"Sleep."

For beds and the blankets of hope they hold.

And glowbugs and bright moons and far away lights

to guide.

For last-try water and first-star wishes, kisses

from fathers only for daughters;

This is a lullaby.


Sleep sweet deep and loved.

My heart sings dreams and I will

never lose,

never leave,

never go.

Always know:

I'm yours.

A Passing Glance

I'm really only writing to end the quiet. I have something to say to all of you, but not the desire to say it.

So strange!

It's been a marvelous roll of weeks tumbling on. Though not with you.

I'm distant, silent, quiet, bored. Standoffish, rude and impatient.

It's possible you'll never be me or him or us and I hear my heart thinking less and less about you.. . .. ... I feel guilty and sad... ... ... . . . and I try and stare and think of a way to change....... . . but I know it won't ever.

It will always be this or less.

No matter who I am, you will be who you are.

I've never been good for many and often only for one.

(I have been chastised so many times for this!)

At the risk of loneliness or reward of solitude, this is the way I've lived my life.

Whatever it is you like in me, it always amazes me that it's enough.

Cut my heart out (with a spoon).

You've a good eye for patterns.

Thank you for looking them over again.

Here you go!

I'll tell you how. It's very easy to do.

Okay!

When am I to come over?

Thanks!

Do you have an eye dropper?

We should be lucky to all disappear so softly.

Your idea was both acute and shrewd.

You're a such a hard worker.

The lemons look fabulous!

You did a great job scanning it.

You don't have to be anything more special than the special you are.

Valkyrie

I'm going to put duct tape (decorated with a heart sticker) over my heart and stand in a field of shoulder-high grass.

Ready;

Aim;

Fire!

But that would be silly.

(And how my empty chest shudders as I laugh!)

I never had a heart at all.

You, on the other hand, you are life and beating and blood.

One by one my saw-tooth-edged arrows fly.

Miss you, I will not.

Clearing (Lost in a)

Rain does rouse the writer's spirit.

Writing is like having a desk covered in mounds and voluminous folds of tulle.  You've got to sink your hands in the middle, elbow-deep, and part your way to a clear space.

And like glitter after an ornament or dried petals after pruning, the tulle does still mar the space you've tried to clean.

Brushes against your forearms as you move.

Falls into your lap.

Surrounds you.

But what would I write if I could get to the very cleanest clearest spot, untouched by anything the world could offer?

Only this:

I've gone somewhere unspeakably unreachable and I don't know if I'll be coming back.

From the Shore

I very often wonder, in convincing yourself of who you are to be have you forgotten who you were?  

Do you know who you are?

I know who you are.

A fish-too-small at the end of my line.

I'll use you as bait for bigger fish or lose you to a passing turtle's snap.

But I'll never set you free.

Decay

I thought I'd won the world today.
But in the last moments of try,
Seconds before triumph,
I failed.

Nightcap

"Maybe god isn't all-merciful.
               Maybe god isn't all-knowing."

"Maybe God's tired."

"Maybe,
                god doesn't exist."

It was the way you said it casually, looking backwards and quietly over your shoulder as you walked away from me.  

(walking away from me!)

A confidence.  A command.  A reward.

How did you know I'd follow?

(Why did I follow?)

I like the way your mind works.

Will you work for me?

Ponies, Pirates, Poems

I'm in a place of ponies and pirate lore.

All of me quiet and still; untethered.

Unloosened.

Soft.

Rarely am I bared so without first being forced.

There aren't any blue-eyed boys to choke me, no blue-eyed girls to choke.

Only seashells on a mossy path and a high-walled outside shower.

Clink of a spoon against a soup bowl.

Who who whoing of an owl.

There's a restorative importance in being alone.

Rolling, lazing, wet-haired and washed-clean-pink in my island bed I'm untouchable.

And oddly, I've no desire to be touchable again.

Shadows and Breadcrumbs

One night I'll find the words to describe you.  All the world will weep then.

They'll read our story and melt in sighs of woe.

We are the storybooks.  You are the ending.  These are the breadcrumbs.  

Who knows what we know?  I know only one who does.

Who has what we have?  Not anyone.

I'm a shadow playing at your feet.  When your sun sets and you've finished dancing won't you take your shadow with you?

Every day I give you more of myself.

Please take me with you when you go.

I am very close to the end of us. I thought you were too, but suddenly you're strange and trying again.

It's as though I watch from a window as you toil in the garden. Under the sun. With broken tools.

Why?

It's not ever going to work. It didn't really from the start.

