Breathe and float

I cannot catch my breath and so I sail forward into the day,

my exhalation fueling momentum, 

my inhalation creating the calm before the storm.

I cannot finish my list, so I up-end the table with a simple lift and push. Over it goes, a listing ship of to-dos and not-dones; a n’er-do-well am I. 
I feel better when the wooden legs are broken, the chairs upset, the cutlery and pencils scattered across the tile, papers fluttering as my breath grows ragged and then (spokes of the hurricane) quiet.

I cannot quiet the looping in my head and so I run the opposite direction from where I sit on the field of floor, my dreams distracting me from the anger and fear sprinting throughout. 

Yet I return, out of breath, to my thoughts in this memoried track meet, a meeting of mind and heart and all the places my feet have been. We choose our loops or they choose us.

And the clouds gather.

I cannot gather my thoughts enough to choose between tasks and so I curl up in bed and read and read and read. I pull my laptop close to me and words spill out in barbed clickity-clacks and dripping pauses, a river of sentences full of jumping commas and gnashing dashes waiting to be caught, gutted, filleted, and devoured.

I am the hand on the pole and the hook and the jaws clamping down. 

It starts to rain.

I turn to look at myself and the words play dead in upturned palms.

My to-do list flops around, breathless, on the floor.

I am moved to stay still in this flood of not-enough, obligation circling at my ankles, pant cuffs wet with guilt and perceived failure. The current pulls me, it is too strong to resist and I am soaked in old tales. They rush into my lungs as I go under, commas and dashes thrashing about my head, sharp-toothed numbers sizing up my longevity and worth, jumbled letters clinging to my thighs. 

It is the words that untangle and push me up to the surface. Buoy me with susurrations of truth. I take a breath and feel the sky clearing and see the shore and taste the wind. I am floating. I can feel the turbulence underneath the surface but these words keep me afloat, above the flood, below the storm, in the soft dampness of the in-between.

I cannot catch my breath and so I sail forward into the day,

my exhalation fueling momentum, 

my inhalation creating the calm before the storm (that washes the sky clean).

Tumbling Towards Truth

They attack, teeth in bone, cracking and grating along my spine. 

I can feel the careful flesh of my heart tearing, opening, 

 bleeding bright red truths into this world once cradled blue.

I feel my guts exposed, 

my brain disconnected

 as those magnificently small beats of wing 

flutter and flap and vie for an escape.

My mouth opens, 

the words pour onto the sidewalk in front of you. 

I cover my lips, 

the emotions seep through my fingers 

and onto your palms waiting patiently close to my chest.

You catch, 

you hold, 

you embrace 

these truths with me.

You fill my outstretched hands with tumbling truths of your own.

Some sounds can’t be held 

and slink into the space between the earth and concrete, 

between the always was and recently has been. 

Back into the core
they nourish the next radicle of seed, 

the next raging of shark, 

the next word out of your mouth 

straight from your cracking and grating backbone, 

fins and teeth everywhere.

Words on Strike

The words creep and crawl around the noise filling my head. They put tiny curlicued palms to Courier ears and stomp over the Arials to escape the din. We are in need of swirling silence, they want to say, but the other sounds are too loud for them to speak, so they continue to stomp, to cringe, to stumble around the latticed areas of my parietal cortex.

I stop suddenly as an itch becomes a steady burn in my head. They are getting upset and I can feel it. They are fighting back now, not simply scurrying away to hide in folds and fluid. I put the broom down; cleaning can be done later. Off goes the Spotify, twangy banjo cut off mid-riff. I finish chewing that handful of walnuts I wasn't really hungry for but needed internal noise to drown out the external.

I sit on my stool. It is green vinyl on a painted green metal base. The color has worn away where boots once fidgeted, now my bare feet. I get up from my stool because I remember there is one dish left to be washed, a load of laundry to be done, my bed has not yet been made! Those clothes on the floor should be hung up, organized, sorted, donated. And have I looked at the bathroom lately? Dust on the toilet tank...

I wash the dish.
I know this is a trap. I dry my hands and sit back on my stool. I stare.

It is quiet in this room except for the planes overhead and children laughing in the water and the occasional rumble of furniture being moved upstairs (this happens more than normal, I believe). It becomes white noise as I sit and stare and wait. The words uncup their ears and emerge from their hiding places. They wander and touch and greet one another and start to sing down the lines from the deep gray. They clap and dance and I can barely keep up with their ramblings but am joyously energized by the tumbling of symbols onto the page.

They want to be heard.

I only have to stop and listen.

Stars Words Sea

I saw a shooting star tonight. The light caught the edge of my dimming vision, the edge of my shooting thoughts. The sun had set an hour before, the clouds darkening from red to purple to black as I traced a path of incomplete half steps along the sandy shore. It fell so quickly, I wondered if it happened, if I happened to remember it wrong. But that is not possible. Memories are true no matter how much truth they contain. Just as journalism is the same as fiction, a day's happening and a dream are both real.

They say that Mercury is in Retrograde. I imagine a planet spinning backwards, pausing briefly to soak up the rays of the far off sun when in the neighborhood. I wonder if the stars falling through the universe towards me are affected by bouts of confusion, misunderstandings. If they are told not to start new projects (like burning up in the atmosphere of a far off planet) or not to even consider having "the talk" with their significant heavenly body other. But I guess the stars must be free of such constraints. They are to shine and hurl themselves without restrictions.

I've started the words already. They are flowing through the ether, through galaxies of procrastination, through the baffles of my editing brain. Onto a page or screen they go. Spoken to friends, stumbling on broken sentences, words tumbling past my lips without my knowing how they got there.

Mercury, retro all you want. It is time for stars and words and the sea (Always the sea...) where miscommunication doesn't matter because we are made up of carbon and don't make much sense anyway.