Cradle

The wings of her eyelashes create great shadows.
Paper-white, the curving shells of her cheeks
invite my mouth. They say,
Kiss me
Leave the sea-salt of your tongue

She is the cradle of softness
I have written mad-love songs for.
Many nights I have taken the swell of her breast
in my hands and many nights I have watched her wash over me
as the ocean licks away at sand.
Taking me with her tides.

Tonight, I let her sleep.
Cloaked in dreams and gray with the briefest hint of white skin.

She is the sea at night,
bathed in the stars of my adoring eyes.

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Catch Myself

I have missed me,
since I was twelve.

When there were dragons
in the lawn clippings,
fairies in my grandmother's petunias.

I rumpled myself into her long gowns, things she wore when
she was young and smiling in black and white.
I wore them over pavement, was always barefoot
in the evening grass, orange-tinted by falling sun.
My toes splayed in its coolness and I imagined
roots forever, crawling, growing, twisting
into another world.

A world where there were no drunks,
and family didn't scream at one another and
little girls weren't picked on for being fat
and
mother and father were kings and queens and
happy and in love and
no one cried.
No one cried.

I have missed me,
I have no more gowns.
My lawn is a lawn is a lawn and I
catch myself
dreaming.

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Handy Tales

A blue nook, brown speckled forest,
a hill bent sideways with age.
Fissures break long lines,
ending in half-moons painted pale pink or sheer.

My grandmothers hands.

As a child they told me stories:
loving, laughing, weeping, learning,
sewing, cooking, sorrow and joy.
I listened to them every night
as she tucked me in.

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