The chemicals are back,
dancing, rising, playing devil’s fiddle
all over my tender psyche.

I waved them away last week.
But they’re like fruit flies,
feeding on sweet decay.

I tried immersing myself
in copious amounts of cheese and flowers
to ignore the alone- but the alone
wouldn’t leave me be.
Somehow, I tell myself
‘keep moving…’ but there’s a simultaneous
message coming from where the bile rests
telling me to crawl into a hole
and stay there.

It’s not an easy choice.
The voices are fighting,
summer grows near,
and my eyelids hurt.

Golden promises
slipped from broken lockets
but hung on morning mist
and we swore, “always”

which meant as little
as the ant’s picnic,
filling up on summer green
deliciousness lasting into winter,
a memory of hillsides
and windy music
carried for decades.

For all pure morning intent,
there’s so much untruth
floating on sleepy dust.

Lilting, lazy music
of island rhythm and warm breezes
fool the dreamer into deeper sleep
with no end; a cozy chasm
that doesn’t translate
when one awakes in the mountains.

Emerging over and over,
limbs are whipped into a gallop
and spread open to climb.

I’ve not been to a desert except
for some parking lots
and family reunions.
I know emptiness.
Over the years, I have been filled
with books and music and drawings
from passersby heading
somewhere else.
I know transient satisfaction.
I railed secretly
(and then not so secretly)
at never being anyone’s destination.
But that’s not my gift.
I am no goddess of remorse or recompense
but a humanist committed to renewal.
I know metamorphosis.
I’ve not found any endings
except in sentences
and they don’t count for much.
I know so little.

Trying to make new fingerprints
with superglue and leaves
because being the fleshy schoolgirl
has gotten old
and I want to be a tree,
holding my ground,
giving sway only to a breeze
instead of anyone’s idea of taboos.

I remember when I was as thin as a sapling
and sick all the time,
balancing terrors of home
with allure of the outside world.
Staring out the window at trees
became my religion.
I can’t peel away those awful moments
so I thicken and age and sway anyway.