cycles
I used to tell myself I was straight until
I met her. what is love, baby don’t, baby don’t
touch me one more time — please,
isn’t each day psychedelic? not all trees bear apples
but upon this damp dirt I tip tock
not walk. barefoot, too tired
to be broken, bikes only catch me
because they can. whisper to me, why are orchards so fucking orderly?
sand in my socks, grief etched in clocks, deep crafted into our bodies
we are not our ancestors and yet
here we are,
yellow crested leaves, too ripe the fruit, walking in what
appears to be never ending
Cascades
Six months since the breaking, and I
stood away from the edge,
dripping. One pool, dark and
with no end, another with
a stone bottom so slick
that all I could do was
grasp. Both filled by
the portal-keeper, guiding
the river from one timeline
to another. You sat on top
of the limestone in the
center of it all, your swimsuit
nothing but evergreen
fabric amid the mist.
Like you, one of my great
great grandmothers was Dutch.
Another, Irish. Still others,
German. Here I am
in southern France, in central
Guatemala, at thirty-one, again
at twenty-two. From many soils
does my body come, my fingers
made of the same fragments
as meteors. My feet leaving
footprints in the mud just like
the dinosaurs. You call my name
across the ageless waters,
your voice echoing beneath
the glass. Even after all
these years, my heart longs
for all the openings that
it’s not sure it can ever
be good enough to have.
