earthbound

Shirley McLaine flew
tethered by a silver string

I was 14, precipice pubescent
I ate the moon, swallowed,
Followed.

Why does adulthood leaden our feet?
The mind is a balloon.

I see you bob aloft, I almost feel myself rising to feel the warmth
that buoys you but you remain

out of reach.
I can grow weak wings.
Not enough.

I could have been a balloon but
I waited too long for someone to cut my string

There never was a string.



(dedicated to max who i haven't met)

The Dreams That Haunt Me, pt 1

The moon rode a dark cloud, and you
A broom, incongruous
Pre-Quidditch

The moon is a pale friend,
I said.
You called to me, "Fly."

The face of the moon made me tremble,
And its tidal pull surged in my womb.

I will fall.
I will drop, gravid, and you,

You will leave me for your genius
And compulsion and the
Way our lives are always parallel,
Even now.

A train track and a road,
But no whistle comes.

Your broom doesn't reach me
Just the moon rays.

"Fly," you insisted and I ached,
trembled to fly, to take
that step off
the ledge.

Fear slayed the moon.
My words bled from me in the pale pre-dawn,
And you flew.

Keeping Silence

That one time I whispered into the wind and
the wind howled my secrets to the fox.

Everyone knows foxes talk.

So now I go to the desert, far out in the clean open air and
I scream my truth to the sun and the sand.

Everyone knows scorpions don't care.