modesty is essential for stargazing.

here is a solemn dedication

to all the professors who said

my papers were built on straw men.

they were.

they were about alice. they were

about wendy. they were about me.

they were not about cognitive constraint

and i had not tried to constrain them,

and they had not tried to contain me.

so here’s to surviving, to messy or minor,

here’s to laughing through trials for justice.

here’s to living through all the ends dying.

we’re wendy and we can’t fly but we can wake up.

there are warm days. there are warm boots.

and in the threat of 230 years of nuclear fallout

we should survive all the things we can.

hothouse roses

in the warm lit tunnel of stairs

no one is staring at the stars

closed eyes watch from offices

with glassed-in birds whose tongues are whirring

in the tunnel of green stems

no blood is stirring

if i could stop sensing scent or shape

i’d maybe believe we spent long hours like

august through november or longer

just waiting for christmas to arrive

when we’d be special, fancy

we’d be words that were capitalized

when i find us eating red herrings

for dinner i believe that we are fancy now

these things protect us from the cold so we can want it

and unravel from an unborn coil

panting for hands, for warm dark spaces

paper like blood, and water slow like oil

michigan seems like a dream to me now

coyotes know they’re wild

with dreams as shattered as rocks

that turn to carpets on cold beaches

and freeze and poke feet

with dreams as crushed as dreams and

as strange to remember, they don’t try

stairs understand that they are dangerous

they catch ankles and elbows at terrible moments

with no malicious intention

walls know they suffocate to protect

they wear pretty things and open glass eyes

and kill when they die and

flashdrives are built to remember

lights are created to illuminate and

bleach is born to erase mistakes - but

people aren’t made to do any of these things

only to try until we break like rocks into sand

and then we have to understand