Sometimes I forget
I haven't always known you.

I met you like we all met things like cake
icing and sprinkles and the birth of daffodils
in the late March that roar
in the strangled throat of Winter.

I imagine that first time I licked 
frosting from the pleated skirt 
of a cupcake I might have
thought it was shaving cream
bubble bath or a snowman's beard--
tasted boxed yellow cake
that has always said "i love you"
more ardent than a hurricane.

I thought sprinkles might grow 
from a bush like spearmint leaves--
maybe I discovered wildflowers and thought
they were spearmint leaves
thought the bells of daffodils were
antique telephones-- tried to call
you from the voice of a two-year-old.

You tell me you want to befriend 
a hurricane so you can know its eye.

I love you like the stillness of air
before a thunder storm in July when
God drops Blitzkrieg buckets on us to watch
us dance--
undressed--
unfurled porch flags--
no longer waiting for an arch
to take us away two-by-two.

We wait for the eye. 

I keep telling myself
I'll stop writing love poems
for boys, for windowsills, and for 
warm coves between pancakes.

Each pivot of my
ankles is a pen-line in
the blue-lined notebook 
page of dawn-- you wrap
me like the redline
encircle my legs 
with the metal spiral bind. 

I don't want to stop writing
i love you
with mascara in mirror mist
in the labyrinths of my thumb
prints pressed-- hold the back
of you neck
like a warm mug of peppermint
tea.

I love you with persistent
nights and forgotten mornings
lost in the cores of my 
Macintosh apples.

I love you across 
inside-out socks.
Across windowsill ledges.
Across cardboard endings
of notebooks that always 
come too soon. 

Collect

pollen on

your eyebrows. Chalk dust

outlines underneath carpets.

 We breath like windows.

Unlock

our door for

me. Like someone was

waiting.Carve your name in crayon.

Write letters with lip-

prints patient

on glass.

Bury me in a kelp forest

body to lay in the limp arms of the almost elms.
they harbor timid fins of lion fish.
i won't sink- i won't float.
i will be a park ranger to
give tours to seals and orphan
egg sacks attempting flight.
there will be a kind of silence that makes us
forget that there was ever sound.
the kelp moves without lips.
no teeth.
chews on the sun.
marinades me like stuffed grape
leaves- oil tongues.
i think about terrestrial forests.
i think about soil toes.
i think about red hawks.
i think about worms cut in two.
i think about aerial views
from airplanes and red hawks
when they fly above the canopy.
i think of the top of my head
as a dot on a bingo board.
pocket engorged with acorns
and smooth stones.
i imagine the kelp forest
has rivers and voles under the sand.
i remember how i had always tried
to get lost in forests- disorient 
myself.
i reject the trail.
i don't float, i don't sink.
I turn.
the tree behind me is nothing but
a mirror of those in front of me.
I bubble beat-breath.
I sleep.
I sleep in the limp arms of the kelp.
i float. i sink.

March bleeds me like the mud puddles 
of water color palettes 
between fifth graders who
try to make flowers that don't look like pinwheels-- 
soaking up mucky-lilacs 
with brown paper towels.
quaking cold-- pinwheel hair out station wagon windows 
I decided that I could stop 
wearing scarves long enough 
to feel the must of daffodil breath on my brow.
A screenless open window.
The older I get the more I realize
that Spring is as much of a beginning
as Fall is an end-- I'm not the
girl who rubbed April from her
eyes last year-- wore snow boots
and ate cheerios from plastic baggies.
Grass grows like the hair on my
ear lobes. Like moss on my heels.
Humans have always found something
in the rain-- only to realize we 
don't need to be washed to be reborn--
we made a symbol so we could pretend
we knew that we were changing.
And then it was summer.
And then we were humid.
And then we were cold. 

I try not to let myself forget that I'm not the only collage of a person.
Taped-glued-rubber-cemented fragments of a past that we all shared
and all forgot and all remembered again together when
we read about it in the headlines or in the want ads for
lost tabby cats named ginger.

I am not the only person to ever be broken and neither are you. I won't
lie to you and tell you that I ever was more than a flower girl
at a backyard wedding who didn't want to throw
rose petals because she wanted them for herself-
so the wind coughed them into the grass for her to gather again.

I gather most nights up like the perfumed scabs of roses.
I used to think I only made collages on Sunday nights-- I am 
a collection of Sunday nights and the sublime stupor of magazine
article titles that I don't read because the headline is always
better than the book-- tattoo my spine with call numbers.

I make collages because I'd rather be the artist of my own recovery
than the approximation of someone else's. I'm not a sculpture. I'm 
not a work of art. I'm the third grade Elmer's gilded compiling
of breaths of god and places other humans have bled out my sides
-or places I've made my own flower crowns of thorn. 

I am not the only anthology of broken beautiful pieces.
If you ever thought that one of use was ever whole- you 
were standing too far back-- look into the 'o' of my
Open eyes and see the 'o' of obituaries- we were all born
like the throwing of an antique vase onto the red-tile floor.

mosaic memories. juggernaut galleries. broken and unbroken 
parts of a whole.  

We all cut ourselves in orange slivers and lemon squares. 

Everyone once dropped musty cherry blossoms in a creek-- rubbed
them between fingers like a perfume swab-- kissed the petal because
it tastes vaguely like skin-- wondering what skin tastes like
really without tongues-- maybe if we write poems about roses and daffodils our skin will
be sweeter-- unwrapped in holly-red throat-coat candies from pursed 
bulbs of in our handbags-- floating skin like a life boat-- like an SOS
SAVE OUR SKIN-- 

Everyone once tore apart a Styrofoam cup-- didn't know where
to hide the pieces-- thought about landfills-- thought about sea gull feet gruesome
gut patterns-- wanted to eat the flecks of foam out of shame-- laid them out
like continents playing Pangaea-- planned a vacation across the strait of 
Gibraltar-- played Indian on the islands-- made fire from the foam--

Everyone was once peeled the bark from trees and to find worms-- cowered before
kingdoms beneath our own skin-- wanted to put it back-- centipede cuticles dripped
in moss and morning-- pasted back their own skin with tongues and tasteless 
cough drops wrapped in Styrofoam-- coughed on the fragments-- crossed the stream
on a boat made from bark and cherry pits.   

Devour ME.

Cinnamon raisin swirl-- i was was once a pale girl with butter-roll cheek bones
served Sunday-hot in my scalloped-potato skin.

pull apart monkey bread-- faus-knee-knots baked in lead. i am peanut pancake.
pillow palms-- fryed egg flake. Shake ME like apple-jacks.

knead ME- i want to rise-- kneel before stale-cold fries-- stinging microwave eyes
puncture my thighs-- set ME on high-- i'm serving tea.

The steps

down to the

basement chirp like dead

robins, poised marionettes

dangling between cherry blossoms like

a sickly greeting card sent to the wrong address.

waiting out February on dew petal paws.

a circle on moist soil basement floor

calico cats conspiring from

attic cahool like

up to the

The stairs.

We are

people of

fallen-tree bridges

 over goose-bump streams in March

cross the ocean on

a maple-

leaf raft.

Pretend

the stream is

Pacific coastline

pluck jellyfish like mushrooms

coral branches like

deer antlers

we float.