When we were beautiful

In the roads, like the songs, swords forgive me for spewing them forth, our words.

Still the memories might not entertain. So tight, so tired, at the tip of a tongue that could balance no more blows. It is autumn as autumn is, rainbow menagerie of leaves, grasses and glass moments, windows I banged against, breathed against, on which I wrote another name.

There is a Bon Jon Jovi concert coming up, entitled “when we were beautiful.” How fitting for these days, this road back (home?). I have engaged, upset the time to avoid the temptation of reaching out, touching my house. Still, it is autumn I recall. The sculpted grounds and walks in woods, front porches that could contain nothing, not the need, not the winds.

I did not know the guaze that would grow around autumn’s trees, trap and sadden them by my yellow barn. I did not know to cook, but heated jars and wet my soul with full grape wine. I did not know that one foot forward would take me far across oceans and age, would unleash me from my auburn jungle of limbs. I did not know those knives would look back, lurch back at me, burst forth from my wool cocoons to flutter their fanatical eyes.

Of that autumn, I remember the cold of metal pipes, voices clinking inside of their bones—how I held my ear even there to sight a single truth. How I pursued pinker lips; how the bathtub could not warm me. How wild the weeping was, that no wish could release me—or even jangle my chains.

The swords

Then the lips, the swords remind me of the pirate in our home. So too the market will mark me, candycane scents and the touch of apples on my tongue. Then too will the ice split open, spill forward a snowy night we could not make it back on open roads. I will press my face to the glass windowpane, pained, see the golden feet of fairytale furniture and lost speckled poneys with sad eyes. I will sit across from you when you mourn in the midnight street diner. I will mourn alone.

And there will be the fields, there will be the bluest walls of all, the cozy nook built by your hands. I will curl in the corner of the attic, push back at the boxes that stifle our tears. I will climb on top of the cabinet, curl my legs to my chest, sip the sour morning coffee and miss you, though beside you, all those days.

Before, I will rock myself to sleep on the wicker porch chair, turn my back to the gorges where grown and barefooted,you were lost. I will sip tea alone from a dark green gourd, will savor even every wind.

Maybe, at dusk, I will cross the feathery bridge, a small branch you hold to my knee. Or I will twist and turn in pine green sheets. I will sip the heart off a coffee cup, will saunter roads home. Two for one specials will catch my eye, sour skittles and cans of soda sipped dry, sat on their heads.

Navy hatchbacks will move inside of my breath. I will lock the door to my passenger seat, taste olives off of counters. Madeline will blink at me me, a stranger that haunts. I will hear his crackled voice on the radio and the chords will shock me; the hills will have grown around me, the mission's cupbards empty and hurting again.

I will edge towards wineries and raspy nights. I will write. I will tie my hair in curls and slip on white. No matter what, when I keep walking, I will turn my head around.

Still, I cannot imagine those white, chartered streets. I cannot remember even my last step, that swallowed goodbye. Only the trinkets that danced on our shelves, only the sunsets that slapped back at my regret.

Where the wild things are

I feel akin to the small boy with pointed-ear pajamas and an imagination that cannot be caught or cuddled, left extinguished or breathless by day. There is nowhere else to go, but where the wild things are: an internal, in-exterminable expression of world eventful and alien, where kisses are blown instead of noses in sleeves.

And so I put on my footies and run.

I play with nostalgia, link back to, lick back at it—promise of storks and white, white nights to ride home. I see those nights as waves, peaked, broken—imagine my lanky arms, drowned in a moonlight I could not love (or turn my back to in later stages of life).

I play in tidepools, soft and hot from sun; corner stores where I could huddle and hum a name; I play on subways, where I imagine an eventuality at KaDeWe, to step out at Alexanderplatz and stock up on krusties, black licorice, yearning that still chokes my soul. I rock in those raw and rickety arms, so sour and still so sweet to touch.

I play on swingsets, churning my insides and the inside outs I whispered, now locked tightly (without keyhole), a place even my child eyes cannot peak inside of: even my voice cannot reach to tell. So many syllables, sounds I cannot speak. Creased guitars, a piglet farm, coveralls and crudettes only touched to my lips.

So the past, played and pleated, is presented in grand gowns and big mistakes. Those mirrors, mildly tilted, both a maze and a storm: a kiss of salt, of the waves, of the wounds.