Our first kiss wasn't in an opportune moment,
with weeks of anticipation behind it or the promise of more before it.

It was on my couch after too many drinks;
it was crooked and imperfect.

We held hands to be nearer,
and we fumbled around each other's eyes.

Afraid to glance, afraid to stare.
We held hands afraid to look.

Our conversations have not flooded from our lips,
we have not finished a single sentence of the other.

There is nothing perfect, nor pretty, nor easy about us.
The states between us are many; the years between us are more.

However; there is something good, something human,
something real about the way we choose to keep on talking.

There is a solid fire of human heart in him, a good heart, a heart known and loved by yhwh.
There is a man, with scars, with faults; but eyes that see truth, that see the world as it is-
and love it still.

How few are the men who will love the world after she has hated him, has seduced him, has twisted him.
And though our kiss was crooked, improbable.. it was secure around so much that is not.

There is no ideal to be broken here, there is only a real man
who this real woman might one day decide to love.

Or we may hold hands once again
and say goodbye.

a new story

Big toes curled around my little toes
and his beard scratches my nose
as we lay between covers together
and lay while the day goes on without us,
and we lay hoping the world will forget us,
let us curl around each other
with his big toes and mine small.

It's the quick heartbeat of a new beginning,
eyes shining and fingers intertwined
laughing at the eighteen inches between his head and mine.

I am warm and breathless,
he is warmer and full of words that
make me blush.

We're a strange sort of people, aren't we?
Tonight an Irishman sang his heart out,
and we wept and danced in the course of his songs.

And we're a cold sort of people, aren't we?
Tonight we laughed and smoked through his songs.

And we're a soft and weak sort of people, aren't we?
Tonight we wept and wandered through his songs.

But the truth, we breathed through them, and in those moments we felt the weight of life in our veins and in our arms. It's a simple enough feeling, we understood what it means to be alive, and we let it show on our faces.

We're all human when the music is playing, we're all alive while he's singing sweet words.

55th story.

Sometimes we sit around and tell stories about where we came from, where we've been.

My stories are all wrapped up in Brooklyn, in that skyline, on the subway, on rooftops. The stories are good ones, and though they ache when told, I like to hear them again and again.

I didn't date much in the city, really, I didn't date at all aside from a few misplaced occasions.

We met within two weeks of my move to the city. We met the first time I went to Brooklyn, at some dive, with some people. And it was unremarkable. We danced and smiled and held glances across the table and promised to see one another again with a kiss on the cheek goodnight.

And we did, with friends and now and then. We talked about Hebrew and how hard it is to find a good woman and taking pictures and making dinner. Good conversations, a good friend. And it was unremarkable. And a year went by and we danced now and then, until he called to say he was moving to Chicago.

We walked the city with bare feet, for TOMS, for people without shoes, to feel good about ourselves. And we did. Danced and laughed ourselves all the way to the roof of a tall tall building under the eave of the Empire herself. He held me and I held him and we stood on top of all things, in the shadow of the city's namesake. We talked about the girl who broke his heart last and the strange way things happen. Finally, after all the knowing anticipation, he kissed me. And we kissed for a long time, maybe to prolong his leaving, maybe just to remember the moment.

And it was three in the morning fifty five stories high, in the middle of the strangest and most beautiful city, in the shadow of the Empire State building, that we kissed for the first and last time. It was unremarkable because the same story could be told with different names and in a different place. But all the same it's a story I don't mind telling again.

Bruised Fruit.

We're a bowl full of undesirables
and bruised fruit.

And really, who likes damaged goods?
Roads are winding and I'm a little woman driving
a boat of a truck.

Wondering where my exit is and if I should pick up something to cook for dinner.

I keep forgetting to look at the clock or the miles I've driven,
but it feels like I've been wandering ages into the rain.

Must have passed my turn,
must have gone too far, too far where there are no houses
with kinds lights and front porches.

Turn around, drive back through unfamiliar to no familiar
and repeat. With more water, less road.

Finally, there's a change to the darkness.
My brights meet the whites of a terrified doe
and we meet with shades of red and a wide
arched turn into the ditch.

Not a, but the ditch which I spent hours
or maybe minutes resting in, that cradled
my boat out of the rough river
of the highway.

Seconds break waves over the shore of the ditch
and I sit, we sit, the boat and I, we sit
the doe and I.
And no one moves.

I won't make the first move.
But she won't move, she just lays there
looking docile.

I move, I shift back into
the river of a highway
and hope it opens up into familiar
waters.

I didn't want to move first,
but she refused,
decided to lay there like bruised fruit.
An undesirable fixture on the side of the river, the road.
Maybe to be picked up by someone who enjoys damaged goods.

Sometimes I forget that this heart tore once, or twice, or too many times.
It makes sense when I remember, because it must not have put itself back together
just as it was before.

Sometimes I turn and it catches, something not placed quite right.
Now and then a stitch that refuses to mend well.

Lately it's been all about remembering.
Lately, I keep remembering and it keeps hurting, dull but there.

I'm writing a letter to my sister
and I can't pent more than a sentence without aching.
Without mountains welling in me, up from my deep parts through my chest and throat and mouth.

There are tears pushing past the corners of my eyes, choking love in my throat.
I love her so much, and penned words won't do. But they must.

She'll be six thousand miles and cultures away soon. Tucked in the mountains, looking beautiful and graceful in a shalwar kamis, loving her own five children and a whole village as well. With strong love, mountains of faith rising from the bottoms of her feet. Humble, servant feet who love so well.

a good woman

I'm a woman, and it's hard to know how to be one. I don't know, and no one seems to be able to tell me. Except for the men, that is.

Women it seems, ought to be graceful and diligent. Even tempered and wild at once. Tall and fit, curved gracefully. That word, gracefully. They dress well, carry themselves with distinction. Coy and honest in one breath.

They should be beautiful, they should be simple, they should be strong.
They should drink wine and point their heeled toes downward. They should have beautiful backs and golden arms and legs. Those legs, long and slender.

The picture painted is beautiful. That must be a woman.

