On Fasting

It’s the month of ‘Ala in the Badí calendar, the month of the Bahá’í fast. Much like Muslims and Ramadan, Jews and Yom Kippur, Catholics and Lent, the Bahá’í Faith enjoins its followers to observe a period of fasting during the year. Ours is the nineteen days prior to the first day of spring, our new year. For those days from sunrise to sunset, we abstain from food and drink.

This practice of detachment is present in every religion—because surely, if we are spiritual beings living in a material world, complications will arise from that intersection from time to time.

It’s such a simple act—not eating or drinking for a little while. But the discipline creates a mindfulness not present when preparation isn’t required to make it through the day. This time of year, life slows down. It sits by the window and looks out at the sea; it stretches to accommodate our prayers and hopes without relentless and insistent distractions. It has a rhythm, steady and sure, and rooted in something greater than us.

The fast is meant to be period of spiritual rejuvenation. “Fasting is the cause of awakening man. The heart becomes tender and the spirituality of man increases,” says ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the son of Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith.

This is the time to fill your heart with light. The time to express gratitude. The time for sunbeam souls.

Bahá’ís believe we lead a dual existence, both spiritual and material. Our souls belong to the world of God, but our bodies to the physical world. We can’t survive if we don’t eat or sleep, ignoring the needs of our corporeal lives. However, taking any of our material needs beyond moderation will trap our spiritual selves. Fasting is about purpose and purification.

 *** 

Bahá’ís are enjoined to observe the fast beginning at age fifteen, the age of maturity in the Bahá’í Faith. In tenth grade and in Alaska is where I first learned what it meant to slow down. That slowing down sometimes means coming to a full stop entirely. That it’s in the pauses when you realize how singularly focused your movement has become: always forward, but in what direction?

As far north as Anchorage, you gain nearly three hours of sunlight between the beginning and the end of March, so like the other extremes of hemisphere, we measure our fast by our watches or the microwave clock or our phones, rather than the east-facing windows.

Fasting in Alaska is as solid as the mountains I grew up next to. It’s sun shining blindingly on the snow. It’s wrapping yourself in a thousand layers (not eating for twelve hours makes you colder than the already cold still-winter weather makes you). It’s counting the rapidly increasing minutes of sunlight, as well as the minutes until dinner—both summer and sustenance fast approaching, although it always felt like not fast enough. It’s a rhythm, measuring your fast by the clock, each day growing in increments.

But sunrise and sunset give the day a pattern that checking a watch doesn’t. I learned this in Jordan, a few years later when I moved there to study. That spring, I began and ended my fast each day with the call to prayer. That part of the world cries tears that taste like God, and I did my fair share of crying for things I did not understand then.

The West seems full of so much certainty. Our leaders speak so loudly, our advertisements state opinions as facts, our newspapers record it all. But we lack certitude. So apparently absent at home is our sense of faith.

But how do we nourish our own certitude? I’ve always wondered where my edges are. Where my own convictions ended and beliefs begin? Where I fit when most people around me are half-hearted about something that defines me?

I was nineteen when I went to Amman, and that March, I woke up before sunrise to bring my tea and bread to the roof each day. I prayed facing West this time. I was fasting, alone still, but everyone understood. It was just a different time of the year. I was offered tips: eggs stay with you longer in the mornings, drink something warm before you eat in the evenings, think of God when your stomach grumbles. That is why you’re fasting, remember that.

 *** 

‘Abdu’l-Bahá says, “Some people lay stress on fasting. They affirm that in augmenting the weakness of the body they develop a spiritual sensibility and thus they think to approach God. Weakening one’s self physically does not necessarily contribute to spiritual progress. Humility, kindness, resignation, and all these spiritual attributes emanating from great physical strength are acceptable to God…. If a man be just, kind, humble and merciful and his qualities are acquired through the will-power — this is Godlike.”

The fast is a marathon. It requires perseverance and a long-term vision. It gives a clear direction, even if the path is not so easy.

