He always wore a mustache.

I used to inhale dreams with peaches
And exhale sonatas
On tuesdays.

At nigbt dad carried my hands
And tied them up in a bow
So i was carrying his gift

"Vision."

I saw it with those hands,
My eyes really liked the taste

It made me smile.
 Smile.
 Smile.

When i grew up i would be like him
My husband would be too--
He would sing tenor and
his hands would find tunes on the piano, name them after me and
be my soccer coach.

The future would taste like smoothie and grow like the tomatoes we planted in our garden
so we'd harvest it in colanders.

We were open, unrestricted circles of potential;
Dad drew it out on whiteboards to prove it to us.

and it was happy.
Because 4 words he didn't speak out loud
were always in my dreams, I traced them there, with my toes, in the sand:
I am good enough.

Sometimes its still hard to treat him like a friend, and I'd like to.

words are sometimes hard to push into motion through the air,

to let them

find the puzzle of bridges

over these multi-dimensional gaps

separating (even the) people (who love) from each other.

but my life acknowledges to his that his dreams fed me until I grew obesely idealistic

and threatened to smile too hard.

'thanks dad' is a bigger feeling than this keyboard can touch. 

I'm waiting for a typewriter and some jazz. 

some peach jam and cheese. 

He'd like that.

everett mills.  

three magi

a glimpse into Day 3:

Grandmothers 

wear scarves in their hair

lifting prayer books to their faces

where bobbing eyes have left tears on open pages.

(Prayers are written and folded like gum wrappers as Tetris players approach the wall one by one. How can we fit all these small squares of paper prayers?)

Girls in matching black skirts and ponytails rock forward and back, forward and 

but one girl in particular stands out.

Standing on a stool, her face is pressing tightly against the limestone wall the way 

I'd like to press myself to sunlight today. She's bright. Her lips move slightly into a smile, never mind that the wall won't let her in.

the phenomenon of the western wall:
here, i'm proud to be a Jew
and I'm not Jewish.

(a few months prior) Day 2:

Sometimes the world is so beautiful i start to cry.
Sunrise on the Dead Sea picks up the desert in its arms
 and gilds her gently.

The sun is up and painting, fingers dragging mirth across his canvas.
 (or
is he a blacksmith? his workshop begins to glow.)

Rising over groves of date palms, the sun
blinds
he is growing taller as we drive.

Once, I grew taller
and the sun was my constant.

Does he remember
little me with dusty palms and rubber shoes?
He will rise above me forever,
but
Today
we are just 42 people learning each other's laughs.

We're artists in a bus,
tracing the Dead Sea,
tracing groves of date palms,
tracing a beach day in our minds
pulling out a stencil for new friendships
again.

In the beginning (Day 1):

We miss their shining eyes.

These are more stars than i have ever seen and each one of
them left heart-craters.

Candles down below become explosions of light pricks

Twisting cords of

fairy lights

Nebulae reaching for somewhere else

They're happy now.

You and I pause in 

reflections of eternally

 expanding 

starlight.

(I'm waiting for an answer.)

who am i because of 10 minutes in a children's holocaust memorial?

--

the fish

Galilee is a blue chair in the sand.
the alternatives were white reclining chairs and
we are
"more numerous than the sands of the sea"

what if Christ fed the multitude with his toes in this sand?

let me sit here forever.

in the ocean of Abraham's posterity I'd like to be one of the grains that saw him, a pinprick in the multitude but he knew the shape of my life.

I was playing the guitar with my feet in the water
I was crunching seashells as I jogged
I was digging my toes in the sand
I was

"swollen with joy," he said. his heart was swollen with joy
and I finally found the feeling of this kibbutz

soft and gentle,
as if someone were spreading butter on my heart.
Sunset here is fresh acrylics replacing a sepia world.

I don't have the words to put Galilee into a box, and I don't want them.

what I want is
humility so I will always remember
what I want is
more time but its time for dinner
what I want is
more chances so what i give will be enough

abundantly so.

call to prayer

I am sitting in the world's first breath.
Five times a day, we all breathe together, and this is the first.
















We're in my favorite place.
A place of pattern.
cobblestone lines racing beneath my crossed legs jump into a fence
and the ancient cityscape beyond it.
The fence is white and checkerboard,
the valley is a soup of vectors and a horizon that is always dusty and faded
history's housetops run northward until they melt into sunflowers and olive trees

Breathing.
we've grown up on fresh
air
but here it breaks from the lungs of a Muslim man in an unnamed tower before its ours to inhale.
lets call him grandfather.

You can taste his patterns of sound,
they are woven together like straw hats.
Grandfather has a city to watch over, men and women to guide home through their streets on pilgrimage to bow at the waist and bow to the ground;
many times, daily, to prayer.

