I’m like that one birthday candle that won’t abandon it’s flame; I’m like that one birthday candle that won’t accept the flame.

She’s got the water in her eyes—Thirty-three radiation treatments proud.

Everything is so real here – I do not get it. The kids are so fleshy and precious, and

They haven’t any moments. The grass is so soft and one whole color. There

Are kids in cages – smiling. I walked in a lap and caught a bubble inside

My hands. Felt like Nothing. There were wrestling over a god –damn penny. The kids. There were puppets with boots on. Electric trains trying to sell me a muffin for one dollar.

I had the most sparkling water in my hands. There was hope written in lights not yet

Switched on. I still felt it. There were toys lying on the grass, probably thirty years

Old, in perfect assembly lines— perfect for an east kill. They were still and stoic. Like my grandmother, the one who helped me rise, my father’s mother, the best one he had.

You are not here to ask me, so I’m just going to answer you right now. To truly

know someone, you must start at their

You are blonde like sun hit you. I know there’s rage in

you somewhere. But you’d never go looking for it. It will

come about when love defeats you. For now—play a lovely

game of chess. The numbers help. The movement helps.

Silence happens. Like glass versus marble. Find me after

checkmate. Celebration will be in order and we can celebrate

arm through measly arm. I have already chosen a volume.

I have already drafted all of the right cards. You will not believe

the punctuation marks, coming from my face! I will most definitely

shake your hand.

| To Frida Söderdahl |

There is this instant where I am thrown into the air.

I wasn’t prepared for this.

No one is,

it’s magic.

There is this instant where performers are thrown

into the audience and back into their magic.

I look at my friend

who knew voices were music 

before being marked beauty.

who knew people

who dance with nothing but their toes.

And when asked why

they

are not

them

and they

are not themselves

they just have to be.

They are happiest

When lit on the spot

We are just alarm clocks

Give us our assignments

Tell us when to sound

There is this instant where the audience is thrown

onto the stage and back into their magic. 

There’s music in the theatre.

I know this because I was

The audience until I was thrown

Into the air and back into their magic

I have no heart so I wasn’t worried about

The theft but it was so loud I could

Leave and still hear them in her sleep

I wish I did not love.

But I am here so I love.

I look at my friend directly

If emeralds came in grey, and were layered and cat-like and patient and reliable and worth-it-all and omniscient and rapturous and okay and dying and living and nervous and pacing and dangerous, well,

those would be your eyes.

You write like a poem sounds.

You wanna know what I liked!?

Watch a woman breathe and you’re born again.

Nothin’ like it. Everything stops for beauty. I watched them.  

They brought the sea to the ground, just like the original plan!

One for the crashes! Better than a thunderstorm at nighttime. Moved.

Completely was I moved, to tears was I moved. You would have enjoyed the

Effrontery. You would have laughed with the madness. Nodded like an angel. You

Would have nodded like the angel that you are. You would have grabbed my hand and ran like the forest. Ran like forests you and me? We could be Gorgeous.

The same way you should look at the world from under a three foot truck.

Yea, that’ll teach you to cherish your atman.

That’ll teach you to swim less in that ocean. Danger, danger, love me now. That’s what we say to each other while we are asleep. I know we do. ‘Your color enters a room before you do.’ I heard those words over the radio earlier that morning. I believe it. …whole heartedly so.

You worry you don’t have a language With your whole body of Passion.

Easy Rest. Lucky. Fortunate fortune. I PASSED THE TEST.

With crooked candles in messy mirrors with deaf direction

in the woven west. My woven west. With your faulty faucets

and your Healing Hell I can’t stand it I need a perfect

hero. Hero hapless and naked nearness in the summer season

beach in a bottle looking lonely I’ll be breaking budgets

Robbing Reno now I have an open office. I am young youth

I am closing the chapter on you. Book’s over. Book’s clean.

Worry not. He had a great dream.

95 years strong.

Nothing died. Just me too, us.

Us me

Us you

Quiet Queen.

 

Ultra Utopia.

 

Battered Beam.

 

Best when Bound.

 

Fighting for Fiction.

 

For a perfect hero.

 

For a perfect choice.

 

For a perfect purpose.

 

And lucky,

 

Easy

Rest.