It's So Nice

I just read my best friend's blog, and I feel like my heart could explode. She is so beautifully full of good and pure hopes.

I've noticed that somedays I miss myself. That sounds weird and maybe conceited, but sometimes a thing will catch me, stick its hand into my chest and squeeze its bony fist around my heart (like her blog did just now), and this thing will shout a phrase, a brief memory, that I had forgotten to remember. It reminds me of the parts of myself I don't know how to show, the parts of me that have been pushed into shadowed and dusty corners, packed tightly into boxes and locked in storage buildings.

Today I was reminded of what a secret optimist I am, how hopelessly romantic I am, how beautiful the little seemingly-mundane moments in life are. It makes me want to kiss a blade of grass, tell a stranger they have amazing hands, take off all my clothes and admire my perfect flaws before running screaming into the ocean. I want to kiss my best friend's elbows and knees and say "I know I never saw them bleed, so this is for all the time before I knew you, to connect to it."

Mostly, though, I want to say thank you. To my best friend, for reminding me how capable I am of love and hope.

Wander on.

For Shannon, on the Beach of Dewees

We prayed for waves, your flaxen hair

tied back and drenched, but instead

we carried your surfboard back,

heavy as a fisherman's haul through

the shushing breeze. That day, it felt so long ago

when your freckles sat pale against

your cream skin, the sun having crisped it

to cancer-tan perfection.

The day, lusty and young, fell about us--

a dream-like melody recording wrinkles in our skin.

You ran back to the sea, wanted

to show me live sand dollars, their bodies

soft and green in the rising brine. "Hold him," you said,

sliding the hairy creature onto my palm.

He already smelled dead.

Waiting to be bleached by the sun

and collected, maybe by you--

just someone who wanted him remembered,

set to decorate a cabinet or table-top.

This small, ugly soul: a new conversation piece.

But it was you, watching me,

your eyes calling like an endless tide, pulling me out,

catching ocean songs in my chest.

Something that Made Me Absurdly Happy

Popped onto Yahoo! to check my email after class this morning and what should come up in one of the headline links but this: 101 Small Pleasures You Can Enjoy Every Day (http://shine.yahoo.com/event/makeover/101-small-pleasures-you-can-enjoy-every-day-1125425/)

I want to share some of my favorites (since, ya know, the one about reading your kids a bedtime story didn't really apply to me)

1. coloring

5. the first daffodils of spring

6. sleeping in

8. window boxes

12. a handwritten letter

14. singing in the shower

20. playing hookey

28. old fashioned photobooths

34. a novel you can get lost in

42. a bear hug

48. singing along to the radio and knowing all the words

53. puppies

54. root beer floats

60. spending the afternoon at a museum

63. the sound of rain hitting the windows

65. holding hands

72. slow dancing

81. a pull-through parking space

92. jumping in puddles

94. birds hopping on the sidewalk

100. having exact change

101. bacon and pancakes cooking on Saturday morning

Wouldn't that be the life? But then again, why can't it be? Wander on.

Picking Up Good Vibrations

I ran into a teacher from my high school today who's glad I've been putting up poetry, and my friend who originally complained was happy about it, too. It feels good to be appreciated, and it feels great to know I'm eliciting emotion in others. Here's another. Wander on.

Girl in Sleep

Her body, still hot with sleep, invites exploration:

a new world of soft rolling hills, the deep valleys

of her waist and thighs, unseen pagan voodoo magic.

Your hand hesitates. She is still dreaming,

probably, and you want to glide over that barely visible

belly-buttoned band of skin, taste the small salt water

collected on her neck. This Carolina summer,

so early, sweltering and heavily ripe, caught the breath

in your chest--her bare shoulder called to you

like a pale dune in the night. And you beckoned back,

begging to grasp the magnolia delirium, longing

to know if this was the South her people lost

like the velvet grace of a girl's finger on her lips.

Your girl stirs, shrinking the gap between your torsos--

a space you hadn't recognized.

Weekends are for the Warriors

This has been one of the best weekends I can remember. My whole body hurts, I'm absolutely exhausted, I have a shit-ton of work to get done before 9 a.m., and I have some serious road-rash on my left ankle. I started learning to skate on my friend's longboard, helped cut this same friend's hair. I've fulfilled my college student duty and demolished two huge bowls of ramen. I went to the beach, played soccer, four square, and frisbee, learned sun salutations, and bled in the ocean. I haven't gotten eight continuous hours of sleep since Thursday. I bawled like a baby at P.S. I Love You.

This post doesn't have much of a point. I'm not even tacking a poem on to this one. This is just to remember this weekend. This post is to say: Don't think everything has to have a reason. Nothing has reason until we give it some. But, just because it doesn't have reason doesn't mean in isn't invaluable. Doing something, or remembering something just because it makes you happy, or makes you feel something is reason enough. Don't keep yourself from laughing and crying, it's good for you.

Now, I've got hours worth of homework to sleep through.

Wander on.

Another Go

Lately, I've been looking forward to transferring colleges, studying abroad, and getting homesick. I feel like the getting homesick part may sound weird, but some days I need something to miss, something to call to me and make my breastbone warm and sore. It's nice, sometimes, to yearn for something beyond yourself; a love, a home, something or someone that is so uncompromisingly out of your control that they push you to be your best self. That sort of place or thing or person has to stay somewhat foreign, though. I've realized that if you know he/she/it completely, then they've given themselves to you, they have surrendered, and as sweet as that is, today in the rain with nostalgia in my head, not knowing is beautiful because it's not something you remember, but something you hope.

Here's another poem that all just sort of gushed out at 4 this Saturday morning. Wander on.

While We're Here and Being Honest

Some days, I want to be beloved--

belonging to someone like their eyelashes.

I like the feel of taut arms around me,

of warm breath on my shoulder,

of fingers interlaced. Beloved, I walk

through strange cities with an internal

map; I glide over waves without knowing how.

But beloved, I am as I am

imagined to be: porcelain and flawless

and fragile. Beloved, I am handled

so gently I can't feel the hands there

and with such trepidation I never

know who walks by my side

with his arm slung heavy on my shoulder.

Some days, I imagine I am

yours, with the eye-catching

glance language of lovers,

the brush of your arm on mine

like the moon to my seas, calling

me out of myself. I think of my hands

in your hair at dawn, clearing love

and thought lines through the strands.

I think of scrambled eggs and

flipped pancakes and sliced fruit.

But I know your eyes don't darken for me,

and most days I think I love you better

in the ways I imagine you would be.

I imagine you would read this

and kiss my mouth, cradle my neck and back

to press me into you. But it's almost sunrise,

you are asleep across town, and when the sun

rises on our separate beds, it will catch you

in someone else's embrace, and I

in the softness of my skin.

On a Whim and a Recommendation

A friend of mine complained to me the other day that he couldn't keep up with my new poetry now that he lived so far away, so for a few days I will experiment by posting some of my work on here. We'll see how it goes. Wander on.

Sonnet I

Your neck, still and warm

with sleep, carries the musky

scent of salt sprayed oaks

across the pillow to me.

In sleep, your skin--that

earthen brown--glows like fever,

like rain glistening on grass

awaiting the next July storm.

I would nestle into you,

fold together our bird-wing arms,

kiss your eyelids one and one

but your perfect sleep is

already belonging to the dreams

in which I cannot lay.