At the end of these nineteen days is Naw-Rúz, the Bahá’í new year. And every year I feel refreshed and prepared to take on whatever comes by the end of the fast and the beginning of the new year. Plus, ask anyone—a new year never was so sweet as one that follows the fast.

Middles

I really haven't written for myself in years.  And over those years, my phone number has changed three times and my address roughly as many.  My hair grew out all the way, but it was an accident, I swear—I just stopped noticing or I didn't have time to take care of it?  Which is really what happened to my writing as well.

Right now I'm sitting in the kitchen of somewhere so, so close to the home that raised me.  I've been gone so long, and still I am looking for myself in vintage mugs at thrift stores.  As if having the right radio station fundraiser cup from the '90s will be the piece of home that will finally close this chapter.  When I drove home across town an hour ago, it was twilight, and the clouds were striking, and something about the section of the road between downtown and where it dips by Westchester Lagoon almost made me cry from knowing that you've lost your hometown to the onward march of growing up, and surely, it can't still be this sad.

I am learning how to be myself again, after years of learning to give myself up.  In Haifa, I spent so much time trying to be the fountain, continually offering herself.  When you serve the Universal House of Justice, there is no room for anything else, just the purest love.  Now, I am trying to find my way in this world again, and the last version of myself I have to remember (in love with Fairbanks, writing her heart on cafe napkins, filling her summer with foraging) is so far from the version I am headed towards (where there is so much more space in my heart to fill with this new, new life).  Not to mention—I'm married now, and everyone I knew has also hurtled far along their own paths. But this is what it feels like to stand at the big junctures of your life, and among the things I'm carrying forward are several old Alaska mugs—small patches to fix a large tear.

but my heart is not the sidewalk

the summer before I broke my heart in the way that you can only do when you are still entirely whole--unaware that there will be trees that need to come up through your pavement—I spent it driving back and forth across town in the middle of the night.

it wasn't dark yet.
is that a metaphor, or just geography?
the pavement at home heaves from the frost.
but this is also not a metaphor: the winter always kept me whole.

once, on the way home, we stopped for breadsticks. there was a friend with a new tattoo who needed a ride to the airport;
but that's mostly unremarkable--there is always a friend with a new tattoo who needs a ride to the airport.
or, a correction: there always used to be a friend with a new tattoo who needed a ride to the airport.
maybe that's why it was remarkable.
because here you can take the train to the airport.

listen:
there is a reason the sidewalk sacrifices itself for the trees.
the trees here are old and tall.
the leaves are always green.

in May, the jacaranda stains the sidewalk purple.
in October, the olives need to be shaken off their branches.

but my heart is not as solid as the sidewalk,
and it still hurts some days.

materials may be renewed for two weeks at a time

Everything here smells like a library book:
the cutlery drawer in the kitchen,
the blankets on the couch, and even
the potted succulents next to the window.

It smells like a library book, and
reminds me that it's not mine forever--
that holding on too long
costs twenty-five cents a day.

excerpt from East Coker by T.S. Eliot

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

-T.S. Eliot, "East Coker," from *The Four Quartets* 

r e s i l i e n c e

"Struggle isn’t tragedy. It is necessary to say this because too often the former is conflated with the latter. And too often we create false narratives around struggle; we say that people have “overcome” their circumstances or “overcome” their struggles, when in reality people often manage to survive their circumstances by way of the very mettle or knowledge gained through the circumstances themselves."

