Independent Reflections
The sunscreen glues to my skin Caking my pores The soft down of my arms laced with Traces of thick white fondant. I lay on the deck Sunning myself like a lizard On New Mexican granite The heat reflects off the radiant surface Further cooking skin Like crackling bacon. With no pool parties to attend No watermelon to slice open Juice running in rivulets To culminate in sticky ponds No laughing knitted community To engage with jokes and company I spend a solitary holiday Contemplating what it means to Be American. I decide I like the pool parties The barbecues, the cluster of Closely woven friendships The freedom to bare…
Origins
My life began with a funeral A fresh start from a bloody goodbye The harmful root wrenched free and yet I weep for what is no more than an Absence. Standing alone, I jump from the edge Suspended above water, space, which Expands to meet me as I greet it with A kiss – both bitter and relieving Romantic For what is more complex than this To risk both all and nothing Life is short and so is my grief But I always remember the Funeral From whence it began, this journey Of solitude where I seek out The innermost secrets of being Me, on the verge of some great…
Shovel
He dug himself a hole in the ground a place to burrow dreams for safekeeping while he tended to responsibilities Locked them tightly in a brass tin and kept the key hidden from sight as dreams belong to youth and freedom in an age before lost chances and untraveled roads laid the tin down and shoveled layers of dark earth, blanketing wishes forgotten ambition. Neglecting the hole in the ground trudging in and out of the room that represented the key kept stowed away like buried treasure work clasps wrists together in irons of promises and paychecks a black and white way for which he did not remember asking as years accumulated in…
