Polaroid Transfer

They say you ripple
into black dust before
your synapses can re-
connect their constellations,
trying to make up a word
that explains itself.
Fire burns through
your veins and your soft-
pounded skin—blue
turned ochre particles
falter in the sighing
light. Like you sighed
before you grasped
my cold arm in the dark.
They say you sift
through the screen before
the sky breathes white.
The mountains keep
their hands around our
staggered throats—
and you are out of here.
Neither here nor there—
who takes your postcards
when you're gone? Return
to sender, please. We have
no landscapes left to us.
They say a lot of things,
but I am left devoted.
When the sky does take
its breath, we watch
to keep your flicker
closer to our lungs.

I want to break into
the power of lightning
captured in photos.
You're the closest
I've ever gotten, and you
are just as intimately
seized into emulsion.

The cactus flowers
came more conveniently
than I thought. 227
miles isn't so far counted
in disc scratches.
You'd rather have counted
the times the road goes
black within the sky,
but we didn't have enough
disc scratches to count
so high. Pink, poked,
pressed into Encyclopaedia
porcelain pages, blossoms
just as crystalline as lemon-
drops on the rubber floor-mat.

I should have seen the cracks
clawing up your forearm.
Spread out with your veins
in the sing-song sunlight,
they took ahold with enduring
demand. Keeping up appearances—
you told me you'd eat up
the pleasantries of sunshine
for a little reality, a little raw rain.

They say your hair stands up
right on end, listening, just before
it strikes. I'll give them that.
My cells could predict thunder
before I could predict your voice
quieting our cotton T-shirts
at sunset. You'd have claimed
the smoke-filled skies
enough to singe your hair,
and they did, no red-
pen corrections to be had.
Graphite on the windowsill,
you drift without words before
the sky breathes white.
We watch to keep your flicker
closer to our lungs.  

I want to break into
the power of lightning
captured in photos.
You're the closest
I've ever gotten, and you
are just as intimately
seized into emulsion.
Return to sender, please.
We have no landscapes 
left to us. Nothing half-
way about voltaic distances.


My workshop piece! Shout out to Ms. Alexander and all my classmates, if they ever find this—because you're all wonderful. I feel like I get so much more out of hearing other people talk about my words than I can pry out of them on my own. You're all inspiring, and you're all amazing, diverse writers. Reading other writers makes me feel like I'm looking in on the physical progression of a person, in so many figurative and literal ways that I can't find words for. This class has offered me new ideas and opportunities to explore the unknown and my own work. Giving and taking what we need in our words. Thank you for all of that. Today was the sort of class that reminds me why I want to go into English.