And it's a beautiful picture until I remember why I wanted it painted. To compare- and I scratch my head through my tangled hair as I look at it. Glance at the mirror and again at the beautiful portrait before me.

And I could tell you all the ways I'm not that woman, but there's really no question to that.

I must be a different kind of woman, one who isn't filmed much or mused over. And much of me aches at that, trembles at the injustice, spits at the beauty and gracefulness of the portrait.

But maybe there is a different kind of woman I can be, and be well.
It's just a good woman. I want to be a good woman.

Tonight, the deepest roots I've tangled with, he opened his mouth wide and told me I was good. Lying, foolish, wrong, he may have been. But the words were spoken, and words hold more in them than sounds and spaces between teeth. Speak something, and you will it to be true.

So maybe that's all I want to be, maybe I can learn to be good.

a good tree

That voice, and all the words unspoken between his teeth.
It's something deeper, something that shouldn't be named.

We don't. We speak of it in lilts and euphemisms. We talk around it, each knowing, each not naming it.

Well I bloody want to name it. But each moment I want to pen it, or speak it, or even think it my blood runs cold.

I can name this at least. We are growing downwards and deeper. With little fruit, nothing but the stump left above, the wreckage of something beautiful, to show for the years and the words unspoken. But downwards we grow and the tree that was there won't come back.

But I swear I saw it marked by a red flower. I swear it was a good tree.

I dreamed I was Bukowski's women, for a night. We sat in bed sipping wine, but I kept nipping at some whiskey in the bathroom. The sheets were silk, the floor was dirty. My slip was sheer, the door was open, I felt vulnerable.

He was this strange man next to me. Not handsome, but attractive. His rough features scream at a woman like me to soften him. We talked, he ran fingers through my tangled hair. He kissed me. I rolled away and hit the lights. With him, I felt old, felt my joints ache, felt sleep heavy on my shoulders.

I slept, he didn't. I felt him get up and heard him flick the lights in the bathroom. He found my whiskey. He'd climb back into bed and roll out again. Only to walk to the kitchen. In and out and his stumble was not slow and easy like I expected from the whiskey and the wine. His stumble had a twitch, and my heart twisted with realization that he was on something else.

I was awake now, listening to his swearing and stammering. Finally the sun rose and I gave up on lying down. Let's talk, I offered. Something to soothe his nerves. And he nodded. And I talked. I told him my story and he nodded. I told him my worries and he sighed. I told him my dreams, he smiled. I asked him the same and he just lifted his glass. To any question, he either kissed me or took a mouthful of wine.

I wanted him to laugh. To break this furrowed brow and see something alive in him. Something younger. I told him stories others had told me. Finally, he laughed. And I laughed. And we talked on, kissing, sipping, laughing.

tangled

I read the words of men, rough. Calloused, bitter, simple, and still beautiful. Words heaved up from the gut, short and powerful. The cover is the same. Rough paper, with deep brown and yellow and rust on its cover.

I heave words from my own gut, but they are long and tangled with pieces of others.

I run my fingers through messes of hair never brushed, straighten my bra, rub the mascara out from under my eyes, trip over books on the floor, look down at unshaven legs, and clamber onto a bicycle.

I am not neat, there is nothing elegant or graceful in my movements. I stutter out the words heaved and smear them when they are too soft. I am not all soft. But I am still a woman and where does my stumbling around meet this womanhood I ought to grasp.

I drink beer, though very slowly. And smoke cigarettes, quickly. I wear dresses but my ankles and shins are covered with bruises, evidence of my lack of grace. Is that disgrace?

But please let me mother the world, hold hearts and make breakfast. Brew tea and write the soft stories of the world, though few they are. Let me cry when the world aches and when stories are beautiful. Grieve when birds die and friendships wither. I am strong, but let me break. And maybe, be held by someone stronger. By a man who is rough in the right places and more warm than bitter.

I'm tripping over shortcomings and stuttering out my inadequacies, looking desperately for my dignity and grace, lost some where when my hands became rough and my fire grew hotter. But I am a woman and my words can be long and tangled, like my story, like my hair.

The Bottle's Been Poured.

If I ever told a story, would you believe it wasn't true?

I walked into a room hazy with smoke and smelling of men. Not men in the sense of sweat and outside, but gentlemen. Musky colognes, tobacco, and dust from old tweed suites.

Drowsy, confused, I listened for familiarity. A bird fluttered to my right and landed on a coat rack heavy and dripping from wet overcoats. She cocked her head, cheeped, and shuddered her pale yellow down free of water.

Udo spoke, his quiet banter met my ears in shock. The context was wrong. He was speaking where his voice should not be. An ocean away from Germany, a thousand miles away from his Upper East Side flat.

This was neither, this was somewhere late into the night in the back corner of my dream.


Dreams are always a peculiar place to meet people. His face was all wrong, but I'm not sure what was wrong about it. It may have been too gray and it's possible it wasn't Udo's face at all.

Udo is a philospher, a teacher, and a very ornery German man who lives in the mountains of Switzerland during the summer and in an Upper East Side flat during the academic year. He's usually just let a joke roll off his tongue, wears very small round glasses, and looks like any older scholarly Grandfather ought. I spent dozens of Friday nights in his flat with he and his wife, talking over cheese and wine and crackers, about death and life and what it means to believe in justice, in YHWH, in truth.

Udo swung around, a broad smile leapt from his face and curled to my own. He really is an infectious character.
My heart warms immediately, it's like seeing everything familiar and safe, and having it greet you happily.

And then my smile fell as I remembered the day preceding this dream. I carried the weight of a gentleman's words until I couldn't, and then I dropped them. His words were too heavy, his sentences too binding. They terrified me and it's not because they weren't good words, spoken from a good man, but because they were not my words. They couldn't belong to me, shouldn't be spoken to me. Should be given to someone steadier, better, not someone always ready to run. So when he spoke them, I dropped them, and they broke. And I tried to pick them up, but I only spread them and caught them in my clothes and hair. Such good words, they shouldn't have to break, but I couldn't hold them. Too heavy, too binding, too good.

