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.