My breath is the salt spray

My breath is the salt spray
on your deep brown skin
as if we were ever on the same beach at the same time.
I reflect on those Los Angeles years
through a new lens
tinted
brown beach holidays when there was time to make the traffic-locked drive from east-side neighorhoods
we may as well have called the Westside whiteside as we stayed inside
I'm learning
about white privilege from black teachers
and now I almost know
what it feels like to never have had to speak for all the people of my racial group because
we are individuals
we have always been
individuals.
I have never had to worry that my actions will reflect poorly on other white people.
I am sickened by this
realization that I have no history, no meaning, no shared experience
of depth I cannot fathom.
Cast me out to sea, I want to struggle
to stay afloat
to take into my lungs little gasps of air and water...
My breath is the salt spray
on your deep brown skin.

A NaPoWriMo prompt - http://www.napowrimo.net/day-six-6/

Vivante

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe1gmkL3xQg

I apologize, it's true

that I imagine us, cavalier

more violently alive than the world would have us

https://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/24561/auto/0/At-the-highest-point-of-her-development

A NaPoWriMo prompt - http://www.napowrimo.net/day-five-5/

Long winter

It's April and snowing again
and the sounds of life slowly disappear
and I can't think of any other words except
blankets
and the landscape recedes, zooming away from my window, down the block
my ears suddenly ring with desperate silence
as I feel the weight of the window sill
lift beneath my warm finger tips
to let the isolation whoosh out of the bedroom window
and the smell of fresh nothing fill my lungs

A NaPoWriMo prompt - http://www.napowrimo.net/day-four-6/

Band Names

Fizzled Daydreams We Are
Perpendicular Universes
Colliding in Your Back Seat
Locked Into You
Until I Gaze Upon
Unexpected Pistachio
Ever So Slightly
Split Like Me

A NaPoWriMo prompt - http://www.napowrimo.net/day-three-4/

Fine Lines

I think there's a fine line
between remembering and forgetting.
The clinging to and the letting go,
as with my body and its blood.

You sense there's a fine line
between sociopathy and buddhism.
The monk is not attached to her hair,
as you are not bound by reproduction.

She knows there's a fine line
between starting over and moving on.
The postcards have different names,
as her luggage waits by the door.

A NaPoWriMo prompt - http://www.napowrimo.net/day-two-5/

Panorama

That I think of life as death and death as life
is a secret held close from the common.

And you might think me inside out and backwards
in that brief moment of your discerning.

But that's okay my short-time friend
the mortal soul knows its calling.

And I will hold your hand and lead you from here
As you allow yourself to untether.

Where edges of the world bleed into focus
and tears are shed for the smallest beauty.

Life and death betray a spectrum
of a love story unending.

A NaPoWriMo prompt - http://www.napowrimo.net/here-we-go/

The in between

Some days the gravity is too strong

so I summoned the Eternal by looking at a picture of a bird in flight because a real bird wasn’t in my living room

and then afraid I was about to escape my mind I made hard-boiled eggs and ate one while it was still warm and soft and the scent of bird was there which made me sad that I was eating a bird

so I put that out of my mind and sat down with a hard-bound book and let the weight of it sit in my palms and brushed the cover with my thumbs to feel the hardness and when I opened the book and began to read 

the pages released my mind and it was gone after all

Some days the gravity isn’t strong enough

The erasure was forgotten

The erasure was forgotten

like a slow train

coast to coast

through trees and hills and blasted rock

forgets its ties

that fade into a single, distant point

around a bend

in time

when thought was free

inside your skull

you steel yourself

resisting

those arresting thoughts

powerless

to rail against

the police of thought

A prompt from http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/2017/02/flash-55-plus.html

In this plain state

Sepia-toned Sunday

I move slowly through the house

Socks shuffling on smooth wood planks

Pausing at the kitchen sink to reflect

On this tiny backyard and its plainness

In this plain town in this plain state

Of affairs

I’ve had with other places this romance

Of what could be, of what I could be

When I was younger

It wasn’t a what-if fantasy that lasted more than a minute

Because I was up and gone

And now I move slowly

Through my body and through my mind

If only to show my heart that it’s ok

To move slowly

Through this romance with the world

As it could be

And the more slowly I move the more I see

The world as it is

And somewhere in the slowness of time

The what-if fantasy is beautiful in its dream-like state

Of affairs

I’ve had this idea that something bigger is happening 

Somewhere else

I was up and gone

And now the world seems smaller

As I shuffle in my socks 

In this plain house, in this plain town

In this plain state

I’m in

We The Tree

I feel like everything can be likened to a tree

The trunk

The branches

The leaves

The system of it all

Do the branches really only stretch as far as the roots allow

Does the trunk forever build its protective layers

Do the leaves turn to face the winds

I just realized I don’t really know how a tree works

The knowing when to die

And when to be reborn