Cherry Picking

July 9th, 2024

The asphalt bends and separates underneath the weight of my tires and the July heat, as I roll around the curve. Rolling hills of farmland and family barns sprawl for miles, taking no frame, the only limit to their expanse is the sky. Blue with the golden haze of wheat dust and August’s slow approach. At the end of every generational driveway seems to sit a cherry tree. A leafy pompom with small reds. The faster I drive, the more trees I see. 

My family had a defunct cherry tree on the side of one of my childhood homes. The fruit never seemed to fully ripen. The blossoms smelled sickeningly sweet, so syrupy there was no sweetness left for the actual cherries. Tart pink underbellies never turned crimson. I used to climb the low hanging branches, scraping my knees, grazing on the bitter bites, and scanning the floor of my neighbor’s driveway for fallen fruit. The cherries were never ready.

In Northern Michigan there’s a cherry season. Rows and rows of cherry trees reach for the mild sun, their bodies look like mistletoe, the cherries full and delectable with a hint of summer sugar and lake rain. I’ve never been, not during cherry season. But I can imagine the abundance. The trees’ need to be stripped bare, harvested, because even more fruit waits to stem. How! How is it possible that more fruit could possibly come? The Michiganders turn their pickings into jams, juices, and wines for the winter to come. But in the summer, the cherries come like they’ll never leave and make appearances at boat picnics, breakfast rituals, and night’s glass of bonfire whiskey on ice.

I would spend hours in the ribs of that pointless tree with the dumb wood-bumping bumble bees, spitting pits into the grass for my dog to sniff over. A sour belly and sticky fingers. I could see into my house’s kitchen window. My mother would usually be there kneading meatballs for dinner that night, cleaning up the morning’s mess, or feeding my ravenous brothers. I couldn’t be bothered. I was cherry picking.

When July rolls around, my mother stops the grocery cart by the cherries and without fail reminisces, “your Grandpa loved cherries.” Sometimes she says “my dad loved cherries,” and for some reason my stomach aches. Most times she’ll place them in the cart, other times she’ll move along to the deli section as if she said nothing, an accidental thought slip. The cherries usually rot, forgotten in the back of the fridge. I always picture my Grandpa eating his cherries. Metal dusted welder fingers popping a de-stemmed ruby into the pocket of his left cheek. One, two at a time. He’d talk with his mouth full, saying something I wish I could hear, something I wish my mother could hear. Cherry juice would leak onto his lips and sit maroon in between the thin crevice of his snaggletooth. His dark hair and leather outfits. His quick nature and eye over my mother. I wonder what he would’ve thought of me, who I love, and what I create. I wonder how he went about cherry picking, what stood out and what he passed by. 

No matter my  grocery list, I always grab a bag of cherries.

I’ve been having a slow summer. Slow around the bends, slow to wake, slow to speed up again. I’m weighing my life’s next steps and learning new things. I’m holding possibilities in my palms. I’m setting them down until one day when I’m strong enough to hold them. I’m back in Pennsylvania, where the hummingbirds landed and my mother tends to her garden after work. Where I watch the trees fill with June food and water, then exhale their energy into July, to flutter light and golden in the occaisonal breeze. I’ve struggled to slow down. A hard time bringing my thoughts down to the speed of my body. Morning swims and dusk walks. A full breakfast upon wake and ice cream at night. My body feels strong and nourished. I don’t know why my mind fights this rehabilitation and recourse. It’s all I’ve wanted for a long time.

It’s as if I’m laying on my back, the rainless grass itching at my calves and tanned shoulders, below a cherry tree. What little rain summer has given so far, was sucked up and infused into the bulbous cherries dangling above me. The elbow-to-elbow couplets move along to the sound of the passing day. Wind shifts, muffled hoove paths, and cardinal songs. I’m hungry, here on this woodland floor. I’m hungry for my thoughts and ideas. They’re all there, growing, hanging, falling in my mind. Ripe and in reach. My poems and practices are synonymous to cherry picking, I like to think. I can tell by their color, how long they hang, and their waxy luster if they are ready to be taken from the tree. I can tell if one’s pit is too big with little fruit to chew off. Or if a stem is too long, too rooted to its source. One day these cherries will be preserves, jarred and ready to be spread over cheese and toast. One day these cherries will be wine, full bodied and swallowed into full bellies of winter dinners. One day these cherries won’t exist. Eaten or fallen to the grass floor. Sweet and rotten seeping into the forest floor, and I love that. 