I shuddered like the little yellow bird had, trying to shake the little pieces out from my hair. But they held on, more like musk that settles in your clothes than water you can wind away.


Ah I just want to close my eyes and remember how I used to be, remember skint knees and tousled hair. Remember Laura Ashley jumpers, pleated and colored like my grandmother's drapes. I want to crawl backwards into barefeet and bugbites. Back to four feet tall and peach fuzzed legs. Back to sitting in laps and not knowing. Where I could eat a salad out of oak leaves and sit on pride rock, that fallen tree behind the house. Boys were gross, and even though Cameron and I french kissed on a dare when we were six, we thought it was the silliest thing as we stuck our tongues out and touched them together. Or the one time I found a white hair in my head; I was convinced my end must be nearing, so I prepared my last will and testament and arranged a funeral. Stuffed animals and my deer named Honey in attendance. My mother only laughed and told me I shouldn't even know about ends. My life was all about beginnings. Her smile was slight and she repeated, keep living and enjoy not knowing until you have to.




I don't want to see, I don't I don't I don't. I whispered it, aching over the words I broke and the mess they made on the floor and the bits that stayed in my clothes and hair. I was curled up in his lap, a little girl again. And Udo pulled his hands across my face and I sighed in relief as it went soft and dark. I don't want to hear, don't let me, don't let me I plead. And his hands moved to my ears and the pleas of the broken sentences were muffled.

I don't want to know, I don't. I said it adamantly, strongly. I mean it. Udo looked at me, with compassion but no pity in his eyes and shook his head. You've always known, it wouldn't change things. And he pulled a hair from my head and dangled it in front of my face. Startled, I looked and it was white. I've always had a white hair here and there, and he nodded. You've always known, known about ends and beginnings, known about all kinds of stories.

I shrugged away, Udo was no longer welcome in my dream. Yeah? So what now? If I'm doomed to break words and read broken stories, what now?

His smile is infuriating. It's the smile of a man who believes he knows something bigger, as he watches the ignorant thrash and tumble through their questions. His head is full of white, the little that's left anyway. He can't even remember beginnings or not knowing, so what does he really know? You can't even remember, Udo. What do you know? What help are you? I felt hot tears and my toes growing cold as anger rose. I just wanted to sleep and forget after I dropped those words and now all I can do is remember.

No good holding them back now, and my fingers were trembling. Through the blur of my tears I could barely make out the room, see the coat rack, with no coats remaining and the water dried up beneath.
Anything to say?

He told me I should write stories with good beginnings and beautiful ends. But the real story is in the middle. It's when old jackets get lost. It's when your tire pops and your knees get skint. When the sun goes down, but there are more bends in the river to float. When the whiskey's gone, but the night isn't over. The middle of the dream before waking. Really, he just said I should write stories that are true.

It's the aching, deep in my belly.
I'm not sure why we bend to the whims of the world. She's a terrible lover, she has no shame.

She spits on who she pleases, dragging us into her terrible stories. She pulls us along and teases us into believing she is the most beautiful woman, the only woman we should ever want.

Her fruit is bitter, and I am sure she has no intentions of holding me after I fall. But I have followed her, in want of her hand, in want of her touch. I have plead for her faithfulness, begged for her mercy and patience. Haughtily she consents, blends my pleas into praises and twists my words into promises I should never have spoken.

I am ill, the bitterness has no sweet aftertaste. I am left wrecked, weary and bent, eyes low to the ground.





An angry woman wrote wrecked words to me today. Her despair was laden with all the bitter the world had bestowed to her. Her curses dripped the same lies she must have been told. They fell hard, they stung and pierced all the soft parts I have held onto. But I ache for her, she's been betrayed as we all have. By false promises and sickly sweet words, she's finally had truth thrust in her face as the lady of the world's stories wear thin.

But she's holding onto those stories, wrapping herself in them. I know they seem comforting, but they won't last. And one day, she'll wake up, as I have, naked of them and sick with shame at their power.

I'm still learning how to feel clothed without them. It's a long story and it isn't easy, and I'm sorry for her, and I'm sorry the world is a fickle lover, and I'm sorry we all have to wade through her lies.




I'm awake, as I have been many nights before, sick and alive with the truth at my side and my shame following behind me. My words are churning in my stomach, wrapped around my dreams and reality. Fighting one another, fighting the world's words. I am sick against her; I am angry at her. I will live with her no more, she can trail at my heels and beg for my hand. But the tables have turned.

Daughter of Zion

Mm, strong words
rolling off my tongue
like the smoke that winds from my lips.

They leave so easy,
easy as the whiskey goes down,
but darker.

Heady are their stories,
made from coffee and long conversations,
and uneasy dreams before them.

These are fighting words, loud and
rattled out of my heart to unsettle you.
To challenge, provoke, and plead your mercy.

Plead your mercy, pull your grace
from your arms, and throw you away
from my body, away from my intimate places.

Those sensitive ones, hidden under
smoke, blood, flesh, and pride.
I shudder at your touch, afraid of your
hands and how they might hold me.

Uneasy at your voice,
and what it may say.

You are frightening,
and I fight with my only knife,
words rendered petty against
yours.

I couldn't run away with your grace,
you came with it,
wrapped me into you and held on through
the slurs and profanities I threw,
God damn punches, and sobs.

You held and you held, and grew stronger.
I wrestle and you hold,
I bite and spit and you hold
and you speak.

My strong words bitter,
bitter grows brittle,
brittle breaks and I am mute.

I am quieted. You are still speaking,
you are singing. I am quieted.
You call me daughter. You rejoice and call me
daughter.

I am quieted.
I am speechless to your mercy, I can utter nothing against your love.

Big city full of people,
fire and people,
and walking through streets finding
coins by the way.

Coins, little pieces of life. The means
that make up our masterpieces.
The moments that build to our entire lives.

Made by pennies and nickels we cast away.
But what if we saved them, oh if we saved them and oh if we gave them away
what needs we could meet, what lives we could create.

Just some copper here, some nickel there.
And then the walls would crash down on wall street,
we'd swim in manna
and a such a broad smile would sit
on the face of a city no longer hungry.