-Ayana Mathis, On Impractical Urges

when all you need is time, marching forward slowly

the summer after 11th grade, i promise myself i will never say anything untrue,
which is why i let you do all the talking and i fill in the gaps:
with laughter like precipitation (maybe hail, maybe something else)
and with questions, because there are so many things i am trying to figure out.
so many postage stamps i bought before i knew i wouldn't use them.
will this horizon swallow me whole as i run into it?
will anyone be on the other side?

when i hear that you write your grocery lists on pieces of scrap fabric
using a fabric pen from your sister,
and that quarters fall out of the sandwich bag that replaced your wallet in march,
i say a silent prayer:

thank god for pine needles and empty pasta sauce jars,
but sorry you lost your only pair of scissors.
sorry, because i took them,
and i used them to cut up the letters you sent me
i put the pieces in jars and the jars on the stairs outside
and it was so windy that dirt and pine needles blew in
and little insects made their homes in your words.
it was beautiful until it wasn't--when too much time had passed.

in the amount of time it takes to be able to answer the phone without my heartbeat pounding in my wrists, i manage to fall off a retaining wall twice and lose my wallet once.
i write eight poems and rip three of them up; i learn a new recipe for scones.
i keep my promise to never say anything untrue, which is why it takes so long.
i still have the scissors.
i still have precipitation laughter,
but my open sky questions mostly have answers now.

Coming, but also going

I went and then came back again. What do you call it when you're getting off the airplane in a place that's so familiar and everything's the same down to the dust on the car picking you up? Because it's the same thing you call the train stop that's yours on the return journey and the four flights of stairs to where you live right now.

I've been thinking a lot lately about vocabulary and its limitations, but mostly our own inadequacies in wielding it. How our words shape our world, and often we are using the wrong ones.

It was nice to be in Alaska (home?) (back?). I remembered, briefly, who I was. That if I want, I have a wonderful place to return to. That maybe I wanted to. That maybe all of the things that seem to matter in such an intense and present way right now are not worthy of the heartache they are causing. But aren't they?

The last two years of my life in Israel felt like a dream during those weeks I was in Alaska.

Except then I returned--4 flights and 3 continents and 2 days and 1 lost suitcase--and now my trip to Alaska is starting to feel like a dream. Like was it only two weeks ago that I was in Value Village with Valerie? Was it only a few days before that when we were making enchiladas and watching She's the Man? And with the quickly evaporating sense of A-Very-Real-Place-Where-I-Just-Was also goes the confidence in familiar surroundings and faces that I felt so fleetingly.

If coming implies a beginning, and going implies an end, and "coming and going" means a temporary middle, where are we all at right now with our lives and our verbs?

Things that don't connect

The watch guy fixed my watch for free on Tuesday.

Maybe because it's a garbage watch and I've brought it to him three other times for the same problem and he's just taking pity on me now.  Maybe he didn't recognize me though.  Maybe he's just nice.

He told me it was broken for real this time and I pointed out to him that the hands were still moving and the back just needed to be reattached.  So he put some scotch tape on the inside and then closed it.  It was $18.50 from Fred Meyer years ago, and I like it, but not that much, but so much more now that I've fixed it so many times.

***

I've been very committed to keeping things clean lately.  My organized desk is making me want to write.  I learned two new guitar chords (bar! chords!) this week and threw away all of my old bus tickets.  That my floor is cleared of dirty clothes is representative of the small measure of control I can exert on my section of the universe.

(Note:  Not that I've ever been inordinately messy, but there were always people to hang with, flat tires to inflate, dump clothing to try on, etc., and putting away laundry just fell by the wayside most days.)

***

The sunset was really beautiful tonight.

I didn't take a picture.  Because yesterday night I was trying to video a friend singing and ran out of space on my phone and subsequently spent this morning deleting photos and there were many, many, many of the sea and the city rolling down into it and the sky waiting at the edge.

Because also I was sitting on the bus coming back from the beach and reading an article about suicide in small Arctic communities and sometimes things just don't connect.  Like where I was and where I am now.

From the neighbourhood

It's Rosh Hashana and there are 12 year olds running up and down the stairs outside setting off bottle rockets.  The girls all have long wavy hair and the boys are all wearing soccer jerseys.

Last Tuesday, the biggest dust storm in the last 15 years moved south from Syria and Lebanon.  The sea disappeared.  The city disappeared.  For a day, everything was yellow.  And for the week, everything (everything) was hazy.  The humidity hit 90 percent and the temperature hovered around the same.