While the summer sun wilts the tree tops and the needed thunder storms barrel in at night. While the bees hang low to the ground, and the deer wander open and fearless. While July turns into August and summer relaxes its shoulders. While I sit and shed my skin. While my time slows down to sit beside me and look at everything I’ve done and everything I could, I will slow down to meet myself. Meet myself below the cherry branch shadows of my abundant mind. Bitter or sweet, I’ll be happy just to have a taste. If you need me at my fastest, don’t. I won’t be bothered, I’ll be cherry picking.

Antonio

February 13th, 2024

I wish I was old enough when you died. I wish I was myself when you died, not the vase for an idea of mine sitting in a hospital parking lot. I remember all the faces and phone calls circling the town pretending to have known you. I remember people speaking from the presumed point of view of your wife and your son, but their words were hollow.

I was never a Bruce Springsteen fanatic, but in April I play him like I’m from Jersey. I never called myself a poet until you pointed at me with your polished finger and told me I’m screwed. I saw pretty things and made them my own – don’t worry, I’m still self-obsessed. I can still hear your laugh. I can’t shake Mary Oliver, and I always count the deer. I can only write in a shadow, and I know shadows are accentuators of light. I had a professor who held himself like you, legs crossed, eyes wild and open but he missed the mark. And I can’t verbalize the mark, so I walk around pining half the time. I sit in the heat of cafes, pen sharp on the trains. I have a stomach ache and my brain is blank. I’m tired. Yet everything is happening always, and shutting my eyes would be a blunder.

I know you would justify my life.

I know what you would say. Something about Rock N Roll, and the night, and what it means to be cool – “and you got the cool.” I feel so small here it's infuriating. I am stuck in my own shoes, they fit too well because no one has walked in them before. I am the first of my pick-pocketers and predecessors on this path. I got the cool, man.

I miss you, and a spoonful of everything I write will always be dedicated to you.

Predictions

January 11th, 2024

After the clouded, sugar coated cavity-inducing, dreamy creamy holiday season, I’m back with more Soft Visions! First, I want to apologize for my inconsistency during the holiday season. Retail mania, excessive gift-spending, and beloved travels momentarily capped my pen. Second, happy New Year! 

Woohoo! 2024! That is, if you celebrate. If you do not celebrate, kudos to you – though I invite you to remember, time is the person rushing to their gate fresh off a delayed and rerouted plane. Time is the ocean shifting tides, taking your pearly shelly sandcastle with it. Time is the wrinkle on your mother’s forehead that digs deeper with every visit home. Time is the relentless rise and set sun cycle, and that itch you get when you’re already tucked into bed that pesters, did you set your alarms?  Time is fickle, and time is forever. Might as well tip your bulbous wine glass of red tongue drying mortality and celebrate (or mourn, your choice) the tick of seconds seconds seconds. One. Two. Three. Two. One. Happy New Year! 

New Years is either the cycle of trial and error shattering, or a free registration for the self-help rat race. Whichever way your perception leans, we as humans abide by the calendar. We schedule our jobs and free-time and generosity around date-proclaimed holidays. What I like about New Years, more than I like the costumes and shamrocks and firecrackers and cutout cookies,  is the newfound intent. Whether this drive is birthed from self-loathing or curiosity – who cares! People are trying. 

There is this invisible fault line that all of our decisions see-saw over. Their intended direction and the beside what-if ‘s  balancing on stagnancy. New Years rattles the paralytics of initiative and kickstarts self-motivation into overdrive. Yes, I know… Balance… Moderation. Our comfort words. 

But isn’t the excess thrilling? 

I am a New Years enthusiast. I put myself pretty on a pedestal and poke at my predictions. I like to call my aspirations predictions rather than goals or resolutions as a sort of self- insurance policy. In all of my writings and all of my tricks, I talk about time-bending. Even though New Years is an exclamation of linearity, I use its annual stamp as the starting point of my time dive. I see my future self and all of her gems and joys, triumphs and failures, and I talk to her. I call to her from where I write today, my mother’s dining room table in Pennsylvania, and I ask her how she did it all.

Her steps, her scribbles, her scrapes and bruises map out my sought and strategy.

Future me is a surfer. She stands up on waves and throttles face first taking in mouthfuls of seafoam. She knows the lingo; break, mush, swell, Jake – which she undoubtedly was. She read an unnecessary amount of books about surfing, and rode the LIRR far too many hours out to Montauk. She definitely siked herself out a few times, but she was definitely too stubborn to be the reason she failed to learn. She lives by the time of waves now, even in the city. If the surf is good she’s unavailable, and she cares less about more. Future me is a surfer. 

