I say 'i love you' too much too little and in the 
wrong ways.

Sometimes I feel like I'm saying
'i love you' more like a plea
or a prayer than a declaration--
like a petition on a paper
airplane to God to let you remain 
with me long enough
to understand that you are
worth telling lies to.
You are worth pretending
that dandy lions are flowers
-- and never have i told
someone 'i love you' and regretted
it. See I say it too much
because the things I mean
you can only find in between the
light hum of the 'o'
when we say 'love' dove-tailed
to the end of making pancakes 
without plates or smiling
at you like you know my
name is Sarah and I'm the wife
of a prophet but
you can call me princess of
prayer books in breast pockets.
i say 'love', dropped above me like
a crema drip of clouds
to veil Mars like the bride
he never wanted to be--
i love you like white glove
mothers on Sunday-- like 
doves at weddings and doves
at funerals and doves made
of white chocolate.
i can't apologize for there
only being one word to explain
how I feel about every single
person i ever met-- no 
it doesn't mean i think your perfect--
yes i say it too much--
no i wouldn't change you
to change you would mean i didn't
really love you-- and maybe
i can't love you like kisses
or a pancakes-- but i know
i can love you like a prophet's
wife. Eat the doves for 
breakfast with me and i'll 
be a dandy lion and lie
for you and lie about being 
something worth planting
on a windowsill.
I say 'i love you'
like a plea-- grow it
in the pots on the porch and hope
no one notices that it's 
always white wishes 
like dove downy. 
 

How many years have you lived in this body and how
do you still know it's yours?

Even though i'm younger
than all the trees around my house
i still feel it my right to pick
their leaves-- peel off
the veins like string cheese 
from lunch boxes left out in 
the heat of a station wagon. 
Even though i'm younger
than any river rock that
has used the palm of my
hand as park bench i still toss
the roundest pebbles into the creek like
stale dinner rolls
the week after Christmas Eve 
when no one wants to pretend
it's still a holiday-- i like to think
i'm tall sometimes and sometimes
i forget that i'm the kind of creature
who could slip off a tree branch 
and close myself like the
heavy thud of a text book 
on the linoleum floor of my 
high school lunch room. 
i can't count the rings imprinted
in pirouettes around and around my waist
to tell you how old i am anymore
but i can tell you i can count
my ribs and the thin grins of
scars on my hips. 
i can count my eye lashes
if i work up the patience
and i can count the sinews
of leaf veins-- extracted 
to replace my own-- 
i know it is mine because
each ring tastes like the rim
of a tea cup or a coffee mug
i know it is mine
because i've used it to sew
soy beans-- taken the hoe
across my forearms--
i always plant too early 
in March--
i was never good with plants--
they always die or fall
out windows.
i like where i live though--
i like maple leaf veins 
of my thighs and the
stretch marks that resemble
the lines God sketched on
watermelons.
it has taken a number of moon blinks
but i can tell you today that 
i do know that these limbs
are at least mine today, this morning--
i am something of this body--
and maybe i have dominion over
the veins of trees 
and the potato stomachs of the river rocks
because i had been that body too--
but we will save my dissection for another 
day-- and for today i will say
that someone knows how long
i have lived in this body
and that they will count my
pirouettes when it's time
to pass this body to someone else. 

I pray like pink sticky note memos
and they answer with a sunset--
dropped like an egg yolk.

