Finished this afternoon :)

The world’s words for both greetings and goodbyes. mew

Hand I painted a year or two ago. Based off symbols on a ring boyfriend at the time had given me, lots of curly fleur-de-lis-esque things.

Considering returning to painting. Right now I can’t play horn due to jaw problems. And I’m going insane.

They add a depth to skin that makes me want to paint it. I’m scared, though, that I won’t be able to get it right. In painting I like to portray how something feels instead of how it looks. Even if I could get the appearance, I fear I couldn’t fully capture it.

One morning I was with a boy, drifting between sleep and consciousness, and I noticed his freckled hands. That moment with his arm across me and the world still quiet and sunlight on those hands made everything beautiful, just for a minute.

When I meet you and notice your freckles - especially in beautiful places where they surprise me - I will, just for a minute, fall in love with you.

Once I thought of ash as powder:
Universal. Familiar.

Flame to ember to ash.
Life, to dust.

It spread by
accidental elbowings,
careless breezes and determined winds.
It slowly crept its way
continent by continent.

We ask so often,
where has the time gone?

Has it been
spilled on the asphalt
from a fastfood cup,
left curling in an ashtray,
forgotten in a friend’s
backseat, tucked in the cracks
of textbook pages, exhaled
into winter air like fog, tacked
between polaroids
to a bulletin board,
emptied through pen ink?

Or stolen from our fingers
like kitestring spools,
washed away by the rain
and carried down barred street sewers?

The doors with wooden panels
have soft handles and stand
like city buildings;
their top corners
are perched so high, the points
are muted to a curve.
Pulling them open
strains my shoulder, and
I take four steps
into this massive space, where
wood and dust and sunlight and prayer
fill my lungs.

After my x-ray,
the woman with heavy eyelids
and an uneven jaw told me
I have a question-mark spine.

Some days, the pen in my hand
becomes dormant and
my thoughts disappear -
the way a balloon, forever
drifting upwards,
finally but unnoticeably
escapes our vision -
and i have ellipses
for fingertips.

And, most of all,
people never really realize
that my smiles are
actually asterisks, with
footnotes and exceptions
in small print. 

We empty our lungs into bubble wands
between little plastic-ridged circles,
trapping life inside a swirling
technicolor sphere.

Soap drips from the container’s rim,
leaving our fingers and bare feet
sticky with this liquid magic.

Like cats
we bat at the paper-thin globes
suspended in this summer heat by
some invisible set of strings, and

I wonder what it’s like
from inside a bubble;

Every outside sound is muted
as if I’m underwater.
The air is thick with humidity
and kaleidoscope colors. 

Keys unlock. Open. Reveal.
Closing, I wonder; what of that?
Forced endings? The finality in locking
the front door behind you quietly, or
securing the inked thoughts
of a diary?

Protection.

Insecurity.