Fires Burn In The Shape Of Mountains, Mere Miles From My Porch Step.

A letter to my father,

I behave youthfully around you, happy go lucky and thoughtless at times. This isn’t because I am those things, but because you let me be. You have never been a parent to me, but a friend. And as your friend, I must tell you:

I behave as if there is nothing the matter, to keep the peace, and not ruin what bond we have, but I have been lying to you, and to myself, that our differing politics needn’t ever intersect. In fact, they intersect every time I look at you and remember the hat you hang in your garage. The red one, with the white letters. I remember you voted against my interests for your own, which foolishly you did, as you will not get your way in the end.

And seeing as I cannot have my father and honesty at once, it seems neither will I.

When the vine burst through cooked earth, and curved to and fro toward the sun, I knew growth was not linear, nor was it impossible to come back from the dead.

The Dog’s Way

I do wish I could be gentle with myself. I really do. But my way is the dog’s way, anything I don’t like on me I chew up and swallow. I carry everything I hate in my gut because it is all I have to take. And I cannot bear to live hungry.

Why is it light is thought of as good and dark as evil? As if the shadows sewn to our heels want anything more than to be like us.

I’m trying to hold onto myself.

Rushing water.

I can’t remember what I came out here for.

Rain coming down.

I wonder if my mascara is running.

Wind pushing.

But I can’t bother to wipe my face if it is.

Create as you would breath, constantly, to live and not to impress. It’s there in your vital honesty you’ll find what it is you’re seeking, there sitting softly in your calloused hands.

If I have learned anything of those who are advanced and civilized, it is this:

New technology is praised even as it wrecks the earth and is manufactured by children’s hands,

Rich men can kill millions so long as they do it sitting in a board room in a suit and tie, but let a poor man kill one rich man and he is quick to die,

Advancements in medicine are available only to those who can afford them, all the brilliance in the world distilled behind a paywall,

In the heat of all their innovation and progress, they have forgotten empathy. And that renders their advancements useless and backward, their intelligence only lets them be more unique in their cruelty.

Her photo bends white at the creases, opened and closed a thousand times, my memories dull and taper away. I think of her. And I wonder what parts of her face I’ve forgotten in my desperate plea to remember every freckle on it.

Sometimes when I have a dream, I feel entirely refreshed of my old perspectives. I see everything brand new, as if I’m a different person. What relief. I know now why our minds wander in the fields of the twilight hours. To abandon the stagnant pond misery we wade in and remember possibility, endless as always.

Life asked Death:

Have you ever been loved?

She responded:

Unfortunately. Flickering moments of love for me in forlorn men are common. Though they always end the same. In my arms, thinking only of you.