The suburb’s still a skeleton
but now I wear its bones.
I was backlit,
bored,
all drywall and divine punishment,
first names shouted through screen doors,
ceiling fans spinning
someone else’s damage.

I kept saying I'd leave.
I kept writing it down,
spending my stories on soft drinks and scar tissue,
but
there’s a difference between
nostalgia and necromancy.
Between naked and naive.
Between full of stars
and just
falling.

We said forever
like it wasn’t
a curse.
Like it wasn’t
already dissolving in the pollen.

I wrote hymns for mouths,
sloppy as mascara in rainlight,
that made meaning feel like a dare:
the emotional oversights
we let ruin us twice.

Flannel soul,
face like unfinished business.
He touched me with all the guilt
of a borrowed god.
Begging,
but never burning clean.

A slippery little eulogy
sprinting toward a dawn already
in someone else’s rearview.
He didn’t kiss me,
but he almost did.
And I’ve been sick about it
ever since.

An ode to night
that chews at the hem
of what we thought we were.

Being here now is
already retroactive.
Already haunted.
Intertwined
like seatbelt bruises.

A small canopied disaster,
still posing.
still pretending.

I was a rooftop girl,
and I meant it.
Which is worse, I think,
than being believed.

The sky never answered,
but I kept
sending poems.

The suburb’s still a skeleton.
I’m just better at burying
what I mistook for light.

My pocket of the world is filled
With women who know the sound of wisdom on their own tongue
Like stick knows stone like
Honey dripping backwards from the the comb like
Planet knows patience like
Honest-to-Goddess-truth and nothing quieter than that

My heart lives in the home that is Girl and Mother
Wonder and Womb  
Made of all that is alive and
Built by sacred hands

And I want to swim to the Moon and call her my sister
I want to drink wine at dawn and
Tell her the myth about Eve
Just to hear her tender laugh
Tell her she is what makes the tides turn
Tell her
I belong to Love!
And Love is a woman!
And there has never been anything more beautiful than that!

AUGUST
I saw you in class today for the first time,
You walked in and I thought I would burst into flames,
You sat down next to some other guy I don’t know his name,
And I think this must be what falling down a hole feels like.

SEPTEMBER
We passed by in the hallway today,
I think I might be going insane,
You were walking and so was I and I was so focused
On being normal–
That I forgot to say hi.

OCTOBER
The teacher grouped us together
And my heart skipped–
That’s called an arrhythmia and you can die from those,
Anyways,
Now I know you know my name
Even though I’ve always known yours.

NOVEMBER
The conversations began on a Tuesday,
At first about the project but then about me
About you
About school,
Did you know my favorite color is blue too?

DECEMBER
You texted me happy holidays,
And even though you have other girls
I imagined ice skating and cookie decorating,
And it was really
Really
Nice.

JANUARY
When school began I saw you and you saw me,
We were talking at lunch and I could have flown away,
You said something–funny but not enough to make me laugh,
So I only smiled, and then you stared at me for a moment,
“You have dimples.”

FEBRUARY
The project is over has been over,
And I think I must definitely be insane now
Because I took the long walk to class just to see you,
And then later when my phone buzzed and your name was there,
I thought this was torture but I loved doing it.

APRIL
“You like korean food?”
“Of course–”
“Maybe saturday?”
“What?”
“We can get some?”

MAY
In class when I saw you and everyone else saw you,
I wondered if they knew
That your smile is lopsided?
That your brow furrows when you’re confused?
Or that you hold hands tightly but not unbearably so?

JUNE
When we were in the parking lot
And the sun was setting
And you were there and we were eating and laughing and smiling,
I hope you know that all the insanity was worth it,
If it meant I would end up here.

JULY
“I might be crazy.”
“You’re not crazy.”
“Maybe a little.”
“I’d love you even if you were crazy.”
Quiet.
“I love you now you know.”

is it something in the water?
or the way they’re taught to win?
“if she tells you no, keep trying.”
as if love is a door
that needs to be kicked in.
even my father
with his anger
loud, burning, and red.
as well as my brothers
one who inherited my father’s anger
and the other
who thinks **** jokes are funny.
and the boys i grow to love
with gentle hands
and painful ignorance
they are all evil in some way.
not always with cruel intentions
but with neglectfulness.
in making promises like they’re disposable.
in the way they leave
without calling it leaving.
i used to think it was just my bad luck
how they are raised
how they are forgiven
or how they aren’t
how they are never told they’ve hurt someone
until she tells them.
until she weeps before their eyes.
and asks them what she did wrong.

