I don't sleep alone

As you believe I do. I’m surrounded by winged things that clasp the wood, drawn to the candle, hot against the flame. I keep nightly company with silver tipped scurries, soft whisps of flight against my ear, paper wings that fold and tuck neatly behind the back like my hands that grasp each other in solemnity. Like the thoughts I have when drifting, my nocturnal visitors are light but carry an under hue of something deeper, richer, something we try to dig. Velvet soil running through a cupped palm; perched in the corner watches with eight diamond eyes, grins because she knows I know and I’m not afraid. I welcome the flutter. I wake and sweep the remnants from the cracks in the floorboards. Against the blonde wood you are incandescent and I mourn for the loss of spark that you once held; right here tucked beneath the faintest curve of a silver veined wind that runs like the river from the base of you to the outstretched fan of your flight. These are the beings that weave and watch and fly…

she...

was the type to always carry a tigers eye stone because she deserved to be protected
hid a knuckle of ginger in her purse- mostly for luck, but also for cocktails
pinned dried jasmine to remember
carried such color in her skin, so much magic in her hands

La dolor exquisite

I am the spirit of the inward

The fever that lives in bones and Tarot cards,

 what is picked Up and thrown down.

The scent of desire and decay.

 I am The new that is ancient,

The hope that hurts,

The budding and the weaving and the stunned bird who falls

You long for me lengthwise

My gleaming ribs a corset to harness

The pleasure and the plenty.

Mine is the double vision

That everything is sacred, and trivial,

the dice won’t tell you anything

you don’t already know.

I am the laughter that bubbles in hot blood,

(Dolor supervivo caro//Dolor sublimus caro//Dolor ignio animus)

And I love the silver spider

Trapping males in my window.

I let her cross over my chest because

I know we are the same.

Mine is the crone wisdom that whispers

You are everything to me,

 you are nothing.

seek shelter

There are chasms of time, and they are vast, where I want to run to you. I sit still and straight and imagine a swift about-turn, weight pressed on the heel as I make the first move back to the time and space we once occupied together. But I guess in many ways and over many moons there have already been moves made. It was February and I was across the Pacific when you told me I was a genius. Often after a scotch I feel brave enough to tell you you I am proud of you. Between the sinewed limbs of contact (a palm curved upward, reaching towards you) week do pass, jobs and siblings and sentiments are lost, and though I forget bit by bit the subtleties of your truth, in a certain semblance we remain intact. We move away but stay in place. Sometimes you're the breath that catches in my throat. Other times you are a tenseness running down my thighs. Once the sirens started and an ancient war began anew you sat with me in my thoughts when I passed panicked hours in the bomb shelters of Jerusalem. Like you, these shelters are open to me; omnipresent- and yet hidden- and my presence in them tells of both safety and a shameful surrender. I spent years hiding beneath you. Breathing you in when I wouldn't draw air alone. Where will I run to when the next siren sounds?

He changed four flat tires last weekend, each one a testament to the certain type of struggle I seem to always search for. The steady curve of his upper arms a methodical sculpture of the hours under the hood, the soft trail of hair that wrapped around his wrist matted, his neck ridged I would slide my fingers down each one, remembering who I was as my rings winked teal, amber, golden in the sun

on air

In Tzfat the City of Air a heat wave hit us as heavy as the chosen people’s tone, we wove through the north steadily, chewing mint to cool us down, shedding layers like preconceptions.  A long red dress to hug the knees, the length of our limbs sprinkled by the salt in thin air. I held a bag weighted down with figs- it was too hot to eat anything that weekend but the promise of something so fresh hanging from my wrist kept me climbing up the holy city’s endless sweeping staircases. Each ascent a story and a battle and an intention well examined. In heat like this; like a handicap, a curse and a cloak; every movement is a meditation.

Winding through alleyways we found ourselves resting in ancient doorways, plucking olives from a thousand year old tree. Following the long and sure step of my sister, squeezing lemon in our hair to lighten in the sun.

When I think of this summer I will think of the week we spent in the heat of the north of this fertile country, old notions weighting me down at the wrist; a bag full of the fruits we will never eat. Just beyond the palm all the things we will never reach for in unison. The three of us together thinking maybe this will last forever and wondering what would happen when it didn’t.