When I was younger and 
I used to pray on my knees before
bed-- back when I thought
God spoke English and could
write back to me on the 
green chalk board of my forehead.
I used to be able to write monologues 
to God-- I would lay out my fore arms
like notebook pages
and carve "Hail Mother,
Hail Mary, Hail doves
and orange peels and the smell
of January snow day mornings 
that make living rooms into chapels.
Dear God I said this morning
I'm sorry I haven't been to church
it's been at least three weeks 
since I last said anything to you
besides apologies 
between tied shoe laces
and washed cereal bowls. I don't think of
myself as a sinner-- I don't think
of anyone as a sinner actually--
maybe I'm  a windup bird
or a jewelry box that
stopped holding pearls and I'm sorry
that I mostly just place
sticky notes on the clouds
and under the maple
tree leaves these
days-- They usually
happen when I remember to say
"thank you for giving me
hands and eyelids and
a nose that resembles a Lima bean."
"thank you for making bridges of
the arches of my heels and 
thank you for the steam off
the coffee mug in the morning
when summer is hot enough
to brew chai tea."
I used to think God didn't respond.
I used to think he listened
and nodded and picked up another
piece of notebook paper
torn from the spiral bound wrists
of thirteen-year-olds--
but he answered me last night
as he does every night
in the elegant cheek bones of a sunset
or the lullaby of
mist after a thunderstorm
or the drifting of snow
across the graveyard of
a soybean field--
laughing like the hot days
in autumn.

We've all made music from
out of tune ukuleles and green penny whistles
from the passenger seat of car
rides backwards to our first kiss.

When I ask if you could sing for me
I don't mean you have to sing
with lips or with a harpsichord--
I only know about harpsichords from
the button on my 12-key electric piano
that taught me about the glory
of caroling to an empty room--
That piano was a trumpet and french horn--
a guitar and a banjo--
Did no one ever teach you that
you can play any instrument like
a first kiss?-- clumsy, exhilarated
and terrified-- play me 
a song about trying to
unbutton the collar of someone
else's shirt on the bassoon--
I don't know how to hold it either
but you can pretend you 
were born with a double reed
in between your teeth--
play me "happy birthday" using
one string of an un tuned ukulele and
I will tell you that that is
the sound that geese make
when they're calling for each other
before it rains.
Call for me however you see fit
and I'll be waiting with
my capo on the third fret
of a acoustic guitar that used
to be my hips-- we can both
pretend we know more than 
the approximation of a g-chord
and we can be untrained street performers
who buy apples with quarters from
newspaper boy caps.
Sing about first kisses and 
untrained fingers on the
neck of a string bass--
and I apologize that I'm already married--
my first kiss was to my husband
on the playground in first grade
after we made a worm grave yard--
but I played my own guitar chords 
before that-- lost my virginity 
to an unplugged Rickenbacker  
wearing an over sized Beatles t-shirt
in the living room.

How long has it been since you sang for yourself, for someone else?

There is a confessional 
that I call my car windows--
when they spread open like 
firefly wings on the ride
to the room with 
my cast iron tea set still standing guard
over my end table. 
on the ride to the room with my incense
soot still smudged into
the carpet like ash Wednesday--
and to dust I will return
in the form of pencil shavings
and snicker doodle freckles
I was was born dust so 
I only return to confetti--
-- I drive the way that
I know without maps-- the way 
stamped with tire wheels 
into the backs of my wrists-- and
there are twenty-questions unanswered
and unasked those still rest
written in the
dotted yellow lines of
the roads that crawl like
centipedes or the snipped
ends of my mother's knitting--
only here do I tell God
how much I have done wrong--
I speak it aloud with the windows
rolled down to swallow my sins--
sift each offense through the
divine corn husks that are 
still hopeful about a long days
and still seal themselves in
sleeping bags when the night is
cold and tastes like autumn and caramel 
and death.
When they die they'll take my sins with
them and maybe they'll pass
them onto to God when they do.
I've never been a good daughter
to God or to my father who
held me like a loaf of banana bread
or my mother who could braid
my hair like Challah--
but I at least I can drive
a confessional and at least
I can sing about everything
I've done wrong and everything
I don't have an answer to 
just for the wind 
to wipe them away like a thumb
clearing incense soot from
my cheek bones and 
putting it on my forehead
as a reminder. 

We've spent all this time trying to be a human.