It was uncomfortable, but in a strange way, it reminded me that I have a lot of practice weathering terrible weather.  I read lots of weather articles.  Did you know a really, really large dust storm is called a haboob, which according to one article I read means "violent wind"?

On Friday afternoon, it cleared away.  I'm sitting at the kitchen table now, and I can see the sea again.  And occasional flashes of light as kids in the street blow things up.

Where do weather patterns go when they're done moving?

Khamseen

view of the city in the morning--not a filter, a dust storm


dust and condensation collecting on the windows in the 87% humidity.


"dust"

Not a robot

We ran out of gas in out flat last week.  As a result, I've been eating more yogurt than usual (which is to say a lot of yogurt).  And pomegranates, as they're back in season.  There are worse times to find your stove rendered temporarily useless.

Between the three of us (a small and vivacious Indian, a tall and beautiful German, and me), attempts to fix this problem have involved fiddling with the various gas tanks in the back of the building and calling out through the window of our fourth floor apartment to each other to check if the stove is turning on--cries of "it's still not working. Are you sure you know which is ours???" mixing with loud meows from the massive feral cat population of Haifa and music from the perpetual Arab weddings that seem to always be going on.

Summer isn't over, which shouldn't be a surprise, but is.



What happens when these things we learn as Truths growing up--September means it'll be winter in the not-so-distant future and you can only eat pomegranates in December and if you smile at someone they will greet you warmly in response--turn out not to be so true?  Oh the multitudes the world can contain when it's only distance to change all of that.

I've been here for over a year.

There are still people and places I miss so much it hurts--like chronic shin splints from not giving up running even when you should take a break, like noticing a huge scrape on your forearm that's started to sting now the adrenaline has worn off, like paper cuts from writing love letters but being careless, like a burn from a curling iron used in a moment of vanity.  Sometimes like getting the wind knocked out of you by the truth of it all.  I don't think it will ever go away.  Not really.  Not all the way.

(and yet.)

The world is not so easy on girls who imagined themselves to be robots while growing up and turned to have hearts after all.

(and yet. and yet. and yet.)

Iceland

In Iceland, we slept six to a tent every night for a week and a half, hiked 26 miles over three days through Hornstrandir, drove around the country on the Ring Road, ate our weight in hot dogs, played cards, sang loudly in the backseat, made tons of Mountain House meals, and generally had the best time in the world.

wildfires

on tuesday, it rains.
it is good news to hear among the updates your mom relays on the phone.
the relief in her voice is a welcome guest who has hung up his coat and will stay for dinner.

she tells you:
1. did you know that the neighbour's daughter got into art school? she's graduating in the spring.
2. it finally rained, you know, and we've all stopped coughing. your brother has resumed marathon training and your dad has stopped rubbing his eyes.
3. the grocery store has finally switched to summer hours.

it rains, and the chalk fades.
the neighbour's daughter, who just got into art school, redraws the hopscotch course for her little brother.
someone sends you a picture.
each number is a different animal--the three is a dragon. the seven is a stork.

it rains, and the wildfires go out.

a place you once loved has stopped burning.
a boy you once loved has stopped calling.
a game you once played has washed away.

on tuesday, timezones and oceans away,
you wake up to clear skies.

International Date Line

The last time the fourth of July was a Saturday, I was on an airplane crossing the International Date Line from Friday, July 3, 2009 to Sunday, July 5, 2009 on the way home from Australia with the Anchorage Youth Symphony for a music festival.  The principal bassist spent the multiple-flight journey singing "Saturday in the Park" by Chicago.  It was the summer after the 11th grade.

I think about that summer from time to time.  Early in the year, the symphony had decided to go to Australia.  Early in the year, the principal oboist realized she couldn't go.  Early in the year, understanding that someone would have to play principal on Beethoven's ninth in the Sydney Opera House, I committed.  Late in the year, mostly out of curiosity, I applied for a language scholarship with the National Security Language Initiative for Youth.  Late in the year, I was accepted to study Persian in Dushanbe, Tajikistan on a full scholarship for six weeks.