Allah.
voices from the minarets
are trumpets
they are proud
like opera singers
they are echoing from there to here on the hill where I sit, listening.
they are
many voices coloring the air, drops of water falling together
until they are swimming together
in our blood and waking up college students at 4:30 and at 12 and at 3:30 and at 5:50 and at 7 and we forget its there
like the air we breathe.

This is one time, today.
I pick it up like a bookmark
to remind me where I am.

Palestine, a series: Hope

We want to change things and it feels like fire.

not afraid of a dousing.

Palestine, a series: Sorrow

He talks about Palestine like people talk about their families

like I talk about my parents' divorce and my struggling little brothers

like Katie talked about her dad leaving

like I think about breaking up with Cyle

"Palestine..."

still its a beautiful word coming out of his mouth.
it makes him swallow a lot and he teaches with silence.

normally his words are hardened;
this is a fact of life.
"the Palestinians are losing hope."

Palestine, a series: Freedom

I'm holding the flowers.
She was beautiful
the thought of being equal
She did so much good to all around her,
always happy, and kind.
She will be missed.

Midnight:22

some thoughts, to a friend:

I hear you ever time i sigh.
I think we are breathing together.
Can you hear me?

When I'm thinking about the truck bed, can you hear me?
when I'm feeling the roof tiles under my feet,
when I'm tasting the blackberries
when I'm running in the dark neighborhood around my apartment, tilted up at the stars and lifting my arms to fly

I see you but
Can you hear me?
I know you can.

are we thinking the same thoughts?
when I want to lean against you and study 
when I'd like to hear you laugh
J U S T  B Y  E X I S T I N G 
I wade through parallels to you.

(can you hear me breathe?)

Its midnight and I had a midterm today and one tomorrow and I'm not ready for my test but I'm ready to write to you.
I'd like you to be tangible. Anything about you could be tangible.
As it is I'll sleep soon when I finish my laundry and then I'll wake up soon when I finish my dreams and then I'll be in class soon and 
it was nice to be in control of my life, 
I guess I'd like that back again. 

Time will tell. Might tell you, might tell me, she tends to whisper and I'd really like to hear but 

now the world seems loud.

Today we did cartwheels in the grass 

barefoot

and I remembered there's a moon.

Its like I jumped into a barrel of feeling:

I don't know which feeling, but I've got a new coat of paint

and I feel a little tripped up

like my skin is half dry and half stripy

and half camouflage

and a quarter sore from studying

and the other 80% is confused

this probably means I'm shifting into a new shape

or on my way to getting those big white wings. 

I know what I shouldn't say.

Meh

a world with him is a better world.

- I M  G R A T E F U L  I  S T I L L  L I V E  T H E R E -

Goodbye,
Everett Mills

Exodus

I've got 30 minutes to write but I've spent days falling short of poetry. 

Is the ink inside of me drying up?
What would well up in its place?


A collection of thoughts:
I'd like to collect poetry daily, like manna.
It would be refreshing in this desert of textbook reading.
"What is it?" said the children of Israel.
the taste is like honey, small flakes to turn into a variety of meals;
I'll examine poems like the Israelites.
"What is this?"
Words like honey.
Flakes I don't understand,
consumed daily.

We're grateful, the Israelites and I, at least for now.
A few years wandering may change that.
But words turn me into someone better, keep me growing, if poetry is manna
I won't just eat I'll give
I'll seek corners needing names and faces wanting recognition
--their stories untold--
Give away pieces of my heart wrapped in punctuation
until pieces of me are growing all over the world,
finding tropical breezes and blooming no matter the desert
my feet find themselves in.

a future

Palestine
I write from Israel.
turmoil mutters that something is missing from me.
futures
are unfurled
too slowly.

You and I
We float in an ocean of peach trees
the ocean breathes and our hearts bob, we are gulls on the waves
you touch me like salt and rain and
peach fuzz
our hearts have lifted into flight above us

we taste like
climbing trees at midnight
no lights
sap
barefoot skin finding peeling bark, hiking up the trunk sideways
hands grappling
hair in mouth
tangled
towards more oxygen.

we were two at the bottom
sitting underneath the world,
a world on top
distant,
hearing
there is a place colored with the sun's eye drops:
light. and cobalt blue
Rising
we swim upward the orchard
toward peaches and deep breathing and vision

hold me up to the light and tell me we are real. solid?
build me, shift, push me you've caught me enough times to last forever
I'd be safe thinking of how

i think God drew you with a crayon
outlined all your edges
carefully, filled you in with sand and seashells
I think he put you with me and fed you milk and honey
because he couldn't stand to see us cry.

sometimes I still taste the salt.
But in these treetops...
He gave you a garden and we climb it because
the future is waiting for us, we lift seashells to our ears and she calls
her breath is on our foreheads my eyes squinting before her light,
heart pounding--my skin just unlatched and my soul is open to the white storm of light beckoning hello love
we will be beautiful
we'll meet our future on the bottom or the top but
We'd rather feel like birds

we want to look her in the eyes.