Oh if we saved them, oh if we gave them away,
those little coppers, little nickels,
the coins that make up our lives.

I'm seizing with anticipation, with heart so full of longing
it's creaking past the walls and rolling into the world.

Deep Southern soil you are full of musty lines of fine laced
literature. Old stories with wide smiles and deep lines in their foreheads. You can smell the rain, the warm air so full of drops you could bathe on a sunny day. The dirt is red and never leaves once it's warmed to your skin, deep Alabama clay, rich Southern color. Ink that writes the lives of dogwoods and the Big Old Oak Tree.

And the green so alive, the kudzo could lace around your toes in the afternoon, and hide you forever by the evening. That's how alive the color is, saturates your stories with wild things in the grass.

Voices are slow and easy, speak stories that could pull you to sleep and hold you in dreams for years. Beautiful stories, voices with time in their drawl and character in their articulation. Voices that never tell a lie, just stories longer than the Saugahatchee and taller than the pine trees.

There are no poetic words for this.

I'm worried for him, sick over him. I woke up at 4:30 this morning to screaming and thumps. It sounded like a brawl, one wall over. It shook me up, I texted him, but no response. Twenty minutes later it died down and I drifted back into sleep littered with uneasy thoughts and incoherent screams.

Went over this morning and asked what happened, if he remembered? He barely did, but it was something about too much alcohol and someone making him angry. Some girl, some alcohol. There's a pit in my stomach and I am worried, so worried. He's leaving for L.A. in two days. With no plan, just a guitar and some sort of passion.

He said he hasn't had a tantrum like that since he found You. Since he believed You were good. I don't understand what he's trying to escape from, why he slinks to the car everyday to smoke it out. Why he won't spend time with us but runs to people that, well, that I've seen no good come from.

I'm not his mother, not his girlfriend, not his answer, not his savior, but Yeshua I'm frightened for him. This summer may force him to face who he is and what he wants, but I'm terrified it will be at the expense of his safety, his well being. We all have to learn our lessons, run until we can't take a step without falling, sit in our shit, and eventually crawl away from it. I get that, but sometimes it doesn't have to be so painful and sometimes we don't have to fall so hard.

It's just a city I know little of but dark roads, and he knows nothing of but opportunity.

I tried to be his answer, but you're his answer. Be His answer, please.

How is it I'm a big mess of words,
and I break the ones I never meant to.

Sometimes I smear the ink and sometimes I misspell the words,
but I never meant to break them.

My body's tense and if you move too quickly,
if you touch too suddenly,
I swear I'll run.

I'll run I'll run I'll run just like Honey
my dearest baby fawn ran, I'll run I say, I'll run.

Headlights will fade and I will wake up and I will run
til my feet touch Alabania. I'll run with a tin drum and a tamborine,
strap my fiddle to my back and black my fingertips with ink
so I can write the stories with my fingers on the strings
of my violin. Big messy words, and little ones that sing so sweet.

I'll run til I find a tent, around the hills and through the mountains
and past the wilderness and all the way to a tent, where we'll sit and drink
chai. Play with each other's hands and say that we know one another.

My ink will stain your fingers and the story will be close, will be close, will be close
and frighteningly intimate.
My desert gypsies will love me home, and we'll drink chai in your tent near the manna.

The aching is no longer aching.
No, it's fire under my skin and in every breath I take.
The aching has surged to ripping.

YHWH my heart wants to drink in the stories.

There are dollars dripping around me, spent on drinks that comfort
and food that calls me home.

Home is no longer comfortable, these dollars are no longer mine.

Yeshua take them from me, take my time, and my body, and pour me out to the nations.
To the little ones who live in bitter, and the aching bodies that sleep in no home.

They are mine to hold, mine to weep over. I can sleep in this bed no longer.
Food and drink and cloth, for what? I am a queen among the tearing of the world.
My dollars should be bled for the ones who cannot speak.

My dollars will be bled for the ones they do not know.
They are not invisible to me, their cries wake me in my sleep
and my dreams feel their little bodies.

YESHUA forgive us. Forgive me.
I am no longer blind.

There's a big rumbling sky
and it's wider than the smiles I throw
past strangers.

And it's bluer than those eyes
I said I loved.
Only the sky's grey today, and

I'm not sure I ever said I love you.

I'm writing lines lighter than a bleach blonde's hair
and pretending to care about the color of the sky.



Big dark rumbling sky,
thunder deep and my blood thumps
and a prick and there's real red on the floor.
It's so I know I'm alive. It's better than
a paper cut, my pulse is thick with laughter.


Found this, from years ago. Written about a friend I ached for.
The aching never stops, though the faces do:


There was a weed, in his path,
and he stumbled on a stone.
There was a mushroom by the tree,
and there he fell on his own.

He took a drink by the stream,
and there he wasted his time.
Under a tree in a dream
sleep failed, while he grinned at the sun.

He tasted the apple,
and laid down in the dust.
Woke feeling weighted,
with Wonderland winds a gust.

As the poppies bloomed forcefully,
he sat on a rock,
at the foot of a mountain
where the weather was soft.

He wasted his years that day.
as he stumbled on a stone.
He tripped again that day,
and grinned as he stumbled home.

It's an easy night with long drinks,
good company, and the house smells of sulfur
from matches lit.

Sun was warm today, and I smiled for it.
I was loved today, and I warmed to it.

Little can turn such an easy aroma sour,
but the sweet smelling room still did
when you slunk to his call
and turned your eyes down.

When light is shed on the ill-trusted, it hurts no less though foreseen. Ache is deeper for the trust held higher stakes.

Tobacco is lingering in my breath
and the feel of music slipped around my mouth.

They taste good together.

Both are stale now,
but the story they tell is worth living.

Work late, drink later, sleep hard,
wake heavy, work again while Sunday sleeps in.

And then the road, long and thick with
other cars living stranger stories.

And then the music, weaving and swelling
and waning and crooning, and pulling strings
of your work ached soul to a perfect pitch.

And between sets the smoke is easy
and full, and dances pretty past your nose and hands.

