After the glow faded
to edges of tattered shadow,
we stopped dancing.

The lights flickered, leaving us
a delicate do-si-do, warped
like in slow motion,
a slide toward a sultry Armageddon.

No words to cling to,
we were two strangers again.

I’m ok. Thanks.
I saw a bird this morning
and it looked like it was sketching sunrise
but snapping the image with my phone
made it look like silly putty art.
I move through my days in a zig-zag pattern.
I’m so close to giving myself over
to the abandon of flourishes.
I am a peninsula.
I am shipwrecked
between the waste of anger
and the exhaustion of sadness.
I keep busy and am never anyone’s focus.
I keep pouring my love on parched lips
over and over
so it’s always gone too soon.
I sort through and file memories
in an imagined card catalog
that has my own special code
that will die with me
because when it comes down to it,
nobody really wants the burden
of others’ secrets.

When the dark night is so quiet,
the air thrums
with impatience at finding a break
in the smooth, sightless landscape.

My blood rises in anticipation
of a new challenge
in the mist, no matter
if it has two legs or wings or voice.
I can make it mine
with just a few lines to hold me steady,
for there is harmony in the unknown
and I relish the anxious silence
that comes before melody’s rush.

It’s 1975 and the sidewalk
is cracked along the way
to the dark house with
the sweet old lady and her candy dish.
My backyard has a rusty chainlink fence
and some overgrown shrubs
that make me feel it’s possible
to suffocate in suburbia.
My mother’s belly is growing
and my father’s about to tell me why.
I’m not ready to hear about
the turmoil of ovaries or vas deferens –
I am four years old.
I wasn’t ready to see “Jaws” either
so now every night I check
beneath my Hollie Hobbie blankets
for sharks.

I’m often alone except for lights
that roll beneath my feet
as I walk in childhood and wonder.
Sometimes I still detect
a glimmer along my path
as though forty years is nothing,
as though I have another forty
to count cracks on the sidewalk.