my dear.

my dear,

for you i will write words

that i hope will move mountains.

i will write words for you

to feel through,

to feel the words through.

my dear, there are no

mountains i would not move to get to you.

to get you to somewhere safe.

i would level the earth

and fold the maps

and draw lines with my

feet and my toes in the sand

until the point between where you are

and where i am

is the shortest possible distance,

until we are in a straight line,

facing each other.

there is no condemnation in the sand.

my dear, i would face you and

face your fears for you.

i would hold your face as you face

demons that have haunted you and

i would watch your face,

those chiseled features, those dark accents,

win.

your face wins.

my dear, there is victory in your face,

your face that has been spit on

and tormented and lain face down in the mud,

it is victorious.

there is no blemish on you.

and if i cannot get to you,

if maps don't fold countries,

if planes aren't strong enough

to carry the heaviest weight of the strongest compassion,

the sleep that i have lost

and the tears that i have wept

for you.

the steadfast love that i have chosen for you,

then i will find every good soul that i know

and we will swarm you.

i will usher armies of love to barrage you.

i will build barriers around you.

you will be quarantined by safety.

i will fight all of the battles that your words speak.

i will arrange trains to take you north.

i will buy you bolts and chains

and my dear, i will never call you shameful.

i will never call you ugly.

because, my dear,

you are hope.

i have given you my hope

and it wells and bubbles within you

and hope wins.

and love never fails.

and, my dear,

you have drowned

and you have fallen

into the deepest,

most single place of life.

and life is not death.

and you are alright.

babygirl, you are okay.

weep, babygirl, you're going to make it.

and the lines that are chiseled in your jaw,

and the specks that sit in your eyes,

and the brows that embolden your face,

the have no failure written in them.

my dear,

there is so much hope for you yet.

7

on the seventh day,
she rested.
a sabbatical, a break,
a pause, an interlude,
from writing poems
until they begin to write her.
until they find her.
words now sound like a vengeful G-D
struggling to maintain his vengeance.

and i, a lady,
have no anger,
and lately have not much else
but tiredness
and yearning
and hope
for YHWH
who saves and comes
with mercy.

to fast,
withhold,
remove myself
from food and men
and the drink of our labor
in order to be ripened,
made acceptable,
soft and malleable
to his whims.
and it is a silence
and a submission
and a trial.

but, there are no poems
bursting forth.

and, why try for what isn't working?
it is always easier to go with the current
than fight against it.
remember that
when all instincts say fight
because it hurts.
it is only learning a new way.
a new language,
set of mannerisms,
behaviors,
and boundaries.
it is only readjusting to a new truth
that just wasn't so clear before.

he is really that worth it,
my heart is really that sick.

and healer, Jehovah-Rapha,
a great physician,
has quarantined his patient
and slowly,
submission.
a gentle hope
to be a gentle patient.

because,
secret whispers wonder
what this heart could be
if set set set aflame.
if it was laughing
with heaven's joy.

and heaven can't be such a dull
place because the bridegroom
is calling his bride home
and she is wild.
and she has never quite
been able to sit still
like the bitter told her to.
she leaps at the sight of her lover.
she can't keep a proper posture
when there is so much
divine satisfaction flowing through
her broken cracks.

and, she can feel them closing.
she can feel new skin growing.

and what a good church,
untame and in love.
and what a good heart,
laughing and in love.

and so her words will
sit for a while waiting for
the promises to flow again.
and happy to know that in
the hardest choices his
presence confirms the
loudest yes
to the the greatest proposal.

(you are already a bride.)

6.

we climb mountains

and search for grace.

we wear rugged our clothes

and tell about our scars

in hopes that the honesty

breaks any chance of judgement.

who will condemn us when

we can do it ourselves?

we find strangers in our bedrooms,

and in the rush of some kind of scandal

forget to mention we were never there.

the feeling finds us even when we're innocent.

the feeling of shame almost covers us.

and we climb mountains

and search for grace.

we hold close the whispers that tell us

he will never condemn us.

5.

his absence is felt

most strongly in day three.

i am told that in the

third day

of not smoking

the body begins to ache.

sick from without

the drugs that carried

blood cells to heart

and oxygen to lungs.

i imagine that

it is after

three days

that the top layers

of comfort and pleasantries

peel off only to reveal addiction.

lungs and hearts

sick from the realization

that they cannot live

without this nicotine.

death has been in them

too long and they do not

quite know how to rid themselves of it.

it is so blatant,

so obvious to say,

but addiction runs too deep,

cuts us out so raw

that i think it takes

three days

to withdrawal.

it takes three days to

rid the heart and the lungs

of all of the dusty residue

they might feed off of.

organs like crack addicts

licking the payment

looking for a crystal dropped.

three days to feel the want,

to feel the absence at its strongest.

