The sky is a feathered mass of down tonight

like the kind you might find in your pillow

soft, billowing, goose-gray tufts

meld with luminous swan white

gracefully backlit by the moon’s distant gaze.

Happiness is an afterthought

sadness a second-hand notion

the sky isn’t thinking tonight

she just is, while her

flight across the limitless expanse

takes her round and round,

a ceaseless migratory circuit

over a darkly contemplative world.

Hi all! A poem of mine involving a reimagining of the myth of Narcissus and Echo has been published in a dream, selective (there was a less than 2.9% acceptance rate this issue!) magazine of mine called Perhappened Mag! I would appreciate it endlessly if you read it here, seeing as it’s a poem I’m proud of!:

https://www.perhappened.com/echotakesaloversunnyvuong.html

Along with that, the rest of this Issue 08: LOVERS is amazing as well! We were told that out of the over 1,000 submissions Perhappened received, 29 pieces were chosen for publication. Please enjoy this journal’s hard work along with some amazing writers’ pieces! https://www.perhappened.com/issue8lovers.html

The witching hour comes.

It time for wheels to turn.

And miles to burn.

Tulsa to Columbus.

The road sings.

As the world goes by.

Scanning for tunes.

While the highway flows.

Columbus to Laredo.

Missed birthdays.

Wheels turn.

Lonley holidays.

Miles burn.

A wife's tears.

Laredo to Chino.

Freight to move.

Coast to coast.

Pay to earn.

Its time for wheels to turn.

And miles to burn.

Chino To Lehigh.

Twenty years go by.

And still all alone.

january sun does not bleach the insides of my gums how i want it to. blushing alabaster and the first peony buds are one and the same: harsher in the light, splintered on leaves un-crystallizing between evanescence and bruised jade. and so i bathe in fluorescence like a microwave, watch the heat rising and stare at the colors it forms in my palm. [heart line and head line are backward stitched into oblivion; there is a point where you must choose which asymptote to reach for. but how can you decide after knowing the possibility of two infinities is ink-swirled in your identity?] fuschia glares in neon, and it demands my laughter before staining my gums of rose petals and rubbing alcohol. i hand it over. [rain-soaked laughter weighs heavier on my tongue, anyways.]

permafrosted mornings slice my heart open with a carnal kind of anesthesia: isolating my senses one by one until the equation can be solved. jawbone-sharp vision softens into honey-blood between my teeth. magnifying the sound of nothing until it becomes the snow in my veins. the quaking of roots and mud not quite metallic in my nostrils. [synesthesia in spring oscillates at 20 Hz: january cracks its shell open like a rotten pistachio, tired mauve and beetle-wing moss and stale skin.] the thunderstorm has quieted. the rainbow flickers on the inside of my fingers: mulberry jam and prussian blue.

january sun is weaker than i think it is. gaia dilutes the sky with too many tears because she is squeezing the life out of her knuckles to the soil. she wrings the washcloth like my mother and does not see the drops that spatter off the edge of the sink. [spring awakens with a clouded mind and forgets to brush the grime from her eyelids. she reaches to wake the plants, but stops. the plants will thaw in time.]

the plants will thaw in time.

un-ending slumber infuse her living days, reality never ceasing

her wonderous dreams. how to make her come alive?

maybe a sweet kiss would finally do the trick,

like in mere fairytales. may love be the key to unlocking

her sanity. but she is too full of her own reveries to

open her heart to anything else.

staring out over horizons, watching auroras evelop the awakening world

glimpsing the dawn as the moon arises up, the world finally asleep.

phony dawn, sealed in daydreams. gazing at the sun through the moon,

but dear, dawn comes before sunrise. you will never see it

during midnight.

she'd rather walk in streets, eyes closed, than open;

i. lie in fields of wild dandelions than sunflowers; so she can wish on their seeds, scattering them deep into the earth

ii. catch the ends of provisional rainbows than admiring them from a window sill; hopefully she'll unearth pots of her strayed senses

iii. toss silver dimes into bottoms of fountains than saving copper pennies; her dimes carry segments of her whispering hopes, drowning them in wavering trickles

iv. count shooting stars than gaze at the full moon; maybe if she hopes on enough stars, the sky will finally discern her

now, to say all that was delusional, she would pity

my ignorance. to strip all that away, she would no longer

have a beating heart. she lives to illusions, vicious.

