His Never Waning Love

She rises in the east,

kissing me goodnight

while I set in the west,

kissing her good morning.

She builds up the dust

on the horizon, rouses

the sleepers from their beds

and to the window as she

kisses them good morning

just as I had.

—

They say to never look

straight at the sun, but

you do it anyway. 

Blinded from her brilliance

you look away reluctantly,

always glancing back at

the soloist in the sky.

—

The Farm

Calves ran down the bookcase houses, delivering glass bottles of milk in the time crease between awakening and eating breakfast. Her young age, work on the farm with the cows, and hardened calves attributed to the nickname she wore like pajamas since she was a little girl. Although this was her first year at the farm it wasn’t her first time delivering milk. Girls from town were sent to the farm on the cusp of the city limits once they turned thirteen. There, they would produce and deliver the town’s food supply. Calves was only able to run produce because her mom was one of the five women who ran the farm. Many girls never entered the farm, much less do the farm’s duties, until they were thirteen. After that it was mandatory to go until you were eighteen.

A boy stood from his perch on the front steps of a house.

“I’m glad you woke up this time,” Calves said to the boy as she ran by.

“Only because you were late today,” he jogged next to her, stretching his arms above his head with a yawn. “If you’d been on time, or god bless early, I wouldn’t have caught you in time.” He sent her an apologetic look. She could never afford to stop and wait for him to show up. Many times than not they ended up missing each other, even though Calves tried her best to show up at the same time by manipulating the route to her assigned deliveries.

He struggled to catch up as she took a sharp right into a zig-zagging alley. “I’ve gotta run quickly, Turner. The assembly is in fifteen minutes.” Turner quickened his pace but still ran slightly behind, partially because of the narrow width of the alleyway. Right as they exited the alley, Turner’s foot caught Calves’ heel. She stumbled forward, instinctively turning her body to protect the bag of bottles at her hip, but the bag was empty. The last two bottles of milk were in her hands, and then the ground as they smashed on cobblestone. 

She didn’t know how she stood up. Her legs couldn’t have pulled her up, trembling like circus stilts as they were, but she stood, staring at the shards of glass drowning in the white liquid. She’d delivered milk a dozen or more times. Her body recognized its familiar weight, she knew how to set them down without making them wobble, could spot day old milk by its color. Witnessing its slow trickle down the ascent of the street in pavement cracks was like walking into a room where your parent was crying. Unfamiliar and inappropriate. She’d never thought of milk as a white blood stain before.

“I’m so sorry, Calves,” Turner stammered, “I’ll go run back and grab two of our bottles. Deliver those. I’ll tell my mom I dropped them.” She reached out to grab his arm as he started to sprint home. A clock bell tolled over head. “I only have five minutes until the assembly. It’s an eight minute run back, even if I sprint I might not make it back in time.” Calves weighed the consequences of running back and not delivering two bottles, or having Turner run back to grab his. She could arrive late but what would she tell them when they asked why? If she told them she dropped the bottles then she’d be in trouble for two things. The punishment would be unimaginable. 

Quickly, with no time to waste, she hugged Turner and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Thanks for coming out this morning.” 

Turner hugged her back hard. “I’m sorry, Maria.” Her real name slipped from his lips. She’d been Maria to him before she was Calves to anybody else. “I didn’t mean to—” 

Calves pulled away, yelling over her shoulder, “I said don’t worry! You know I’m not one to cry over spilled milk.” Those were the last words she ever said to Turner, and, as last words go, hers were quite extraordinary.

a light goes out

how could a girl so bright

be so empty?

filament coil hair eventually loses shine

lightbulb hearts aren’t meant to burn forever

she shattered with no premonition

and they swept the shards into a grave

Even broken she shone.

we walked on appalachian trails

in search of ourselves

we looked up, rummaged through the clouds

until we realized we were only the dirt

beneath our feet.

book sleeve biography

who he believed he was:

a boy with blue fingertips starved from oxygen

with a chest that went up and down

up and down and open

with a heart that flew away on monday

and back on friday

a boy with clumsy feet

who tripped over stumps

but i’m sure if he took the trail

he would be stand straight tall

but he didn’t because he preferred to fall

he only learned lessons from poking his bruises

he believed he was a boy 

with a mind like a ma & pop shop

because he knew everybody but not everything

and he read books but only the odd chapters

and he ate chocolate covered pretzels

to taste the salt.

who others believed he was:

(it didn’t matter to him)

skuffuskald (drawer poet)

do you shiver and slide away?

please smother me under your permafrost skin

in the core of you hearth,

burns this tundra’s only heat

oh, skuffuskald, it’s only you, me, and the blizzard outside

so whisper your coal-hot words in the lulls

between drifts blown by skipping winds,

like the first flake of winter

that melt once they kiss the ground,

before sleep wipes my mind like an avalanche.

when we awake

i’ll submerse myself in your glacier depths,

below ice my frostbitten lungs will lose air

even before death

i’ll be your kindled flame

that breathes only to warm your hands.

this is it

Truth speaks in the turning of pages,

The end of one day and the beginning of another.

Between sheets, we purge ourselves of lies.

Refusing to fall asleep with crippling thoughts

Refusing to live one more day with cutting tongues.

In my dreams, I live in truth.

It painlessly hurts.

Lisbon

he jumped boxcars on sunday mornings,

tried to beat the train to portugal

while she toed the spanish border,

scuffing dust with mary janes

she thought of the sea,

the saltwater armada.

he thought of a town on the atlantic

of sharing food and footnotes 

with a sea-fearing girl.

places in empty spaces

she dragged her body through time,

a slippery slide that pushed her back down,

cold arms that locked her in a hold

until she slipped free falling and

grasping for years

    months

    tomorrow she found

the place where now meets forever

and the flowers exceed imagination.

where a no-man’s land became a clearing

to paint aquarium skies with no bottom,

to pluck love like daisy petals

and collect those she lost to the wind.

V

V is my favorite letter

i see it in the bony ridges 

below your stomach

in the spaces between

toes and fingers

arms and branches

lock’s ridges and

sunshine rays