– fall down stair-cases to the attic where we keep all our insecurities in flower vases.

I remember laying on the floor of my bedroom and thinking about cheerios. Dry cheerios. It was midnight and I was thirteen and I was thinking about breakfast. I was thinking about waiting till breakfast and how sleep wasn’t hungry. I was thinking about a third of a cup of cheerios, tracing their circles on my belly button. I remember thinking about the angel I had asked about when I was seven. I was wondering where she was that night. I traced the spin of a book on the shelf and thought about how you couldn’t feel the vertebrae of a book and something made me open it and I read until I feel asleep on the floor of my bedroom like a coffee stain.

And I woke up and I ate cheerios from a measuring cup. I swore they tasted like peanut butter but I am sure they tasted like a sonnet’s ending couplet. See my doctor said he didn’t believe me when I told him I ate 500 calories a day. He said that nothing held me up but God– but I was thinking how my guardian angel wasn’t holding anything but a nightlight. I was thinking how God fed me poetry from a porch-spoon like sleeping pills– how I learned to live hungry for everything  but words. How my guardian angel lives in between the lines written by dead people who also felt moth-wings in the chests and had their nightlights blown out by gusts of wind between their curtains. I find God in the splicing of saint stories and Kurt Vonnegut. Between Saint Clare and the thrown of Prince Caspian.

God writes me poets. God writes me nightlights.

 

 

 

We think

about rain

but not asphalt creeks

or the tributaries of

sidewalk canals that

sing in steam.

Take the

ferry with

me. We can sail to

the shoreline of my front lawn

between gum wrapper

capes, sleep like

tube socks.