Future me ran her first half-marathon. She trained for hours, and sacrificed the idea of free time. Long runs. Compression. Electrolytes. Yoga. Speed-work. Rest days. Protein. Her body became top-priority again, and she finally understood her frame is her one true home. Distances and doubt were the cocktail she downed for months until her feet moved faster than her thoughts. Worn-in shoes and willpower. Future me ran her first half-marathon.

Future me is employed for her writing. Her hours of poems/applications/reviews/newsletters/interviews/coverletters congealed during the right moment in time to secure her a position where she writes to the world. Whatever occupies the space of topic is besides the matter – she writes for work, and works to write! Future me is employed for her writing.

Future me is working really hard and celebrating what it means to be alive, on Earth, in a body, with all the time she can hold in a moment.

Early Gray Mud

December 23rd, 2023

Happy holiday weekend! I hope you are steeping in some downtime and snow falls for you soon – if snow doesn’t touch your ground, I hope the sun is shining.

I’m writing to share my morning recipe of joy! I’ve been concocting this simple beverage for a while, each variation slightly different than the last. I am not a recipe follower, but I can confidently say I’ve perfected this cup.

This stretch on a typical earl gray tea brings out each of the flavors packed in the tea bag: orange & bergamot, earthy cacao, the milk of lavender. These flavors are too delightful to be subtle, so in my true fashion – I exaggerated them.

May I present you my Early Gray Mud! With a full and earthy body and an after-bite of citrus complimented by the natural sweetness of milk fat, this beverage has become a winter morning stamp! 

—

Ingredients:

• 3 pieces of dark chocolate (or milk chocolate if your sweet-tooth heart desires)

• 1 tsp of Ghee butter

• Orange zest (a pinch or two will do)

• Earl gray tea bag

• ½ cup of boiling water

• ¼ cup of raw whole milk (or milk of choice)

• Cinnamon

Directions:

• Bring water to a boil

• In a mug:

  • Melt dark chocolate and Ghee together (stir generously)

  • Add orange zest

  • Add earl gray tea bag

  • Pour water over aromatic mixture to steep

• Aerate milk in a separate cup until the top layer of frothed foam can be spooned off.

  • Pour milk over steeped tea

• Finish off with cinnamon

• Enjoy!

To Look Up At It All

December 7th, 2023

The cold spurs suspicion long before it's celebrated. No one can ever let go of their Autumn, the bones of their summer, so winter is greeted with a high chin. November flirts back and forth between the seasons before it settles down with the idea of winter, leaving us in a battle with layers and change. Aimless cold with no direction in the wind, just the aggressive tendency to lash at exposed skin and slam doors shut behind you. But the second it snows, the walls fall and we are reminded what it feels like to be in wonder.

Today the first snowfall of winter graced New York City. Well, more of a brief flurry, but the flakes still slowed time. People stop to look up and watch the sky fall. They stretch their palms to catch snowflakes and pause their day to witness a short lived life melt on their skin. Finally, the wind has a purpose! How snow falls is similar to the motion of life. Essentially falling to its end, but swirling in circles and never seeing the point in a simple line. Floating up up up only to plummet ten feet in a second, before freezing in our eye-line. Hanging mid-descent to look into the glow of our lives’ winter windows. Before landing on the ground to look up at it all.

When it snows, I think back to my days on Bellaire Road. I lived in an 1800s farmhouse with green shingles in a yellow door. Just my mother, our dog, and myself. It was modest with quirks and colors real estate agents loathed – it was perfect for us.

The seasons exaggerated themselves in that yard, outdoing their colors and dances from the year prior. In April the dandelions would spring from the dew-frosted grass like candy the winter-thin dear would pluck from the waking earth. In July the rain would pour down while the sun shone through the dense canopy of green leaves sprawling from the mother tree centering our acre. In October the sky was ablaze – or at least it seemed that way, for the trees ceilinged our space with hues of scarlett and burnt orange. December was special. The holiday decorations were magical, obviously, but winter laid her blanket over Bellaire with the most humbling snowfall. Silent, heavy, and serene. The tree branches weighed to the ground and it was as if the tree was hibernating herself. 

Winter taught me plenty of lessons during my time in this home. The most important being: 

To lay with the snow, and look up at it all.

