Don't call back.

I am drinking coffee at 2 p.m.  I should be leaving now but I can't quite make it happen. There are only two weeks of school left, but they seem insurmountable. None of the places I call "home" are home. I'm a migratory bird and winter is biting.

He hung up the phone first last night, and I got that sudden hollow feeling again. It's been gone for so long. Somehow, it's still as familiar as the whistle your dog returns to.

I'm going to grow my hair longer than it's ever been. I'll become Samson in rainbow hues. I need strength to back up this cornered feeling: this fierceness arisen.

The words don't bubble like they used to. The thoughts are short and shadowed. Because they're ugly, I don't express them. I dress silence in smiles.

Two weeks.

(I'm not sure how to end this. Except that the coffee doesn't help the sadness. Things have been hard recently. I don't want to lie about it. But things will get better. I know it. I wait for it.)

to-do list for November

• get another piercing
• eat a doughnut
• wear cool jackets
• take care

poem for a clouded Tuesday

Unable to sleep, or pray, I stand
by the window looking out
at moonstruck trees a December storm
has bowed with ice.

Maple and mountain ash bend
under its glassy weight,
their cracked branches falling upon
the frozen snow.

The trees themselves, as in winters past,
will survive their burdening,
broken thrive. And am I less to You,
my God, than they?

—Ice Storm by Robert Hayden

a song that sounds like a text tone

My hair matches my favorite necklace. Today I got two cups of coffee for the price of the smaller one, and got to share it with a math-class friend. It's been raining since last Thursday. My feet are still wet from the walk to class at 8:30 this morning. I got a 90 on my math test, which was enough for my professor to write very good work in cramped, scratchy letters next to the score. My friends are all struggling, multilaterally, every single one. Today I thought too much about the way the world would be without me.

As I walked back across campus in the rain, I saw it pouring into the pond and churning the water to a boil. Across from that, the trees that mark the boundary were turning yellow and orange, and the smoke from the power site rose grey among them. Everything was silver. Everything gleamed.

to-do list for October

• be honest
• light candles
• fight
• come up swinging

everything is jumbled but here's this

I kill all the spiders in the house
because Lauren's too kindhearted and Emily's too scared.

My hair has gotten long again
without me taking notice.

I don't write anymore and I don't call home
maybe for reasons not so different.

(Hey, let me see your wrist! What happened?
deny deny deny)

One missed call from Lindy in Counseling.
You cancelled your appointment, please call back so we can get you in as soon as we can

He doesn't treat me the way I would like
but it feels like more than my just desserts.


The leaves are changing,
my hair color with them.


(It's fine, as long as you don't like anyone else. Do you?
deny deny deny)

A kitten kissed me softly
and I cried real tears.

His hand is on my thigh
and I let it be.

nothing but sparks

"When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks made them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine."

—from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston