poems & photos
Suddenly I understand
that all the doors
(of possibility)
are on the inside
Answers that can be
forged only in silence
Behind one: the delicate
archive of this current path,
preserved behind glass
Behind another: overgrown
dreams, like a garden full
of weeds
And behind yet another:
true feelings
How quickly the truth
unravels within us
(if we let it)
Each night, we enter the portal
and we haunt each other
with possibility.
A spread of still photos,
stitched together in our brains
to craft a the construct of
who we might be – and we
text like we know we
are both real humans
with real hearts, real minds
volley back and forth, until
one of us falls asleep.
And the trail goes cold.
The idea of you as a “maybe”
snuffed out by a sea of
new threads, sparking with
curiosity
And each night, a different
ghost of a man holds me,
I knit together the idea of him
his warmth, his smell, his touch
But when I wake up, he’s gone.
Once again,
in the height of summer
mountains shrink behind
curtains of haze
conjuring the familiar dread
of winter’s opaque skies
But it’s different, ominous
the way the sky brims
milk-white
replacing the meticulous
clear blue of
Seattle summer sky
Collectively we wonder,
the air feeling thicker
than usual, if this is
our new normal
The dim sun pressing
neon rays through
layers and layers
of crispy trees,
houses, anything
flammable
The hallucinator sees
the contents of their mind
spread out before them,
like dusty old knickknacks
brought up from the basement
and strewn out in the front yard.
Their minds become a
kaleidoscope.
They look at their life
and see themselves
as a miracle.
An accidental poem by this article in The Atlantic.
It is a wonder that my eyes
may see the city from such
varied perches, day to day:
By bus: elevated so that
I may gaze indulgently
into wet, dirt-caked
cavities of construction sites
hidden when I am
By bike: so that the flawed
contours of road, frenzied
traffic patterns spill soft
city breath on my cheeks,
ever still when I am
By foot: so that I may watch,
observe, stop at the apex of the
Walnut Street Bridge and see
(for the first time) clumps of
bright clothing, remnants
of bicycles, water bottles
sticking to the concrete
embankment below.