When it snows, I think of Ruby. The paw prints she left behind on early morning walks, and how they would freeze through the new year, their indents failing to thaw until march. I think of that Northeastern salt crunch reversing out the driveway and night drives home, slow, round the snow smoked bends. I hear the itch of compacted snow against the belly of a sled on an elementary snow-day, as Lexi flew past me down her hill into the trees. I remember my brothers building igloos in our backyard, the house in Michigan where everything stayed.

It snowed in New York City today, and I thought about our future home while you slept in my bed. Our home with brussel sprouts in the kitchen, and mountains of baked goods from my busy hands. The dogs eternally at our feet, and the candles always burning. Your paintings littered on the walls, and my pens in odd places. Cider and tea for you and me. Pillows and blankets. Slow time and warmth, warmth, warmth. The only sounds between us are our daydreams and the wind singing outside, blanketing our home in snow.

The Colors Between Time

November 22nd, 2023

Hello hello hello! It has been well over a week since I’ve written to you, and for that I apologize. A day can turn into two, and a weekend can turn into a week so quickly – if you let it. This past month, time evaded me. Hid from me. Tricked me. Played mind games with me and pitted me against myself. How rude! 


This month I’ve been sick. November always gets the best of me - humbles me. My body loves to remind me that I am in fact bound to my body. Like I write a check for my crooked comically crucible-esque apartment, I must pay rent to the body. Vitamins, water, movement, SLEEP, tea, stillness, and some sweets seem to be the chords of my lifeline these days.

 So here’s a friendly reminder: hydrate and seek the sun where you can find it!

—

It’s so easy to live without living sometimes. When I catch myself existing without realizing that I am existing, I get angry with myself. There is so much I miss. In a place like New York City, it is especially easy to lean into the behavior of an individual. Sometimes, I’ll feel myself physically snap out of my fast-paced trance. I’ll be scurrying to the train or to work, paranoid on the streets at night, or in lala land (Trader Joes), and I will stop in my tracks, halt my aimless stroll. I will look up and see each individual lifeline leaving their streak behind them as they mosey about, unaware of the person next to them. People paint the space with blues and reds of sadness and anger, or purples and oranges of curiosity and care just by existing. And the colors are brilliant!


The past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to consciously notice the moments stitched into the hitches of life’s stream of consciousness. I look at the sky for a moment longer. I listen to a song twice. I pour extra milk in my tea. I smile at strangers whose eyes pull up from the sidewalk as they walk. I call my mom one two three times a day. I pray?

Here are some of the colors I’ve collected:

Yellow

She’s on the train 
from the airport to Manhattan
Windows of sun pour, warming 
her from December’s walk
Golden moment, time
she’s been craving for awhile
with her twang songs and early
plane rides 
from a home away 
to a home for today.

The woman next to her 
smells of shampoo and solidity.
The man across from her
 taps his shoe.

The morning can be kind
to you, you
know.
If you let it.
If you like sweet air and slow moves.

Gray

I smile when I see your church on 10th Street.

Navy

Even in the stillest of waters
you can see the spine
of the wave
back curvature 
mild breathes, softest rise
and
fall. 

White

I am on 3rd Street, and it’s about to snow. 
The air is full, and I don’t know. 
Maybe it’s tragic. 
Maybe I want to stay.

Orange

Ablaze in Prospect Park
and no one is terrified
of being alive.

Purple

I started making peanut butter toast
in the mornings, like my mother does.

Red

On the train, study a face!
A real human face!

Black

and it’s only this short existence
in which you will know
gravity and what it feels like
to look up at it all.

Ode To Emma

November 8th, 2023

I met Emma Dowd at the Bowery Ballroom. It was a boy band celebration party for One Direction fans, so naturally my friend who I attended the event with and I were obnoxiously intoxicated, and emotions were high. When we descended down the stairs into the hazy ballroom lounge, the space was pulsing at the stonewall seams with young women and queers adorned in vintage band merch and the bouncing bass of pop songs. I hadn’t felt this sense of belonging in a while. Not since I moved to New York City. Not since I graduated from my teenage years. Not since I was a young girl. We immediately took to more alcohol and loosely danced with strangers. It wasn’t long until I sniffed out a camera – tequila is an attention whore. Behind the flash of a tiny camera a woman with a butterfly tattoo on her chest and a head of curly mane was scurrying around snapping photos of everyone. Shamelessly, she looked like a young woman embodiment of Styles ((one of) our hero(s)). 

I stumbled over to her, and without an introduction, demanded:

Take my picture! 

And so she did. And so she did again. And again.