Inside a song begins as the bowl empties,
and tobacco and music drift together.

whiskey ponies

whiskey ponies,
shaggy little ones
with flared hooves and sharp eyes.

stamping their feet, and sniffing
the fermented gold on their backs.

cross with their ears laid flat,
they are impatient to trot paths
smoothed by their errand every week.

the lesser known brothers of those equine
heroes, the runners of the Pony Express.

but these were ponies with stories rarely
told, with coats never brushed.
Joseph, Nicholas, and Bartholamew.

These ponies had soul and hot whiskey
to wind over the mountains.

Good Morning, Istanbul

I crawled one thousand miles south of the city,
thought I would follow your smoke signal home.
Find you on the porch, with your pipe in hand,
but I got there and you were gone.

The smoke that remains, was from a book you had burned,
a book I wrote too may words in.
You flew five thousand miles east across the sea,
to write better stories than I could.

Good morning, Istanbul,
Do you miss my hellos.
There were an awful lot of them.

Now I'm writing words in the books of gentlemen,
Scoundrels I should never have met.
The handwriting's sloppy and the story
melancholy, but at least I am writing at all.

Good morning, Istanbul,
Do you miss my hellos.
There were an awful lot of them.

Did you keep even one page of the stories we lived?
Or have you left them in sweet Alabama?

The danger of words to a simple girl.

There's a maroon 1998 suburban out behind the barn. The one on Tally Ho Drive, way down a two lane highway west of Auburn. It's got those runners along the side of it, and a dozen scratches from dogwood branches and the back bumper is wrenched out to an awkward wave from the time I caught it on the side of the house. It's been sitting for three years now. It's the same four wheels I learned to drive on, pulling hard on the steering wheel to make doughnuts through the red clay. It's the same truck written into a story that still makes me tremble.

I was fifteen and words were a new and exhilarating tool. To write things I never dared speak, create stories and moments and sentences I blushed or swore at. The story, I named Plastic. And it's protagonist was a surly young woman, and she was running from something. And she drove that suburban through stop signs and lights and into parking lots behind bars. She left her lipstick in that suburban, and she felt her weight against the door when she slid out of it into a house that held a deathtrap. There was something sultry in the story, and something forbidden. A man with his hand brushing higher and higher on her thigh.

What humanity that I wrote these words and crafted sentences about a woman I had never seen, who experienced things I had never tasted. The story is raw and it brings red to my cheeks even today. I created a character and her steps more honestly than I'd dare to write today. She was sexual and deviant, and broken and weak, and resilient and beautiful.

What a strange thing, the freedom words bring. The terrifying and fulfilling rush when the un spoken is written and the unthinkable created.

To know I have books upon books left unwritten down in my belly and every new sentence is a step to writing the truest one.

The three of us, we decided to drive, to grab the keys to my car and head to a city we hadn't seen.

Well, that's mostly true.

I can lie on the grass, let the sun warm me through the breeze and grab deep breaths of sweet pollen air. I can lie here, and I can let my mind drift no further than the prickly green in my back or the story-swearing crusty kids a breath away.

They are all huddled around a man-sized cardboard box, smoke snaking out from their mouths toward a sour looking middle-aged couple. They seem happy and I like watching them.

A bicycle, of course. It would be, they're building it in the park. It must have come in the box. I wonder if they carried the box here. Of course they did, how else would it get there? But I guess I'm wondering if it came in a box from a store down the street or if it was ordered and mailed.

I wonder if putting a bicycle together is difficult. I can barely tighten my own breaks or change a tire, but they look more bicycle knowing than me. I wonder if they think I'm too clean, if I'm casual enough to join a group of story tellers like them? I wonder if they tell stories..


I'm twenty and I'll never be old. I'm twenty years old and I'll forever be young. I can take deep breaths of this air and life is only as deep as the distance I can stretch my toes toward the sun. It isn't far, I've got the shortest legs I know.

Blake and Ian sat down beside me. I didn't notice them coming, I didn't remember them saying they'd join at all. But it's ok, I like them and they joke young. Their smiles are still light and I giggle often at Blake's recent mustache. They're safe. It's Saturday, so no one will mention work or school. It's mid weekend and the sun is shining and there are crusty kids building a bicycle and I'm breathing in pollen and we're twenty and I'll never grow up.

My dress is too bright and I've put on three patterns and I almost put my hair in braided pig tails. Today is one of those days I'm fighting it hard. If there were clouds I'd be trying to find shapes in them, or a daisy and I'd be picking off love and love me not petals.

They hug me, but somehow these hugs aren't giggly. There's something weighty in their hands and I pull back to look at a squirrel. Squirrels are brilliant, always nimble and delightful to watch. But I notice this one has a shrimpy tail, like something big and mean tried to..

Blake's mouth is moving and his voice isn't jolly. He found out Lucy was pregnant. I knew that. I start thinking about babies and spring time things and giggly spit and wonder why yellow is a gender neutral color. It seems pretty clear that yellow is feminine. Well, I guess it might not be. She's young, but she's older than me by three months. Which makes her twenty one. But a little one will bring her back a few years. How can you be old with a little new pink toed baby on your hip? I guess she'll have to grow up, but a new one gets to be young. I guess that's how it works. One day I'll have a baby and I won't be so young anymore, but she will. A little baby girl will be young and beautiful and she won't know that the middle aged-couple doesn't like the crusty kids. She'll think they everyone loves everyone and that the smoke curling from their stomachs is magic for big kids...

Ian's mouth is moving now and I don't know what he's saying. Something about an abortion and how she didn't tell anyone. Something about her being worried about not having enough money or being able to finish school. Ian has his hand on Blake's back and Blake is crying. Why is he crying? Babies are wonderful and they don't know about the bad things that I'm trying to forget about. Blake's eyes are a story I don't want to read. I couldn't understand his words because I'm crying la la la in my ears, but one look in his eyes and I understand it all.

I don't want to, I'm in the park wearing a bright colored dress thinking about bicycles and squirrels and I know that Lucy lost Blake's little girl. Lucy lost Blake's little girl.

