Time unfurled
a single yarn from the hem of a sweater
pulling apart the fabric of it.
Light consumed all darkness
until even the word shadow
held no weight.
The heavy weights of fear,
depression, and the impenetrable bruises
of lifelong aches,
melted,
like winter snow being touched,
at last,
by the spring sun.
A room awaits, made for me:
a coffee ***,
always full and warm with welcome.
A leather bound journal,
with ever-ready pages,
and a pen with ink made from my own veins
that always knows what to say.
An old fashioned is served up promptly,
at 7pm,
when my mother greets me at my door
and curls up next to me on the couch
we talk and laugh,
for hours inside a minute.
Candles glow with ambered remembrance.
Music plays the odes to journeys taken.
My grandfather fishes by a river nearby,
teeming with bass,
and I glimpse the child he never was
smile at me.
Every morning the ocean of my backyard
kisses my feet as she waves hello,
her salt no longer bitter.
I greet the blood of my blood
and bone of my bone upon the shore.
They wear faces that, through centuries
still resemble my own.
We tell stories around bonfires
of the legends that we were in our time.
My soul is made tangible.
I touch the fringes of my warrior spirit,
caress the edges of my creativity.
I dance with the stars before dawn
upon a floor made of crystalline moonbeams,
and marvel at how green,
how delicate,
how infinitesimal,
is the Earth below.

He handed it to me when I was 25,
with a Cheshire cat smile,
knowing it wasn't my team,
and liking it all the better for it.
I wore it,
reluctantly,
the Kelly green of it a traffic cone
warning others not to get too close
brim worn thin
on the edges
where he was always
making sure it sat
...just.
right.
until the shamrocks stitched to the side
could no longer mask the shackles
I tore it off
set it ablaze in the front yard
and let my soft ginger curls
fly free in the breeze,
finally mine again.

Snow falls, weaving lace from a forlorn sky
that caresses the tender edges of sand dunes.
Indigo waves buoy lamented lullabies,
filling empty drifting bottles
with salted cold foam.
Gulls screech,
shrill with curses
at the winking lighthouse
taunting the winged rats
with its cold, unreachable glow.
Silver threads of moon beams
luminesce the stardust under my feet;
my toes sink in as I pirouette
among other forgotten things:
bits of shell, braids of seaweed,
and stones of glass made smooth
by the ever-changing tides.
A clock washed ashore,
devoid of hands,
chimes notes for the unknown hour.
My footprints leave a path behind me
softly whispering my name
to the wind that welcomes me home.

I caught the deep inky blue of it
in bottles
labeled 'pleasing'
and set them on a shelf
next to bowls full of tears
and baskets full of unwanted memories.
It was cold
aching like limbs in the winter
sip it,
let the ice unfurl,
bitter on your tongue,
grief catching
in your throat
before settling into the pit
of your stomach,
like a swallowed apple seed.
one day the winds came
knocking all of the bottles down
and all around in the broken air,
ruptured by the fragmented glass,
screams - starved and rising
screams shattering bone
screams - ringing
wild and ragged
at last.

In the hush beneath powerlines,
through fractured stones,
no gardener knelt to bless them.
No springtime choir sang.
Still, golden heads rose,
leaning towards the shadowed light,
the kind filtered by clouds
like a half-remembered memory,
or a lullaby hummed to a ghost.
Roots thread through ruin,
tasting rust,
sipping rain
that fell before the world began.
They were never meant to be here.
And yet
yellow ablaze in the rubble.
A flicker. A flare.
The petaled armor of hope
unfurled against battle-smoked skies
as if the world exhaled
and breathed them into being.

They laid me to sleep
in a coffin made of glass
lined with velvet apologies
thinking I'd dream of oceans
or forgiveness
or that one perfect nectarine
I'd dropped in 2003.
The ceiling shattered
while a symphony played
... wolves chasing Peter,
and me.
They chewed on my ankle -
wearing a voice that once prayed for me.
My nerves bloomed bruises.
My hands turned to questions,
tossing runes to the laughing sky
that held no answers.
My skin peeled,
old wall paper from worn bones,
regret curling
smoke above untended altars.
This is what it must mean
to be haunted by your own heartbeat,
to taste rust on your tongue,
with feet that remember
what a mind will not admit.
Love letters delivered in salt,
signed in static,
that simply read
"Persephone,
come home."

I was born
with questions in my mouth.
Why do wolves howl?
What do bees dream?
Will I ever be held
the way that the ocean's depths
hold secrets?
*
I pressed my hands
into the cool dirt of every mystery,
removed them to find earth under my nails,
ink on my palms,
and a smile I still cannot explain.

They tried to tell me:
not everything needs to be known.
But how could I keep from exploring
when every whisper of the wind,
every caw of the crows,
every daisy's petal,
tells me there is more.

They tried to tell me:
Pandora's jar is just Eden's apple
wearing a new name -
blooming only sorrow,
but can we really know the light
without the dark?

Hope was the last thing breathing.
She was caught in the looking glass,
unable to speak,
and I thought her reflection
looked an awful lot
like me.