aurora.

and i’ve run miles and miles trying to make the world

spin faster like it

would matter at all like i’d feel better if it did like i’d feel like i wasn’t the only one

the lonely one that ran as fast as i could as fast as i did as fast as i am.

i am only sixteen and everything is so much i am only sixteen and i want to be

so much i am only sixteen and i put the world on my shoulders i am only sixteen

and i am atlas who knew it would crush him but still wanted to be great it feels like

everyday i’m going as fast as i can with no time for a water break i am only

achilles without a patroclus i am invincible i am golden and gleaming and i am

only sixteen and i won’t let anyone coax me out of my armor and take some of

the legend onto their own shoulders i want that. but i do want that but there’s

no time for that there’s no time for that because i need to be everything at once

do you get it? i’m trying to be something here i’m trying to be the hero with the

happy ending because i’m going to be the one to do it if it’s anyone it has to be

me but i’m seeing a flaw in the plan and it’s that i am so tired and i am working

with everything at once and i am only sixteen and it feels like i

have to be much more than that. but i am so tired. and i am only sixteen.

Another page, another sentence, another story. Another day, can I stop writing just once? Maybe just reread the stories? Then stop adding more, because we don't need to go on, do we? Or maybe, maybe our stories were poorly written, errors upon errors, mistake after mistake. Maybe we should throw them out before we feel a nostalgic urge to keep them? If we stop writing them, they will become mere memories, a view into a life that no longer lives on, a moment of a world that now lies still. How beautiful it would be, to let them become memories, faded and almost forgotten pieces of the past. 

Shall I pause for a moment to catch my breath?

Footnotes:

I found this in a stack of old papers from the fall, I don't know what it is, or what I was feeling when I wrote it but here you go. 

(So sorry, I usually don't post on here more than once a week or every other week but I had one more piece I would love some feedback on if you all don't mind? Thank you so much! Suggestions welcome :)

As I watch my feet slowly turn to shadows,

And dissolve into the vastly stretching void of darkness,

I can feel chills racing up and down my spine.

Another breath of the frosted wind sweeps over me.

I look up to the sky, and see the moon smiling back ,affectionately

Somehow it seems to whisper to me

“You are not alone.”

I smile back at the moon,

But now I wonder “What lies beyond my new found friend?”

I gaze up at the stars,

That have been sprinkled across the sky like silver glitter;

Scattered across the ever stretching abyss,

Like snowflakes on a velvet blanket.

Somehow they seem to whisper to me

“You are not alone.”

I smile back at the stars,

But now I wonder, “What lies beyond the stars?”

Somewhere far in the distance,

Beyond what my eyes can even perceive

There are venturesome comets,

and wildly swirling galaxies, still yet to be explored.

There are mystifying places that man has never even seen.

There must be marvelous baffling puzzles somewhere far in the distance,

Beyond what my eyes can even perceive.

As I turn back, I thank my God for stretching forth the heavens.

They may never be explored,

but they will also never be forgotten.

God alone knows the secrets that lie

Beyond what we can see.

From when we were young, times that are now only remembered through memories and stories, and dusty photographs holding a memory in its hands, never to let go. It represents freedom, and an urge to disappear from what you know, to run away to a place that you can only dream of. The paint faded and peeling off of the old wood. My reflection not visible in the cracked and blurry mirror. Each shard of glass holding onto the faces it has seen and the stories it has witnessed. I have heard your adventure so many times, told in the dusty twilight of a summer day, or beside the fire while the wind and snow beat heavily upon our solitude. Given from hand to hand, and heart to heart; pulled from place to place. Showing up on our doorstep many years ago, to be passed on to our home, to our world; to be remembered when everyone else has forgotten.  Now sitting there, in unbroken silence,  you will wait for a time where we will remember.