Lists and hard facts

Define the future:
I can't.

Freckles:
Several along your jawline, the right side especially.
Three or four up your neck.

I like your eyes

this way

This is the way I feel.
I haven’t felt this since those high school funerals.
the way I feel. 

I haven’t felt this since goodbye last year.

(since)

I am leaving my country.

My heart is buried in this ground

One two three hacks with a shovel unearth my heart pry it out as this flight lifts up

This is the way I feel 

You are my country

This was different

We were new

Airplane windows have painted a landscape of fire 

Gold from the sun is reaching out to touch me with its fingers. His hands curl and are gentle, 

His fingers look like yours 

Wide broad brown soft kind strong 

I smell your touch and

I am warm even through airplane air-conditioning 

You are my country. 

This is the way I feel.

Forever ago, my friend

You

are June.

Crimson-stained hills

and a stretch of sun-burnt walks.

(We are prying for loose change in the cracks)

The world is a quilt and we are its center piece

a square of velvet, we are blue and soft eyes

You and I

we are masters together

natives of the dreamland

heroes in second-hand accessories.

Ours is an Empire-

built on lucky coins and sidewalk chalk,

we dust our palms and gold escapes our fingertips.

Wind chimes keep time and we

flaunt backyard sunsets and mom’s

rose

lipstick, lost,

we are staring up at meteor-showered skies

Transfixed, as if

they are a bathtub-full of June poppies

we've spilled across California.

dated: 1 Septembre 2016

(thoughts from my first area)

We are four girls in a room
there are four big walls.
and a terrace with flower pots being eaten by worms.
I am sitting in a chair on the terrace.
Chewing my finger. chewing my thoughts.
Thinking on meetings with strangers. thinking
on encounters with a book &
FIRE-eyes--
always trying to turn on my
FIRE-eyes--
when I talk about that book.
I try to speak in other languages-- the language that brings out their fire-hearts, that makes them cry.
we want them to cry, because we want to speak with their heart.

Hello Heart.
Hello Heart.
open please?
giving you something that tastes good, that feels good. It will grow into a tall beautiful flower.

I try to speak with fire-eyes, in that other language that is heard deeper, farther down.
And in French. Always in French.

Beautiful things listen to us--little babies, always.
People on trains stare at us. tall people look down at us, short people look sideways at us. Questions...

we are two and two with name tags.

rain and jam

Why do I keep?
There is a tingle in my right leg that makes my big toe into a bale of hay.
My eyes are closing up for the night, sweeping out the last of the customers
They are wanting to stay
And we want our legs back

things are leaping onto outside

Leaps into reflections of a roof

And I stand up to close the door.

My ship crashes through waves pushes my legs back to be stumbling,

Balance comes slowly more slowly than the couple below joined beneath an umbrella beneath falling marbles explosions at their feet.

Cold bones

I am keeping 

Warmth in the taste of words

A new book of old poetry

Freshly bought, tightly squeezed, making orange juice from Cummings and Elliot in my lips

They taste like rain and jam, thunder and a quilt, rain dropping and I feel you here too

Sometimes

Warming my cold fingers with words and fingerprints pressed against mine--

but I am alone in paper and Paris

thanksgiving, three years later

when i have no words to write I'm thankful for the sky,
who wouldn't read them anyway.

Sometime we could remember,
Remember for years until we forget ourselves and wake up groggy-eyed in heaven.

Let's remember magnesium-green cliffs and the drunk man Greg who must have been a priest,
he bowed his head to his guitar and prayed while his hand painted nylon strings into the blues.
His church was the hostel at his back and its pews the single white plastic chair
where he slouched at midnight.

We were only in Moab.

But sometimes I'm afraid of running out of light, like last night on the cliffs. I'm thankful that God put stars above my head, and a half moon.
I'm thankful that he tightened my grip on the rope and gave me leather gloves and friends with cheez-its who caught me at the bottom.
He put red walls around us for a day and put us together in a car thinking about home and russia and our next trip... Me? I'm trying to remember how to write.

Grow a little, y'all. don't be scared.
When we get taller we'll just buy new clothes and graduate from primary and
see the world from a few inches higher and
buy ourselves new bikes.

Someone's with you to catch you when you fall and cradle your head til the tears stop.
I'm no tree but I've felt hollow,
sometimes when life is a little much I think thanks and look into fish tanks and remember how
God loves me more.

..................................

& big thoughts like those
make me grow,

tall and thankful