The First Day of Fall

I moved today 

Again

Into a new house 

In a new town

Like a new chapter

From here

I can hear a train whistling down some not so far away and not so close tracks.

I’ve never noticed the train here. 

And it’s funny, to me, as I wipe away 100 years of dust from this house that has stood here for 4 lifetimes, that I have never stayed in one place for more that a mere second. That I always manage to accumulate baggage, even though I know how heavy it is, when I, inevitably, pack it all up again in 10 months. Barely a year. Barely a life time. I am so young and tired. There is a kind of fatigue from always trying to find home in the room you happen to be in. Hello walls. Hello, same stars and new street lights. And goodbye, to the old new familiar things, like the goats in the backyard and the paragliders over the mountain tops....

It always feels significant

That first night

No matter how many new firsts I have

I love the heartbreak of leaving one home

To find another. 

It always hurts 

And no matter how sure you are that the space you carved out meant something

Like dough, it closes in around the space that once held you,

When you move through to the next place. 

This morning, my sister said to me,

Think of all the leaves falling that only you and I have seen. And it was true. I could feel it stinging in the back of my eyes. 

She told me once, when I was still close enough to the ground to look up at the sky, that if you catch a leaf as it falls out of the tree, you get a wish, because you are the very first thing to touch that leaf other than it’s own tree, 

or maybe some butterflies and birds. 

It grew out of itself in the sunshine and rain, and now, at the very last moment of its life, there you are to wish it goodbye.

I suppose I am no stranger to autumn, she is like a friend who always stays just a little to long, and never quite lives up to the promises she makes. She tricks me, her orangeness and promise of rain, every time.

I am always glad to see her, just the same. 

Arctostaphylos

Evergreen in the chaparral biome

You can survive with poor soil and little water

Smooth orange red brown, twisting 

smooth

In the cold mountains

You bloom in winter, bare fruit, flowers, berries 

in spring, ground hugging or 20 feet tall. 

Little Apple

Stay here with me

Tell me your secrets

I will sit on the cold ground

With you

And wait

For bargaining, anger, denial

Grief to end. 

You can not, 

Will not

Leave me, 

And I sigh,

Content;

Haunt me, 

grow on my winter skin. 

Millenial Existential Angst

I'm just a girl,
Lying on a couch,
Trying to figure out
How
To make her life feel
A little less meaningless.

Preferably without spending any money,
Or moving too much.

Like, is there an app I should get or something?

Tinnitus

When you opened your mouth,
speaking just above the sound
of the fountain crashing in the background.

It was loud.
Too loud to speak,
but not loud enough
to cover up the sound
of you not wanting me

Not loud enough to cover
the heat in my cheeks,
My public rejection,
My public solitude.

It was only just loud enough
to leave the ringing in my ears
For years and years
and years.

Print Temps

I have been many times in love.
but never quite like this.
Where falling for the world feels like falling for myself,
and I thought I loved me then...
When suddenly every beautiful thing feels close enough to touch...
like spring is happening inside my chest-
the creaking of my skin, bones
flesh- expanding- let more in!

Oh world, I can not hold you close enough
so let me stamp out little red lines across your heart,
and they spell out
I
  AM
        HERE

But though I left to prove that
once
I existed.

What I found was
My own footprints fade and blend with countless others.
No,
I will never change your face
with my feeble footprints
but you never needed to change,
it was me
all along-
My substance has shifted for knowing you better!
Surviving your misery,

like winter waits for spring,

gives me new life.
New strength
One that waits frozen
for the sun.

The brave crocuses who poke first, through the frosty fields
and die
brave soldiers, pioneers,
martyring themselves
for the rhododendrons and daffodils
who will follow in their footsteps.

My Brain Feels like Scambled Eggs

You

send hot and cold shivers

down my spine. 

My heart pounds,

My head swims,

My palms sweat.

You 

make me want to stay in bed all day.

You change the way I dream 

and make me slightly nauseous

You 

make me sneeze a lot

And I can't stop coughing,

so I'm taking lots of vitamin C

The flu is the worst.

Emily

Emily doesn't like poems that rhyme
which is good.
Because I have to write poems,
and only she reads them.
and magicing words
out of the air
is simpler when I don't have to stop
and... [air... bear? bare, fair.]

Why would I talk about those things?

I would rather write straight out of my fingertips
and off the top of my head
and then say, quietly,
"Emily, I wrote a poem.
It's not very good, but it doesn't rhyme".