And if I reach very slowly for the shutters I can shut them unnoticed.

Bolt them.

Turn my back and sigh a tired sigh.

I never asked you to start a garden; I have plenty of green beans.

I don't want to hear you cry (anymore).

Reading Letters

Tonight I spread the wrinkle-crinkle paper of you flat upon my desk.
Smoothed your edges and creases until you sighed.
And with a pen of whittled beech I wrote your story new.
Because, of course,
you're mine.

I claimed you in a kiss beside a turtle pond.
A boy lost in a store after years of plotted wanderings.
But I'm a landscape without a map;
I'm a map without a key;
I am the key.

Yet, you're still in my lock.

And what I claim I keep.
What I want I have.
So bring your worries and promises, raise your wrinkles and creases while I laugh.
I would have used my tongue.

It was you who whittled the beech.

Darklings

I left my light on for you.

It's small and a little night-shy but it still tries.

I don't even know if you'll see it, but that's all right.

There's a quietly pleading wish in everything I do.

Breathtaking

It isn't the fear of knowing you could kill me, it's the thrill of knowing you let me live.

One struggling breath at a time.

You take my breath away, literally.

One day I'm not going to beg for it back.

A Stunt of Silly Glee

Here again, once more?

Let me bustle about this dark and cozy room; a pencil behind my ear, a  
candle lit upon my desk, and words at my tongue and fingers' tip.

You know I'm writing to you.  And I know it too.

But what to say?

Once I knelt in soft summer grass and collected cucumbers in a worn  
and ruffled pink plaid apron.

A season later, the very fall that followed that cucumber summer, I  
used the same apron to carry freshly washed apples from their sink to  
my counter.  And chopped them into happy slices to become delightful  
pies.

And wasn't my father proud!

So tonight, a winter's task!  And what have I collected in this loved  
and ruffled pink plaid apron?

Words.  Letters and punctuation and space and silence. So many words!

Here I stand, soft white arms clutching a bundle of phrases and folly  
and kisses- up against my butterfly stomach and still-beating (think  
of it, a still-beating) heart.

And, oh!

Throwing my hands and laughter into the air I've let my apron loose!

For you.

What words will you find scattered about my now nervous feet?

And why am I nervous?

Because if you find the right ones, and arrange them just so, just so...

I may have to stoop to gather the words I've thrown about in a stunt  
of silly glee,

And write again.

Only this time not to you,

But for you.

Songs of the Lost

There is glue in my hair.

Not your common let's-get-high-in-6th-grade Elmer's glue. And not
that weird goes-on-purple-dries-clear glue either.

This is really adhesive, not glue anyway. Double sided and very
sticky. Dispensed from a transparent and pretty blue plastic, um,
dispenser?

The point is, my newly and so neat cut hair has something very sticky
and cumbersome in it.

I only wanted to make you a card.

First, an innocent "I'm happy we're friends card" but oh, oh then.
Then it became the "If I know love it's because of you" card. And now
looking at this mess of scrap-paper and glitter, ribbons, beads, and
brass, I know it has to be a "Good bye" card.

Because instead of saying the right and proper things, I want to feel
your warm, wet lips against mine just once more. What good is the
flare to my back if your hand isn't there to press into it? Where
will I laugh like I did in your arms? And hardest, worst: who will
know me, if not you?

Who will know me? (if not you!)

These are the feelings of fairytales and the songs of the lost.

And now, awash in tears and wishes and a trembling, aching heart, I
can't finish this. Not us, not this card, barely even this thought.

There are things wreaking such havoc on my young and hurtling self
that I can't begin to capture the start of them in these black lines
on this stark white page. Words falling faster than my torn and
hastily-hewn net can catch them!

So, the glue. The adhesive. In my hair. That's what we'll focus
on. That's what I'll think about.

Is there really no better name for the pretty blue plastic dispenser
than dispenser?

And what was I thinking, making you a card in the first place?

Dream Gently

"Dream gently, Girl."


"I'll try, without trying, to dream gently.

You're already away and will get this early in the morning. Two of my favorite things: to be sent to sleep or woken up with an e-mail all my own.

I'll pin it to my nightgown's front, this e-mail. A lost little girl with a please-take-me-safe-to-sleep note.

And when I board the train (with a satchel full of words and frames and paper planes of legal pad yellow) to dreamland or sleepville or wherever wishes take us, the conductor will say:

Oh! That's the girl with the ladder and apple friends.

Two stops and a swap at Dover, to Babylon for her.

Good night all."