Varnish

That acrid smell
a burning, noxious
unwelcome stench

Peels you, rubs you away
Dissolved

Now clean and square
her fingernail
is primed and ready

Prickling black bristles
drag your shining gloss
like a red red gem—
you bleed pigment
over solid planes

All week she had picked
you, chipped
you, bit
you, spit
you into a pile of dead, red
flakes

Now you gleam,
a liquid soul sacrificed
over half-moon altars

A covenant spun in glass

Healing Day

Today was stressful and filled with laughter.

Imagine a classroom. Its ten students sitting at their formica desks in circle formation as they dissect and analyze the contents of their latest reading assignment. Now image that same classroom of mature-beyond-their-years AP English students all doubled over, laughing hard enough to burst veins and send fat tears rolling down smiling cheeks. Today, this was my class.

Every once in a while, you will have moments like these when it seems like all the pressure and stress that each of us has been holding in for weeks and months and even years just comes bursting out. Sometimes it comes in laughter, sometimes tears, sometimes both. But after the laughter has died off and the tears have been dried, you begin to feel better... you feel healed. You realize that we really are all in this together and it is times like these that remind you of how close we have all become over these past four years of high school. Oh Faulkner! (It's an inside joke, you wouldn't understand).


Today was a healing day.

Good Day

Today was a hard day.

The kind of day you dread all week-- you have papers due, tests to take, essays to write, and that's just the "in-school" stuff! But at the end of the day, I feel victorious. That AP Euro test? Piece of cake. That in class essay? Nailed it. That college essay work shop where you unexpectedly had to give a ten minute presentation in front of the whole grade? No problema.

It's the days like today that test your every nerve, but once you've reached that glorious plateau, the confidence you gain is worth the sweat and tears. It's that sense of accomplishment, when you know you've done your best at a daunting task (or in this case, daunting tasks), that gives you the chutzpah you need to call that hard day a good day.

Today was a good day.

Breaking up is hard to do

we are new
like a crisp pillow sham
like an apple (still stemmed)
like the unbroken filament of a light bulb.

we are over
like a curtain-close bow
like an arrow’s quivering tail
like the very end of a jungle vine.

this is pain
like a size-too-small shoe
like an underwater breath
like the sting of crushed bleeding lips.

as this fades
as the heavy stomach pain fades
you feel the numbing kiss
of Apathy.

She mends you
you welcome Her
like a flood soothes
the scorching desert

and you are strong
like a fallen tree—now immovable in the soil
like an old patch of scarred skin
like the thick membrane tissue of your broken beating heart.

Toothbrush

March 2008

“Mom, where’s my toothbrush?”

“Did you check in the bathroom?”

Did I check in the bathroom? Cue exasperated sigh. Clearly, Mom is going to be of little help in this quest. I am on my own.
My mind begins whirling through all the possible scenarios. I quickly rule out burglary (who would want to steal a toothbrush?) and alien abduction. Could this have been my own doing? Did I lose my toothbrush?

I consider pulling each of The Siblings aside for individual interrogations. The divide-and-conquer method has won victories for me in the past, but I have little reason to suspect them this time.

As I begin to pace sociopath-like through the house in search of my missing toothbrush, the high squeals of childish laughter and the hissing of a hose diverts my attention outdoors. I squint through the glare of the sun and wave to The Siblings as they spray down the grimy anterior of Mom’s minivan and my own “grandma-tested-teenager-approved” Toyota Camry. How wonderfully innocent they look, running through the iridescent arch of the water spewing from the hose. Beside them, a faded bucket filled with sudsy rags and brushes lies neglected in the grass. I feel instantly guilty. How could I have suspected The Siblings of taking my toothbrush, when all along they had been outside, innocently washing…

Oh no.

They wouldn’t. They couldn’t have.

My horror begins to escalate as I catapult off the front porch and make my way towards the vile bucket of grime. I dump its contents onto the crumbling driveway and as the soap begins to clear, I see it. My toothbrush. Its aqua blue handle stands out in stark contrast with the white lather of car cleaner and the muddy water, mocking me for my naivety. How could I have missed this? My embarrassment grows as I think about the smug pride I had felt when, not fifteen minutes ago, I was cleverly ripping off a kindergartener in exchange for a vacuumed and scrubbed car. The joke was clearly on me.

With the fires of hell burning from my retinas I turn my wrathful vengeance to the soapy fiesta that is The Siblings, post-carwash.

“WHO DID THIS?” I wonder briefly if the neighbors can hear me before deciding that I don’t particularly care.

“Who did what?” I take a deep breath and compose myself.

“Which one of you took my toothbrush to wash the car?” Silence.

And then, “We needed it to do the tires.”

Bandwidth

I linger in a digital world
which dazzles like a champagne flute
whose blush of amber liquid
casts you into wet unknowns.
This place of digital knowledge
is a synchronized illusion-
where reality is porcelain
tattooed with broken fault lines.

But the buzzing haze
of hard-drive space
drowns out pleasant digital dreams.
And the taste of wire cords
is laced with electric conversation.
Here, every question has been asked
(and answered) by an unseen cyber deity.

In this digital environment
you have everything there is
but nothing that you need.

Wild

I am golden brown
Tanned feet, hands
Hersey's kiss hair
The shaking drumbeat
of thunder
Sharp shards of cracking
light simmering across the sky
The jungle of my hair
is separating, growing
standing on point
Each follicle
a quivering shape-
the air breathes moisture
into every strand
Frizz, static, curls,
twisting whorls of untamed
disaster.