And then i understand her
her anger, her jealousy
it's difficult to be pretty
while other woman prettier
it's hard to have attention
when other girl has enough of it
the men ask me about her
and i simply smile and answer
while i question myself
what she has that i don't have?

There is an old, cherry oak Grandfather clock perched atop the hearth of my girlhood. In the early days, I never knew the absence of its ticking. Every room, every season, every dream— superimposed over a perpetual rhythmic symphony. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Until one day, many moons ago, I found a garden filled with garden sounds. An Earthsong played all through the summer, and as my limbs grew, so too did the space between that clock and me. So too, did the choir of humanity in my ears.

These days, I have sewn seeds in a lifetime of gardens, and I have heard each and every hymn. The harmony of the world clawed its way into my heart like a river-carved canyon and never stopped singing. But sometimes, in the stillness of the night, it fills my spirit once again, that clock. Tick. Tick. Tick. In scrapbooks and old letters. Tick. Tick. Tick. In a broken silver locket and the remnants of a poem written long ago. Tick. Tick. In the arms of the girl I love. Tick.

There is an old, cherry oak Grandfather clock perched atop the hearth of my girlhood. I am a woman now, but I listen for the ticking still.

Paint peeling from the window sill
Long legged lady walking,
In such a way
All frail like a mouse without its tail
She wishes not that of a picket fence
But that of lattice.
So that each time she gazes out
Into her garden
She is reminded of bramble pie
Seeing her mothers eyes
Who’s spirit lies in oak
Samaras floating down into her hair
Twirling the whirligig between her fingers
Trailing with gentle fingers
The mid ribs of little sprites wings

We said we’d never stop believing
in fairies,
in kindness,
in return phone calls.

We swore we’d never
become like them.
The adults
with milky eyes
and calendars
and knives
they only use for mail.

You said we’d grow up
but stay soft.
Like peaches.
Like lullabies.

You pulled your own tooth out
in second grade
just to see if the blood felt like something.
It didn’t.
But you didn’t say that out loud.

I held your hand
and told you it meant
you were brave.

You said the tooth fairy would bring you
everything you circled
in The American Girl Catalog.
You got two dollars
and a cavity.
Welcome to Earth.

I still have some of my baby teeth
rattling around in a film canister,
in the same box as my First Communion Dress
and my Princess Diana Beanie Baby.

I thought I was just saving pieces.
I never knew which parts of girlhood
were meant to be disposable.

As if saving them
meant I hadn’t lost
the rest.

I was supposed to be somewhere holy by now.
Twenty-eight, maybe.
Soft-eyed, loose-shouldered,
eating cherries on a porch that faces west,
“I trust the sky not to drop me.”
“I haven’t wished on a coin in months.”
Instead, I’m awake at 3:47 a.m.
Googling “What does it mean to feel inside-out?”

I keep finding pieces of myself
in weird places—
a sandal from eighth grade
in my mom’s basement—
a song I skipped for years
until it wrecked me—
now it’s the only sound I can breathe to.
A fourth grade diary entry
that ends with:
“I think something’s wrong with the air.”

I think something’s wrong with the air.

I was so sure by now I’d
quit making altars out of absence,
retire from bleeding for the line break,
know how to hold still when people love me.

I thought I’d hear God more clearly
and panic less when I don’t.
I thought I’d be done
being undone
by
a read receipt.

/ Then the break. /

And yet.

I flinch at compliments
like they’re coming from behind me.

Sometimes I still check
if my name’s spelled right on things.
I still rehearse
what I’ll say in case I’m asked,
“So, what do you do?”

(I become.
I break and unbreak.
I drink soda in bed and call that healing.
I make it to morning and call that enough.)
I keep living like the soft things won’t leave.

There’s a version of me
who doesn’t bend into a wishbone
for every boy with a god complex—
and a version
who flosses because she thinks she’ll live
long enough
for it to matter.

There’s a version who never had to explain
the scars on her thigh.
A version who didn’t stay
just to see how bad it could get.

I keep dreaming of her.
Not to compete—
just to confess.
Not to ask forgiveness—
to give it.

She sleeps through the night and means it.
She makes plans and keeps them.
She doesn’t exist.

So I just keep writing toward something
I’m not sure I’ll survive.
There’s a version of me
who didn’t touch the red button.
Didn’t ask.
Didn’t hope.
Didn’t write any of this down.