The dates conflicted, of course.

We always get to where we're going, I think, but sometimes it requires a fair amount of course correction.  In 2009, I was getting ready to start applying to colleges and auditioning for music scholarships.  By 2012, I had dropped all dreams of a music major and was studying languages in the Middle East.

There's a part, about 16 minutes into the final movement of the ninth symphony, where (and believe me, if I could describe this in a less cliché way, I would) the choir sounds like the heavens opening up--and suddenly--the low strings take over and it gets a bit minor:  still spiritual, but with some suffering.  That summer, I sat on stage counting rests and cried for things that come together so flawlessly and for things that are still so uncertain.

Happy 4th.  Have a good weekend, everyone.

dropped stitch

in the end, my hands feel like they have been covered in honey.
this was nothing to be transcended.
this was bare feet in the river and hands sticky with avoiding promises.

in the end, i tugged so hard on loose threads
the whole hat came undone.
maybe i am your dropped stitch,
or maybe you are mine,
but now all either of us have is a mess of yarn.

it's summer anyway.
i wouldn't have used any sort of knitted anything for a long time anyway.

Tea kettle

At one point, I had my public library card number memorized. This was the outcome of a particularly slow last year and a half of high school. My friends all had boyfriends. Nothing took up enough of my time. I spent a lot of it reserving books via inter-library loan and typing and re-typing a 14 digit number into the Anchorage Public Library website.

I remember, very distinctly, feeling like I didn’t have enough time to read. (For context, I was probably averaging two books a week. Maybe one non-fiction to every 10 YA lit books where someone smooches someone else at the end.) I figured, like I always figure, that when that period of my life ended I would have time to do some serious reading.

But no one told me college libraries don’t have fiction sections. Gone, gone are the days of wrapping myself in a mattress pad at night because I was too busy reading to put new sheets on my bed after laundry day.

I also remember tugging the ends of my hair and willing it to grow at age 15, thinking, my hair won’t be as long as I want it to be until I’m a senior in college and by then I’ll be so old that I won’t care about my looks anymore and all will have been wasted.

I am a tea kettle, constantly brewing misconceptions.

I hate talking about the passage of time and the weather, but: is it March next week? March last year was seeped in so much unsettlement, the nascent stages of all the emotions that grew into tall trees in the fall. It doesn’t seem so long ago.

I realize my blog suffers both the weaknesses of being infrequently updated and short on personal information--especially when I travel to new places! Do new things! Climb onto new rooftops and eat new fruits! So, insufficient though it may be, here is a brief summary of events:

Three weeks ago, seven boys who were watching the Super Bowl saw a commercial for sending flowers, which reminded them of a friend who’s address they asked me for. And then they sent me flowers too, finding themselves, no doubt, much deeper in the Israeli flower business than they'd ever expected. “Whoa, who loves you?” all the women in my office asked. To which I could truthfully respond, “Seven boys watching football in a bar in Alaska.” The flowers are dying now, which my roommate so helpfully pointed out over the weekend. ("Dead. Like your heart.”)

I went to Budapest last weekend. It was cold and crisp and I wore my favorite hat and walked across bridges and observed monuments to communism that towered tall above me and contemplated how small I am in the universe (so small) and how quickly we move on (at a moderate pace, it seems). When we got there and I squeezed myself off the budget airline, we had to run through a chilly night, chasing a bus I wasn’t sure was there. It was, and I remembered suddenly that I wasn’t over any of this.

