Last night I fell asleep singing to myself. Some sound that seemed to draw pictures in the dark. Round peaks and valleys I wished would vary in striation to tell a long winding story. Last night I fell asleep singing to myself, imagining carving out an old wooden stump, running strings along her lips. A gentle strike and they’d ring out to me. Last night I fell asleep late. My house seems to be alive and breathing, making noises through midnight. Half alive pine croaks in the walls. Burning gas-water burps and hisses. And on this morning, the snow makes static connection. That keeps me inside and draws our eyes together with one thread.


There’s a glazed and gauzy quilt in the air. My body in this bed and my mind in floral fields with you. The lure of sleep rains over me. A cloud through my head. Pouring down a white sheet that makes the road slippery.


My heart missed the green, the picket shale walls. My body missed the weight of the wind and the way the earth feeds some soul through the feet. I would pray to be like a bird, gliding gently to you. Where my home doesn’t lie in the landing, but in the seeing everywhere from above.


A helmet of sleep makes my words slippery, my eyes filled with dew. Makes words decompose before they superimpose themselves into the space just beyond my skin. The space that drinks in the world’s emptiness.


This snowy haze keeps me in a quiet cocoon. Warm colors massaged into my back. Dry bone memory secretes ancient air bubbles, time capsule worries that don’t hold like they used to. That seem to burn away in the air–– their ashes like flecks of joy now. No more either or. No more this or that. Because the air was everywhere, all at once. She would flow through my mouth and cut across pine needles. She would catch herself on the side of the cliff face, and cascade into our eyes. Billowing loose drapes, severing tired threads. She would carry water up her spout and leave euphoric tears at our toes. 


There was a quiet shadow of my future walking towards me. And I didn’t know what she held. But I trusted her tenderness. And the invisible earthen shield she built with all the breaths she let herself feel.