Those kids smell terrible and their bicycle is probably a fixed gear. I'm sneezing from the pollen and the grass stained my strange colored dress. Something big and mean probably should have finished off that squirrel and with no clouds in the sky I'm sure I've gotten sun burned.

My hug is frantic and I struggle to hold like I haven't just lost my world. I'm twenty years old, I'm too young to know about best friend's losing their children or squirrels getting eaten. At this point his hug is holding me and I feel defeated. I should be comforting him, but the three of us are one hug full of disbelief.

Much is blurry and few words were said. In the end, three kids sat in a park and cried because Lucy. Well Lucy lost something we would have loved very well. Ian asked if I wanted to go get icecream. I don't want icecream, I'm too old for icecream.

He says it's for my birthday and he's sorry that today isn't how we planned. Today I turned twenty-one. I want ice cream and to pretend to be young.

Moon risen, wide eyed we wait. All is ready to burst. Bursts and the silence is shattered and the curtain is torn, and death sighs its own death rattle and a new sun rises to the morn.

My door is open and wisteria is wafting through, and there is sun, and warmth and there are insects and birds and one car after another is rumbling past my home on Thach. Does Thach know? Does my front yard or the wisteria? Does the bird in a cage beside my bed know? Is that why he sings?

Has creation any idea? Anymore aware than the humanity that is blind to what has just burst and broken? To what has just ripped and risen? Death has been denied all authority, yeshua has changed things.

Who knows this? Does your heart feel it, do your bones ache with the weight of knowledge or your lungs ring with deep gulps of air not condemned?

Sun risen, wide eyed I am watching. Old corpses have burst and instead of their death stench something sweeter pours out. Wafts of wisteria and something very alive, something very alive. No veils remain, the sun is warming my front yard. And creation must know that something has changed.

Well I broke one bottle at least.

We're better off untogether.

stone in my belly

I could vomit, I could heave and hurl all of this out of me. I could take the bottles collected under my sink and heave them into the sea or better yet the pavement. Feel the release of something. Let something crash.

It's anger again. Such a strange building. I've crushed it down because anger isn't proper, isn't loving, isn't right. Right? Or is anger something more passionate and truthful than I've ever been comfortable enough to admit?

From the deep of my belly where it burns to the tightness of my lungs where it aches to the sour in my throat where it chokes- I am consumed with care. With a weight, with a stone and I hold it. I know at some point I'm supposed to release it. That's part of the pretty picture. I'm not supposed to carry the stone, it's not my job. And yet, maybe it is. Maybe I'm alive by knowing it's weight. It's the most real, the most truthful, the most passionate thing I can grasp in life.

It's that you- you hurt my pride and my feelings, toss stones into the basket of the lies I fight not to believe. It's that you are indifferent and I bare the consequences of your blindness- but that for you I ache and sorrow to see your frustration. Sorrow over your desire to escape and to mute and at the same time claw to feel the highs of life. It's that I see you and I hurt selfishly and then I am crushed by your spirit- it is sad. And I want to fix, to mind, to bind, to soothe, to warm you. And I cannot and I know this and so instead I am alive by holding your stone for moments. For knowing your spirit, though incomplete, for long enough to gasp at the weight of it. Your story, your life, with as many sentences and plot twists and heart aches and thoughts as my own.



And in my living room are hearts I love, I love, I love, I love and they are breaking. They are breaking themselves and they are breaking me. I am choking on their stones. My face is hot and my hands are shaking and my heart is tearing and I am overwhelmed by the tension. By the sorrow, by the anger, by the hard pride, by the blind eyes, by the foolish faith, and the ropes they are binding around themselves. I can hear them talking, a word here and there, but mostly I hear the melody of the story being told.

The tension between their sentences, the pauses, then the interruptions. My God, God Damnit why is it so? My God, where is your character are you good? When do I get to break the bottles and throw the papers in the sea? When do I stop choking on the stone, let it kill me or get it out of me.

But then I'd be afraid of the silence, afraid to not feel. This reminds me that I am alive. Because my face is hot and my hands are shaking and my heart is tearing and I am overwhelmed by the sentences being written with their voices. I am dismayed and the turn of the story, who is the author, will it be fiction or truth. My God, God Damnit I am not simple and this cannot be normal.

From the deep of my belly where it burns to the tightness of my lungs where it aches to the sour in my throat where it chokes- I am consumed with care. With a weight, with a stone and I hold it.

This I know.

For every breath that has uttered my anger and distrust. My despair, my heartache and my apathy, YHWH has answered with lungs full of himself.

And I cringe and pull away. I keep his words on my bed but I do not look at them. I dare them closer, by my pillow when I wake and they are open to Luke 18, but I will not let my eyes follow the words. And in the morning I grow angry and push the leather bound thin pages to the floor and I leave them there.

And I think about talking to him. I think of what I would say and I etch out my arguments and my apologies, my tears and my stories. I edge closer and closer to uttering them to the Spirit, and I refuse. I call someone I know will not answer or I sit here and I write. I write these words that I'm writing now and I roll my eyes at myself.

As if I could make him less near by deciding he isn't. He is, and it's unavoidable and I'll be honest, infuriating. If the depths of hell and the East and the West cannot pull his lung fulls of himself from my suffocating body, why dare I tell him he cannot be where I am.

He is, and it's unavoidable and I'll be honest, beautiful.
This I know.

I laugh and they are deep laughs full of mirth I did not know lived. My sentences have better endings today, and I am home on Thach.

my vagabond heart and gypsy soul are
wrestling and aching to be heard.

but tonight I am home on Thach.

Things of note since moving back to Alabama.

A month without crying.
A week straight of crying.
A concussion.
A new house.
A new job.
Beautiful friendships.
Hope of family.
Smoked for the first time.
Drank too much whiskey for the last time.
Being asked why I said, "no."
Restlessness.
More questions.
No answers.
Heartache for home, for Brooklyn, for King's, for the Gallery,
for Esperanto, for the Crooked Knife, for the L train, for Humboldt,
for hearts that loved me through the worst.
Jonah.
Anger and heartache over settling.
Knowing my sister loves me.
Tuesday group.

