dark

you could be anywhere suspended in limitless dark but in fact you’re on a bridge. the dark is as necessary as the river. everything that lives grows from both.

Read More

for the formerly feral furdre

i remember your first purr. small creature in from the wild, slowly learning to trust me. you had not purred in years, and you were rusty, motor sputtering, body half-tensed for flight. but you let me stroke your chin, slowly, and you leaned your head into my hand, where it fit perfectly, and blinked, slowly,…

Read More

the bones of this land

i grew up on a mining claim in the mountains of central arizona. bear with me. i grew up in a nice-enough house on the poor side of a small town in the mountains of central arizona. i walked to school every day, got a job in a thrift store when i turned 15, and…

Read More

the heat of this night

i stand in a twilit field watching the water ease in, watching flickering bats hunt mosquitoes, watching you prepare to leave again. the water seeps over dry soil, finds every fissure, pours in. the bat careens in circles, appearing and disappearing against a darkening sky, feasting and frantic. you load the last boxes into your…

Read More

like the light

i am almost twilight i am almost home i am cracked by a thousand birds crossing the darkening sky. you are a silhouette you are a stormcloud you are half of every strand of DNA in my body. the storm strains inside my skin. the storm is breaking. you will never be merely memory. you…

Read More

what to remember

remember not that you argued with your sister, but that you sang in the kitchen alone, and the house remembered a sound it had not heard in years. remember fireflies blinking slowly in the roadside dark and a night sky as open as the Arizona night sky – remember, on the last night, every star…

Read More

winter can wake me when you return

the dawn sky cracks with birdsong. wild geese fly over in a noisy mass, autumn spilling from their wingbeats. you leave my side, your silhouette disappears through the doorway into a grey morning, one shadow vanishing into another. weeks will pass before i see you again. i do the only thing i can, and go…

Read More