I woke up today with the resolve to be
totally and completely human just for once--
by noon I found myself entangled the arms of
another mistress that was also a hydrangea 
bush and I regret to say that I had
already fallen into my tendency of
turning back into a plant or vine
and thinking too much
about whether or not
I had ever seen a living star
or if I had only seen memories
of a light long turned off
in the ceiling of God's studio apartment--
I have never needed to eat-- so I
worry about things like the sun
that keep my hair white and dab
freckles on my cheeks like a splatter 
art kit-- I cut off my roots
so I don't dig too deep in the soil--
get my knees caught on buried
pocket knives and chicken coop 
wire from the farm that still sows 
ghost soy beans underground.
I wonder if those farmers ever neglected to be human.
Isn't that what we're all trying to do?
Trying to remember to be human-- it's hard though
Some of us turn into butterscotch krimpets
or the warm space between a hot stack 
of pancakes at the diner with the swivel chairs--
I've been told that some of us have
a tendency to grow yellow in the pages
of a sun ripened books-- I have
been a raisin memoir and the peach pit
of a poem.
I have already given up on today.
I have bent my spine in handle 
of a coffee mug.
I believe in us you know?
I believe that despite it all
we are in a sense human-- even if
not all the time. And maybe some days
we can both be plants and by sunset
we can weave a grape vine
just to cut it down. There's something
human about grape vines 
and poison ivy--so maybe you were
the mistress in the hydrangea--
the petals always looked like
your smile anyway-- 
and who says I can't turn back on the
stars to use as my night lights--
God wouldn't mind. 

The boldness of mismatched socks 
and forgotten white bras.


I don't want to be ten again
because I know too much now.

I don't want to be ten I just
want to worry about baking enough
chocolate macadamia nut cookies
to sell at the farmers market
on Saturday and pug dog necklaces
and what flavor of chap stick I 
want to wear-- and it will still always
be blue raspberry--
I want to worry about shoe laces
instead of frayed skirt hems
and stocking runs up my stomach
like a surgical incision. I want to worry
about forgetting to wear
the one dindgy white bra that scratches
under my arms and makes
unnecessary crisscross lines
beneath my softball shirts-- plague
me with strap sliding anxiety.

I don't want to be ten again
but I want the luxurious abandon
of the body of a ten year old. I want
to be confused by every turn of the
hair on my chin-- I want to worry
about growing a beard. I want to 
shave my legs like a sinner--
get down on my knees
and praise the swelling of
my hips. I want to fill
the popcorn bowl of my stomach
with corner brownies and
the delicate cuisine of stove top
macaroni and cheese kits--
I want to eat frozen waffles
on the porch like a goddess
legs spread apart like a 
unfinished book chapter on
the shoulder of the couch-- 
I want to sit the same in 
creek jeans and pleated skirts.

I don't want to be ten
because I know too much now
but I do want her to know
that I don't want her to know
too much-- I want her to 
go on beinng enamored of
every terrible curl her
body takes--feed her thighes
with everything that
ever tasted like love and forget to
wear bras while mismatching
socks on purpose.

The jungle spy head quarters of Walmart in Temple.

