030: human

I tried to write a poem but everything

I said came out clunky and

taut and irrelevant

I tried to run ten miles but I got

lost halfway to the ocean and

found I had no lungs

I tried to fall asleep but when

I dreamed my mind felt heavy

and I got scared and thrashed awake

I tried to brew tea but the cup

grew hot and smashed when the bitterness

seared my tongue

I was so tired of all my nothings

of walking with eyes shut

I didn’t understand the ground’s rigidity

when I stood up and danced

029: spatter

At sunset I carry a white ceramic pitcher out to the porch. I sit on the step and pour cool water over my muddied feet.

I scrub the last streaks off in the upstairs tub. Laska, curious at the running water, pokes his nose over the edge of the tub and, after a moment, jumps in, smearing muddy pawprints on the white. He pads around in the water for a minute—then he looks up at me, solemn, and climbs out.

I drain the tub and pat my calves and ankles dry. Dad's painting walls. I walk downstairs, barefoot, raw.

028: sink.

Every day someone calls at work, confused about X, desperate for Y, angry over Z. And when I can’t help them I sink. Clutch the phone, listen to them howl. Wait for the water to slip over my head.

My favorite bracelet means nothing—I braided the leather myself, on a whim, out of boredom—but I ache when I lose it. Now the snap is loose and it keeps falling off my wrist. Every so often someone taps me on the shoulder: “I think you dropped this.” Or a week later Mum finds it, dampened, in the unfolded laundry.

027: evening.

You know, the earth comes alive when it rains.

Life doesn’t disappear. It revives, runs out to dance.

So I flick off the lamp and write by dusk.

It’s darkening, but do I care?

I wish time meant nothing.

I could drift from strength to weakness

without guilt.

I’m afraid of these woods—because they are dense? because they are imperfect?

Those old woods overgrew long ago.

No more of those paths our feet made.

I still think of the horses,

the cobwebbed shelters,

the pond on top of the hill,

the lily of the valley everywhere,

and feel small.

026: how to fall out of love, on purpose (because you have to) (because life)

1. breathe.

2. look at the sky. a lot.

3. learn astronomy. constellations. get lost up there.

4. lie flat in the grass. nose to nose with ants. study their lives.

5. drink tea, which is better enjoyed alone.

6. put on clean socks.

7. say, “no. no, no, no.”

8. scream.

9. go on a wilderness adventure.

10. read poems.

11. take a long, hot shower.

12. eat soup.

13. draw on your hands.

14. listen to the black keys.

15. hang laundry outside.

16. laugh.

17. make art from newspaper clippings.

18. cut your hair.

19. dance. passionately. in the kitchen.

20. blow bubbles over water.

21. run barefoot in the dark night.

22. catch one firefly.

23. forget their name.

025: swept me away

I’m addicted to cafés—I’ll go to multiple in one day—but I always feel strange when I arrive and in less than an hour I’m gone.

Driving in misting rain,

sitting on rocks under a willow, branches dipped in water,

postcards from London in 1926,

Main Street sidewalks deserted and mine,

music I can fall asleep beside—

these things I can survive on

for a while.

take the strangeness away.

I heard this, remembered steps from a dance I choreographed on the rainy days—must have been three summers ago.

I will never comprehend the world’s aversion to rain.