My dad told me he was proud of me.



What if I have a story, and it was a good story. But I wrote too many bad sentences. And now the story is no longer good. And nothing gets rewritten. How does the story end?

The past.
The future that could have been.
Gone.

Could I have ever said yes? Would I ever again?
Fear held me back, and what else?

Somethings will not be, but do our choices determine that or is it too deep in the wood?
Could my lips have formed any word but no?

I've run the dust out
and now the house smells, well it smells like pine sol
and the glade plug in named "sunny day," that's in my bedroom.

It smells slightly feminine, mostly clean,
and an awful lot like someone is trying to live here.

I wonder who lives here?
A woman, a coward, a child, a writer, a has been, a hopeful?
Is it too soon to be a has been?

Walking down streets people smile at me, say my name, and greet
me with affections I don't quite understand. I have done nothing,
nothing in a long time, to deserve such smiles.

I am a has been, a woman who once did, but now writes. A child afraid to hope that things could be different. Could be different because I did something. But I write.

Two feet from my head, on the other side of the wall, is a boy I believe in more than he does. One I hope for, one I'd do something for. He's asleep and I'm afraid he will never know how to love me. I'm afraid he won't fall in love with you as much as I have. I'm afraid I'll believe in him too much- and like the list before him, I will make him run or I will run myself.

I don't want to live in this house alone. But I'm afraid to invite you in. My door way isn't holy, my closets are full of things I don't want you to see. But I don't want to live in this house alone. If I invited you in, would you come? Would you believe in him for me? Love him for me, so I don't have to run?

Will you follow me if I run?
This house smells like it's trying to be lived in.
Would you live with a has been, a woman afraid to try?
Your tent must smell better than this.

Our Blessed Virgin Mary

"You're like our best friend, our blessed virgin Mary, our apple eating Eve, our mother superior, our first time, our ex girlfriends, the womb we crawled out of and our big sister."

Spoken to me by Caleb, oldest of a silly clan of brothers.
It's a great deal facetious and yet speaks a little more truth than I am comfortable with.

This has always been me. Vital to their lives in that comfortable memory filling way. I'm a constant, some feminine smile in their life that will be there tomorrow as it was today.

It's not a bad thing at all. In fact, I was a little flattered. But one day I will fail or fade out of this role and nothing, not even my refusal to ever leave some love started will keep things the same.

One day I will only be a memory and I will mourn the death of my reign as the woman in their lives. They will marry. They will move. They will at least date someone. Most likely it will be marry. And that woman will ever after be the woman in their lives. And that's completely natural, right? I mean, I actually think it is.

Which makes me believe that it's me that is not normal. I am sad when these relationships fade, when my time is up, my love no longer wanted or needed. I am deeply wounded and it has taken years to let go of some of them.

Maybe this is why women long for children- little bodies to love, that even when big, still belong to them. Maybe this is why the pain of a broken parent-child relationship is so searing and aching.

All I know is, I don't want to fade out of all of their lives. I am longing for one to call me home.

alive to the glory of living

Picture this.

There is a street, a cul de sac. It sits near the downtown of a city devoted to college students, football, and social church standing. If you know the town, you probably know the street, have driven down it at least once, and glanced at the six abandoned houses with no more than a passing question. Huh, I wonder what happened there? Melancholy and quiet, these houses have died or fallen ill.

Now Spring is coming and with it the houses begin to change. At first, nothing can be seen from the outside. But the trash is gone and floorboards have grown over gaps. Now the grafitti is withered and coated with fresh white paint. Now the holes in the walls are covered and the broken porcelein toilets replaced. The rusty pipes can swallow again and the basements are not drowning anymore.

Now the growth is covering the outside. Quietly and quickly it comes. Broken glass windows are whole and the rugged siding leveled. Now the the boarded up doors have grown clean wooden frames and brass door handles. Now the weeds have scattered and something fresh and colorful has carpeted the yard. Now the houses do not seem so quiet or sick.

One night, there is smoke out of a chimney and muffled laughs and strings played, and a subtle warm light from within.

Summer has arrived and now there are lights at night and smells of things baked and sounds of sinks running. Now there is movement and sound, footprints and new furniture. Now there are doormats and chairs on porches. Now there are pipes smoked and cars parked. A bike rack, a mail box, and a sign that says, "Come in, you are home."

Now the nights are filled with music and stories laughed and whispered. Now there are faces pouring in and out, walking from one house to another. Now there is food and drink shared and spilling over. Mirth is louder now and spreads into the afternoons. Walk in and each house holds different stories.

The house on the left, the white one? No more white walls inside. Everything floor to ceiling is constantly growing into drawings and paintings and color and shades. A hundred different stories are drawn upon the walls from a dozen different authors. No one but the creations themselves live in the house. It has no doors and many windows. A place to be shared.

And the brick house with the big porch? She smells better than a bakery. Full of new creations and sometimes chocolate sometimes spicy. She is full of tables heavy with honey, and meals shared every minute of the day. She is loved by all who cross her thresh hold, and she offers the breaking of bread at a table where Yeshua is always invited.

The third house is mostly filled with couches. With couches, chairs, futons, pillows, bookshelves, boardgames, and conversations. Memories have been made here and stories written. Friendships have begun and songs sung, hearts known, pasts revealed, broken parts restored. Here is brotherhood and sisterhood, here is fellowship and a body of many many sets of shining eyes. This is my favorite house.

The fourth is dancing, throbbing, crooning. There is music, there is merry making. There are melodies and strings strummed, drums thumped, keys played, brass blown, harmonicas whining, voices rising, and bodies making the best of their curves. This house is not quiet, it is not still. It is breathing loudly and lit up within. I like this house, it is the dancing after a wedding feast.

The fifth house is quiet. Beautiful and quiet. Her floors are for kneeling, her doors for knocking. The house is quiet but electric with breath. With words cried out to YHWH, with murmurings of spirit rich and thick. Shoes are left on the doorstep and though quiet, this house is never left alone. I am almost afraid of this house, but I love her. She is terrifying and close, honest, and I see a shimmer of glory wrapped around her.