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit
that when I feel lonely I go to supermarkets--
When I feel out of control I grip for
the worn bar of a shopping cart--
not the little shopping carts for newlyweds
and one bed room apartment owners
who have two golden retrievers and a tabby--
I'm looking for the ones that are Mom sized that
seven year olds can ride on the fronts of.
I don't shop for tank tops or shoe laces--
I want to run my fingers over bokchoy
and oregano and smell freshly watered
parsley from the little boxes in the
produce isle.
I want skinny cow ice cream sandwiches
like my mom used to buy.
Yes, yes I actually feel calmed by Walmarts.
We didn't go to Walmart often 
when Billy and I were in elementary school
(for my mother's own sanity I imagine) 
because Walmart was never just
a super market. We set out with a goal to
find whatever we were imagining
and painted that reality over ever aisle
in the shaky frayed brush strokes 
of a seven year old safari princess
with a light up wrist watch
and her four year old brother
who thought she was nothing short 
of a nebula--
We wanted to walk in the Amazon Rainsforest
but did't want to think about the mosquitoes
or the malaria-- we set out
on spy missions with no goal
other than an excuse to roll ungracefully 
on the cold tile floors and collect
the dirt of all the cuff buttons
and tiring white sneakers.
We were the collected rations
from the sample stations. Cranberry granola crumbs
and the corners of pretzel bites.
We stacked the little cups to form castles
on the floor beneath wracks of plus
sized women's coats on clearance.
Oh! and we had never been lost despite
having gone to the costumer service station
more than once to report that we were missing--
we just enjoyed the power to summon 
our mother using the voice that boomed through 
the clossal bones of the store like God
or Jesus. We had never been far from
the squeaky wheeled cart of our mother--
But, no, I lied-- we were completely and totally
lost. We fell in a labyrinth of indecisive 
imagination and impending car rides home
with melting ice cream sandwiches.
Yes I still get lost like that in Walmarts, Giants
and Shop Rites and there are spy missions
I store for if I ever find myself seven years old again--
and yes I still want to report myself
missing at the customer service desk
to summon my mother with the voice
of a God I've been searching for
the voice of but she's not here. It's only me.
It's me and an empty shopping cart
and boychoy and parsley and ice cream sandwiches.


 

Have you walked the circumference of the world
like a brown leather belt pulled tight with 
a rusty buckle? 

because you seem like the kind of person
who would want to walk under belt-loop bridges
next time i walk all the way around the world
and back you should join me-- you would like it
if you like to see everything but
still stand far enough away to feel alone.
it's easier to walk all the way around because
then you don't have to remember where you are 
to get home -- and people ask
me if i've walked on water-- and sometimes i tell
them that i do-- that i have feet like those water
bugs-- but really i go on the heads of the fish
who follow me till i reach
the gravel edges of the forest path sprinkled 
like confectioners sugar
on the collar bone of my Pennsylvania wetland--
we wait for the blue heron who
walks with me in the guidance of a little brother--
only until i reach the Mexican border
which i cross with ease because they know
me-- they've seen be walk around before
and i take a sip from a cactus flower
which is more bitter than sweet like i thought it would 
be-- i had imagined it would taste like
blue cotton candy but it was more like old licorice
rope and lemon-- it's good enough to keep us going and
you know what's funny? it's shorter than you think!
the whole world fits in the blocks between my house
and the soy bean field that once grew corn 
all splotchy like a mustache-- it can fit between
the North and South poles of a main street
and between my house and your
welcome mat-- i don't ever wipe my feet
when i come home even though they're still
wet from fish heads and beaches and
broken she shells we pretend were never whole
to begin with
so i hope you don't mind the mess--
i come home to the world and walk
round it too.
it's best that way. that way i don't
forget how small a waist we all have
that i could fit under belt loop
bridges and wait for herons there.

I'm running away to the backyard.

I know that I'm supposed to be over 
the notion of running away at this point
but I have to admit that I have packed
two bags of Milano cookies-- three
potato rolls-- microwave mac & cheese
and three bags of Macintosh apples and
they bruise easily so I can
only trek to the area behind the garage
that I've always imagined as a garden.
Build my bed from dying dandy lion
firm-frost grass sofa--
and spear mint petal pillows   
And it's cold but I have a blanket.
I'm thinking over the next few years
I could build a life for myself
from the soil still 
laced with wires from the chicken
coup and vibrations from the 
throat of the cistern to keep me company.
I'll talk to the cicadas as I fall asleep.
We can call ourselves neighbors
if you want and if not I can make this
island of weed and quashed hula hoops. 
I tried this once before-- you know?
only I was in sixth grade and I had 
more Milano cookies and I had forgotten
a blanket. I lasted an hour
this time I might stay here for
two-- but night always makes house
windows look like home even if you don't know them--
we can find home somewhere and I
don't even eat Milano cookies anymore
but I know that you love them.
I'll be done running away soon
enough. I'll eat spear mint
and plant the seeds of the apples--
and I know it will never be a tree but I
can pretend it will be when I return
decades later.