4.

the rain has not stopped for days.

we wake up with it pouring

and we are locked inside.

the rain has taught us something

about hiding.

we wake up and we are cold.

we wake up and we are thirty

and we sings songs of drink.

we have pruned ourselves for winter,

cut back our useless limbs

and our deadened skin.

we shrink back in winter,

and sing songs of drink.

we wake up and are thirsty.

the rain has not stopped for days

we wake up and its pouring.

the rain has taught us something

about growing.

we wake up and we are green.

3.

connecticut soil is made of rocks.

when we used to dig to make way for the tomatoes,

we built ourselves castles from the rocks.

granite ontop of granite

for peaks and glory and i am the princess.

i am the glory girl.

there were even enough left

over to build the hedge which came

right before the moat

and the draw bridge that

is only let down after a

collection of magic words

spun together is said with his eyes.

they used to call me repunzel.

the used to comment on my hair

blonde and long and strong

and wonder who might climb

up that braid

and crawl over the crown of my head

and up and down the mountains

and valleys of my ear

and into its drum

and suddenly inside.

they used to wonder who might have the strength.

2.

(a poem a day

becomes not quite a poem a day

when there are no poems

running through the day.)

1.

i hope-

i hope that you meant it.

i hope that you meant it when

you said that you forget -

when you said that the east and west

could not touch

and neither could your heart and my dust.

i am covered in dust.

i am covered in sin-dust like layers

of skin-dust scratching off with my fingernails.

i am itchy.

i am itchy from sin

get me out of this winter

get me out of this easy

get me out of this body that's covered in skin-dust

that so easily knows where to go and how to find it.

i hate it.

bathe me.

send me into the ocean

and sink me under

and pull me out and

clean me.

use oil and rose hip and

consecrate me.

i hope.

i hope that you meant it.

i hope that you still mean it,

that you still want me,

that you still mean it when you said

are faithful.

i will love you until i don't anymore.

it seems that the closer i get to going home the more i ache for it.

you left a hole in me, you carved it yourself.

, easy girl

there seems to be such a continuous going until the final command to stop. i long for the heavy hand gripped on my shoulder, easy girl. when the heavy yokes weigh too much, i cast off the lightest one first. easy girl, slow down.

, easy girl.

how can we do anything else?

we talk in whispered wishes

late at night

when we remember

that some of what we invested in

must die.

like seeds planted and

turned over

in hopes of a newer, fuller crop.

we sowed in love

and we are reaping in regret

because the returns will

take longer this year.

and, really, what it might mean

is that we lived in hopes of life

and are having to reconcile death

in the midst of it.

and how can we look at the death of love

and keep our hearts from dying too?

how can we do anything else?

it is when

it is when the air is supposed to change

and instead of cool breezes

and i sit in the sun, too hot.

it is when i wish to be cold

that i wish to be warmed

be someone other than myself

and the lonely sun.

it is when i am not home,

for the first time i am not home,

to see the seasons change or

to feel the holidays advance

on us like soldiers,

window after window,

that i wish for my own -

that i am aching for my own.

it is when i am tired,

when my thoughts

and spirit are sinking

from the weight of independence

and higher impossible seeming dreams,

and a terrible loneliness

when i am tired of on-guard conversations

that i regret.

that i wish you were waiting to greet me.

but, brooklyn is not paris.

brooklyn is not paris.

I am a woman waiting for her lover to come home from the war.

I nest, creating a space for him to come home to.

In this perfect rearranging I am trying to woo him home,

to convince him that I have grown up,

that I am ready now.

unmoving.

i spent the day unravelling.

unpacking.

undoing.

unmoving.

i spent the day inside the same four walls.

i spent the day in stillness carefully laying

memorized mementos in their proper place.

my home travels with me.

no matter where i am there is a hummingbird and

there are red beads strung on the wall.

i feel old in this place. i feel treasured.

settled, settling in,

i am tired of the past.

i look up to my map,

the line drawn across it.

this is where i came from.

this is where i went.

i am tired of the past.

for now, i am here,

it is of no concern where i was.

the eastwardly mountains

and westwardly sea enclose me.

i stand still.

i do not desire to be anywhere else.