Two weeks ago, I woke up early on a Saturday to play Frisbee on the beach. It felt both like a summer day and familiar. I threw the Frisbee into the road (unimpressive) and gracefully jumped a fence to run into oncoming traffic and retrieve it (impressive). We drank fresh passionfruit juice in the afternoon. Someone got sunburned. It rained the entire following week.

not so good at this

in the fall, i learned about writing things down that will never not be true.
sometimes this means that words are blue willow plates.
sometimes this means saying almost nothing at all.
sometimes it means waiting until something can be true before it can be said.
you learned no such thing.

in the corner of the diner you work at most nights,
the evening shift workers come in for coffee like clockwork.
you know their faces better than mine by now.
they ask you about your days,
and you fold dreams into their napkins.
mid-afternoon is all too often taken for granted,
you tell me when our kaleidoscopes match up for a moment.

i am sand stuck in a bathing suit.
i am a jellyfish sting on your leg.
you are salt water in my eyes.
i forgot the sunscreen. our sandwiches are hot.
there's only one water bottle.
you lost your sunglasses in the ocean.
the convenience store was out of all popsicle flavors except grape.
we are not so good at this.

i will never unfold napkin dreams at midnight.
i will write blue willow plate letters
and wait to send them until the sentiments feel true.
i will sometimes match my kaleidoscope to yours.
i will pass on the grape popsicles.
i will wait until i hang up to cry.

Kumquats

"You're livin' my dream life," I said earlier, to a friend who's an immensely talented photographer and spent her day putting those talents to use. We went back and forth several times--the kind of meaningless complimentary chatter that could be put on paper, then shredded and used to fill Easter baskets--before I conceded, "I mean, I'm living my dream life too. I just forget sometimes."

I do. Because real life isn't anyone's dream--to be enjoyed while wrapped in blankets and slipped out of when you've had enough. You scrape your knees and put too many rocks in your backpack sometimes, which is the kind of minor weight and hurt that's enough to distract anyone from how good it is (good: 68 degree days in January, strawberry season, supportive friends in front of you and forever away/bad: ever-present heartbreak).

Anyway, it's January 22. My internet game is the worst it's ever been in my entire life. I would make a New Year's resolution to blog more! or post more pictures! or whatever, whatever, whatever; but I've never been into New Year's resolutions (don't tell me when to set my goals. I'll do it when I want, which is never in the middle of winter), and I'm really not into raising anyone's expectations at the moment. This could be the only blog post of 2015. This could be the only blog post of the foregoing decade. This could just be another draft I never actually post.

But it's a Thursday night and the year is young and so many things in my life are unfamiliar in a way that's becoming routine and I'm here writing on my laptop, so why not/here we are/I'll always come back to this anyway.

I ate so many kumquats I made myself sick last month. "Wow, what are these tiny oranges! They are so sour and great!" I thought to myself one afternoon in early December. And then, perhaps 20 tiny, sour oranges later, there was enough acid in my stomach to make a zillion batteries.

Sometimes I feel all too stripped down. A lot of my life used to hang off my arms or drape over my shoulders or braid itself into my hair, and I didn't realize the weight wasn't supposed to be there until it wasn't. When the edges you thought were yours turn out to be empty air, it's enough to make anyone pause.

on my calendar this year

you are 16 feet tall.
in september, when you exhale, the leaves fall.
you are full of stories,
and slowly i am too--
one by one, lining the crooks of my arms
with moments i shouldn't know about,
forgetting that once i used to
use my arms to pull myself up
onto rooftops
and tree branches
and sides of the pool--
instead of holding on.

in january, when you cry,
the snow melts. on bad days,
sometimes i can see grass,
dead and brown. it's too soon for spring.
you are as tall as the cherry tree
my mom planted 8 years ago,
you don't know what you're doing to the ground.

in july, when we go swimming in the lake,
the water level rises.
just enough that we lose our lunch,
which was left carelessly close to the shore.
i forget that i used to eat before swimming,
you are busy floating on your back, and do not notice.

all year, i will love you.
all year, i will wade through your rivers,
even when my rainboots have holes in them and
my feet are cold.
all year, i will tell you about
the weather
the candle my roommate just bought
the song i heard on the bus in the morning
what i made for dinner
what i would have made for you, if you were here too.

all year, i will wonder if the 10 and a half extra feet you have on me is making this too complicated.
i will wonder sometimes if it's better not to melt the snow;
if it's better to not even bother swimming, and just eat lunch at home in my kitchen.
all year, i will wonder if i should use my arms for climbing again,
and just let go.

