Outside in the long yard, dry grass waved
as gray-brown wheat awaiting the harvest
blade, slightly bent against warm, early
August cupping winds, beneath the
copper, late afternoon sun. I peered
through a front window. The old
house stood quiet with abandoned
spider-web loneliness, only its worn,
wooden floors, creaking to thin, lethargic
memories squatting in lost shadows,
were audible among dust dunes piled
in plain corners below a rough raftered
sky. Pale yellow slivers of intruding
light, pushed their splintered
fingers through chalky panes to
slowly climb peeling walls. I turned
the doors knob, all the while feeling
as if I were doing something wrong,
opening a world that had existed
years trying to adjust to itself,
cope with stagnant pieces of wounded
lives left behind in its empty and
bruised rooms. I walked through the
house to what had once been a
friends room and stood in its door-less
entrance, sharp aromas of everything
I had forced down long ago, passed
through me like cheated ghosts.
My breath came naked as tilled earth.
After a few moments, I
realized I could never repair the
childhood that had been unwillingly
surrendered there. That became enough.
Breath As Hands
The sky is stained with imperfections of
a million perfect colors, lemon-mauve,
blue-sienna, creating a speaking
water-color that could never be placed
on canvas, bound by sad parameters
of what we consider beauty. The
green-sequined water watches with
slack concern, not attempting to
understand us, our false abdications
based on gnawing greed; while folded
ghosts watch from the squinting
corners of our one-directional eyes.
The trudging sand, dreaming of becoming
three dimensional crystal, something
to be admired, clinked during celebrations,
is warm beneath our feet. The thin,
orange-peel, tittering sun, resembles an
undercooked egg who's yoke has
moved away in search of a less serious
mate, one who possesses breath as
hands, love for clumsy words, a bohemian
heart capable of bleeding tears. We sigh
without breath, attempting to render our
betraying emotions still, not accepting
the simple lessons surrounding us
The sky is stained with imperfections of
a million perfect colors, lemon-mauve,
blue-sienna, creating a speaking
water-color that could never be placed
on canvas, bound by sad parameters
of what we consider beauty. The
green-sequined water watches with
slack concern, not attempting to
understand us, our false abdications
based on gnawing greed; while folded
ghosts watch from the squinting
corners of our one-directional eyes.
The trudging sand, dreaming of becoming
three dimensional crystal, something
to be admired, clinked during celebrations,
is warm beneath our feet. The thin,
orange-peel, tittering sun, resembles an
undercooked egg who's yoke has
moved away in search of a less serious
mate, one who possesses breath as
hands, love for clumsy words, a bohemian
heart capable of bleeding tears. We sigh
without breath, attempting to render our
betraying emotions still, not accepting
the simple lessons surrounding us