The last house, what a place. She is quiet, too, but for snores and late night whispers. She is the fullest house of all. Visitors may pass all other houses, but at night, call her home. She is full of beds and places to lay weary heads. She is home to all that sleep there. She is known best, for her doors do not close. She is a testament to love, for love does not end at the turn of day to night.

And in the morning, faces again move from one house to another. To paint or sing, play, talk, pray, eat, laugh, or sleep. The faces change, more come, some leave, more leave, some come. The street is no longer melancholy, it is pulsing and breathing, laughing and crying. The houses are alive with the glory of community.




Hear my dream YHWH. I ask for this. Come live in these houses with us. We'll be dirty, strange, human, broken, needy, colorful, wretched, beautiful bodies. Our hearts ache to be close to one another and somehow close to you. To feed, clothe, create, cry, know and be known.
What will the autumn bring?
I am alive, I will not forget it.

i cried for the first time since i left my heart
in brooklyn and crawled a thousand miles south and west of the city

thought I would follow your smoke signal home.
Find you on the porch, with your pipe in hand,
but I got there and you were gone.

The smoke that remains, was from a book you had burned,
a book I wrote too may words in.
You flew five thousand miles east across the sea,
to write better stories than I could.

Now I'm writing words in the book of a gentlemen,
one I fear I may hurt.
The handwriting's sloppy and the story
melancholy, but at least I am writing at all.

and tears fell today when we spoke, because there was honesty.
the truth was piercing and I felt anger.

pens do not erase

i laid staring up at the wood panel ceiling,
trying to cry, but I couldn't.

there's a stone in my belly,
it is heavy and lukewarm.

There is so much life in pain- so much that I have never regretted a moment of it. Maybe been nauseous and ashamed and hated myself for it. And yet, that searing, the part where my muscles rip a little and my bruised flesh gets bumped.. my eyes open a little wider.

Because this city terrifies me.

The Empire was not asleep. That city never slept. It was uncomfortably watchful. There was shit or there was manna. And there was nothing in between. The city waded through sin and bathed itself in its own feces, but where there was light- it was undeniable. The lights and holy water were so pure and strong, anything they touched brought a reaction. Woke up the dead parts, or angered them into war.

Simple. Those asleep or dead, slept in the dark. When the light turned on, and the flood gates loosed, they awoke.

This city terrifies me. She's sleeping with the lights on. Curled up under the sun and the bright light doesn't wake her. Pour water over her head and she yawns. She's asleep on the pews for Christ's sake. And how do you wake up a stupid beast that can't tell light for dark or shit from manna? She's guzzling unleavened bread, thick with yeast, and stumbling to the altar to close her eyes.

And so, my knees shake and my stomach turns.
I have crawled into the belly of a beast and my eye lids have started to droop.


This is why I like pain, even a stupid beast won't sleep through a prick in its ass, or worse, teeth sinking into its neck. There are wolves prowling, and I'm glad to have been caught now and then. Their bite is not easy to forget, and even once the pain fades, I have scars.

So God help me, I will not lie down. Old scars are aching, and my bones are groaning. It hurts, but I thank you that it hurts too much to sleep.

must be something about the house,
about the way the wood smells or the floor creaks.

must be something about its dusty furniture or the doorknobs
on the walls.

so many doors to let myself in through,
but here comes the water.
it's knee deep and rising,
crisp and smelling of rain.

the creaking has turned to swaying,
and the foundations seem to be dancing
and groaning, and lifting,
and water drained through the doors

and now i hear the waves outside.
sway deep and right and up and left,
the wood smells wet.

i opened the curtains, we're at sea
the magic of the old house must be buoyant,
the house is alone but for Jonah and me

this is one of those first steps,
those big steps,
those decisions i probably should have thought long and hard about.

and i did, i did while the whiskey warmed my blood and i did while we left for private company.
and i'm still warm, though the whiskey left me hours ago. i have been held strong
and i think i just created an inciting incident...

I wear pink lipstick these days,
and old friends don't believe it's me.

I think that's strange.
I am the same.

I forget how true words are. I do not like to see them written.


I have a job, dancing around tables hoping to get orders right.
I have slept off my silly heart. A new day, hush heart.
A new day, where nothing can matter but reality.

Tumbled knots in my stomach,
I'm falling all over myself again.


Brooklyn, I left you? I can't believe, can't imagine, can't understand. Yeshua, you asked me to do what I said I would never do. And now I've done it.

And I have no job, and no school, and no direction. And it's terrifying and exhilarating. I read books all day, and late afternoons I begin to draw. Early evening out comes the mandolin, and nights are spent with pipes and fires and bars and southern folk.

New people and old faces, and this strange feeling that people have made up a story for me while I was gone. Did they forget who I was after I left, reinvent me into someone dashing and fashionable and.. wantable?

I have upchucked the same story over and over and over again. Why did I move to New York, why am I back now, what am I doing later.. The answers to these questions are so fluid and so complicated and so useless, the story is different every time.

Why isn't I DON'T KNOW enough? Can I just decide to not claim my story anymore?

Southern soil is in my bones and deep in my belly.
It has sweet melodies and rich feasts, slow nights and lazy mornings.

And all of this? I'm still talking circles around what matters.





He's in Vienna. Now he's stepping on a plane to Istanbul. I crawl my way 1000 miles South and East and he's 5000 steps past me in the other directions. We must have crossed paths somewhere in North Carolina. My heart shouldn't know how to fall so far down in to my belly. It should have learned long ago that great walls and muffled ears are the best medicine.

Instead I'm awake at 4:30 in the morning, thinking about a boy who turned into a man who became my friend who may never step out of my heart again.

His words are with me, there is ink to prove it. Much ink over many pages. And many words, true words.


His words have muffled mine. None have come out in weeks. At least I can admit it. Admit that someone else has captured mine, and until they are released I have nothing but jumbled slippery type.

He's in Istanbul, hey there Alabama. Months from now he'll say hello there Alabama, but will he call me home?

There will be words.