roadtrip promises

if you take the wheel, i will spread out this map
we bought at the gas station 15 miles ago
and tell you which way to go.

i will hold your hand when we're out of the city
and there are no more stoplights or traffic.

i will say "just one more hour, i think!"
even though i'm not so good at predictions.

i will peel you an orange,
shell pistachios for you,
unwrap granola bars for you.

i won't change the music if i don't want to,
but i'll consider your feedback.

for every farm animal we pass, you get one point;
for every orchard, i get one.

on nights when we have to keep going,
i'll take over the driving. you can stretch out in the backseat.
i'll listen to the news to stay awake.
when you wake up at 4:30 a.m. and ask if i want to switch,
ask if the empty roads are getting lonely,
ask if i want company,
i'll tell you it's ok, i don't mind so much,
the sun will be coming up soon anyway.
we'll get there soon anyway.

questions asked too late

is this what you meant? hands deep in your pockets, shoulders drawn forward, like you were holding too tight onto enough spare change to buy two-flavor ice cream swirl insides? i couldn't tell. can't tell. will never get a chance to tell. in the end, no one said "don't go." no one stood on a chair and asked the ceiling fan why girls have arms like pine trees, when so much changes anyway? why boys who tell tumbling stories with all the rushing force of the river's current in april are still always evaporating? it's why i took so many pictures that spring. it's why i never learned how to do a cartwheel. it's why i left my snow boots in the basement. so i would have a reason to come back eventually, if all my other reasons had moved on. that summer, the nights were too bright to hide all my blushing. instead of holding on, you let me go in a parking lot in the middle of the day. i tripped on a pothole walking back to my mom's honda, but it wasn't enough to stop me.

now there is a new kitchen

the straps of my tanktop don't stay up for long.
there is too much pointing to do.
my shoulders are in constant use
(but not because you are here,
telling stories loudly;
reaching out for emphasis).

i save up my moments for emails,
but it doesn't come through the same
when there are no interruptions.
the light makes all the edges blurry anyway.

i don't want to out-grow this.
i want the mud on my boots to last forever,
even if i feel out-of-place sometimes.

i haven't figured out yet if i should measure time
in teaspoons or teapots.
either way, i'll spill it all over the floor,
and memories will get mopped up like milk.

eventually, new sandpaper will smooth me out,
and all my corners will fit nicely.
someone else will sit across the table.
when i leave, i won't push the chair back in.

recycled cardboard

i wonder sometimes,
if i hold a sign up reading "home,"
scrawled on the torn off side of
the box your brother's speakers came in,
while standing on someone else's roadside--

boots unlaced,
hair undone,
insides untied--

where i'll end up these days?

it's not my intention anymore,
to figure out where hitchhikers will take me.

just to find home somewhere other than your kitchen table,
or on the extra bicycle your parents got, so visitors could join them on the bike trail at a moment's notice.
or in the extra toothbrush you kept around, or in knowing my favorite tea was always in your cabinet.

i have nightmares sometimes,
that i won't recognize anywhere.

someone's aunt will ask,
"sugar, what have you been up to these days?"
and i will pull my sweatshirt zipper up and down,
hoping that the length of my hair won't give anything away.
you know,
just
here
and there,
this and
that,
i guess.

how to leave

1.

do not start by estimating damages,
contemplating insurance,
wrapping your edges in old newspaper.
there will be enough time
to put furniture polish on your new scratches later.
the moving company promises nothing will break beyond repair.

2.

hold your breath,
and fold up your sweaters.
take off your shoes,
and kiss a boy who won't wait.
who will unbraid the promises in your hair,
and hold your hand until one of you goes.

3.

melt ice cubes on your skin to remind yourself
that once you were the only thing around above freezing.

4.

open your arms
as easily as you opened your passport
when the agent at border control
asked why you were here
at 7 a.m., after thousands of miles,
you adjusted the hem of your last clean shirt
and told the truth:
it was time.