The childhood that was my own.

There is a lie
that has been told
many times over
and years on years
The lie of the firm foundation
the steady rock
and the possessive childhood.
It was not yours, nor mine
nor in the way of things
was it a thing at all.
A collections of vagaries,
a soiled retelling
that wears thin to touch
or is so heavily darned
as to be remade in entirety.
You hasten to protest
to return in hauetur
to repossess the land
that was your own,
and your fathers before you
but it has turned to dust
and blown away.
The places that were ours
were taller, brighter, more
in existence than could possibly be.
They are a series of extrapolations
from concrete  squares of facts
into the type of narration that dissolves
the thread of story.
There is no thing to own
no needful title or claim
to boast in memory.
It was no more mine than yours
but more than that
it is no more
and therefore might as well
it never was.

HamJien

I once knew a girl
with cheecks plump with life
soft skin stretched tight
the red glow of peach skin
a lucky double peach.
Her parents called her Gold
True gold
the type that bends soft in your hands
but will not change.
She wore her mother's heart
around her wrist, a heavy bangle
and her mother carried her against her skin
warm with the heat and work.
I knew her small hands
with sticky fingers and pink crescent moons
because she had seen her mother
with the tiny nail brush and had wanted
had needed that magic too.
She scowled and laughed too loud,
 always loud
and the house turned around her.
True gold, they told her, shines softly
but she shook her head.
She blazed.

A sense of it.

Love lies in the eye
first sight, long lines of grace
but grief is tactile
a punctuated blast of friction
the stunning blow.
It strokes the temples
with sticky heat
and numbs the fingertips.
Grief shakes the spine
clenches the lips
locks the jaw.
Love may lift the heart
but grief bruises the soul.

The last rites of the sacred stilettos.

We held a funeral

for your Jimmy Choos

scripted after the ceremonies

we performed for the goldfish

who survived long enough to be named.

Already your feet have flattened

and you move through the days 

in perpetual company.

We raise our glasses

to stilettos

and the rush of city streets.

Still flats are no bad fate

with your feet firm on the earth

and the future waiting with you.

Food for thought

Before biology, I believed
the brain grew ripe and heavy
like a pomegranate
with leather stiff skin
for protection
but if you once broke through
it would spill out
a thousand juicy sections
red slick kernels
swollen taut with tartness
and inside each fleshy nub
a seed
from which could grow most anything
a thought, a dream, a right hook,
even love
if planted in the right soil.

Fear of Heights

The stairs had been my terror
too many in the house
steep polished spirals
each ledge high as his hip.
When he crawled, I transformed:
a sheepdog harrying a lamb
shutting gates, doors, a traveling citadel.
The doorbell was my downfall.
Scrambling to sign and return
I turned, too late.
The little hands stretched, overbalanced
tumbling forward and--
not down.
He drifted above the bannister
giggling, reaching for the chandelier
until I screamed
snatching the corner of his shirt
a squirming helium child
till the cloth tore loose
and he soared upwards
the red fabric floating behind him:
his first cape.

Snap shot.

A discrete shadow
to the feather weight and meat heft
precise
a thousand geese strung out across the sky
as a solitary bird flies south

The time elapse
between a motion and reaction
becomes an ellipse
suggesting transition

A thousand wing beats
thrust up and down
no progress
teleportation

a single solitary bird
a streak across the sky
reality stitched tight and bound hard
printed and displayed.

Winter Migration.