With One Direction’s “Little White Lies” nearly audible through the photo I’m flipping her the bird. I’m flashing my tits to the camera. I’m kissing the lens. Today the vault of incriminating photos of me exists somewhere on Emma’s computer. I trust they’ll stay there for when we need a laugh. 

That night she was capturing the glory of young passion that made it into adulthood. The photos she took were truly marvelous. Women in hot pink fits on their knees, clutching their chests or strangers’ hands, belting the lyrics like one of those mega-church prayers. Limbs shaking in a dance only a veteran fangirl can execute.

We stayed together that evening, exchanged numbers, and parted ways once the drunken deli hunger called out to my friend and I. The next day she sent me photos of myself. I was messy in them, yes – but I looked so alive. So myself yet so out of body as I headbanged my long sweaty hair and collapsed to my knees, drink spilling everywhere, lyrics coming from their permanent place in my heart. I couldn’t thank Emma enough. Today, we live together in our laughably small, dingey, boy band poster littered apartment above the Bowery Ballroom.

Deciding we were bound to be friends after our chaotic meet, we went to dinner and a bar one night before I went home for the summer to say goodbye. That goodbye was really our first genuine hello. 


We talked about our shared interests of dismantled boy bands, the fucking science of music lyrics, wine, our bewilderment in New York City, and tattoos – that night we sprinted to a sketchy tattoo shop in Greenwich in hopes of getting a matching ink. Thank God we did not follow through (we ended up getting matching tattoos in each other's handwriting today – it’s one of my favorites).


From strangers, to roommates, to best friends, Emma has become one of the most significant people in my life. Though she’s only a few years older than me, and most often than not our age difference goes unnoticed, I look up to her at a great height. Emma is the queen of being an individual. She is so authentic it's blinding at times. Her light makes you wince away and assess yourself in its honest cast. It makes you want to be better, search for yourself so you can exist on her plane without clashing with her genuineness. 

New York City can be violently isolating. More isolating than one person can be for themselves – and I’m guilty of locking myself in my body and going through the motions, constantly on trial for false impersonation. When Emmamoved here, she knew no one. She abandoned any shell of herself that she wore. She was a student. She dropped out. She pursued a passion. She did all the things that scare people back into their cave. Meeting someone like her changes your life.

This year I fell in love with a woman, Ashton. She was unlike anyone I had ever met before. Her presence erased any self-doubts I had stitched to love. I would not have pursued her as I did, though if it wasn’t for Emma.

Emma loves like stone. 

An element so unbreakable, that despite its shatter there will still be traces of its matter scattered on everything. A red dust, a ton, a fossil, a spark to the fire. 

Last year, I had the privilege to watch Emma fall in love. Em & Em. I had never seen such a pursuit. Intention. Self-acceptance. Bravery. These two women are something of feminine beauty – not only physically, but of intellectual luster and a romance that evades the skin.

Unknowingly, Emma extended her hand to me which I held tenderly, as she guided me through the warm fog of gay. Yes, fog of gay — I’m a good writer. And yes, a lot of the knowledge of my sapphic identity already existed. Yes, I owe myself gratitude. Yes, it is an individual journey for everyone. But Emma’s surge search for self-satisfaction and elevation showed me what life can look like if I just be.

If Emma suggests you shave your head, you probably should.

If Emma wants to practice her tattoos on your skin, you roll up your sleeve.

If Emma blasts “1989 Taylor’s Version” in the living room, you go dance with her.

If Emma pours you a glass of wine, you drink it.

If Emma loves you, you love her forever.

I love you, Emma!

The Silent, Observant

October 30th, 2023

“You are speaking in other people’s memories.” 

I’ve serial cycled through therapists like we all have if we really tried. One woman’s voice is the solve for only one of my problems – Oh, and she takes my insurance. I broke my genetic taboo of therapy back in high school for reasons I smile at today with a hands-up surrender laugh.

This past year, new problems came and went how the seasons do. Every year we beg for autumn, but when she arrives we see her colors as winter’s frigid prelude. Every year we roll heavy purple eyes at the snow we romanticize in July. Spring is rain in the face, not an annual wash of pain. It’s all shifty. It’s all the same. This past year, I had new problems so I searched for a new therapist. 

Eli.

She was cool. Really cool. She had a sprawling eagle tattoo across her bicep, and always nodded her head. Even when I was comically wrong.

Up down up down.

She only had a wilted limp houseplant and a dresser in her space behind the computer screen. Her room reminded me of what I thought a safe-house might look like. Was she being held hostage? Was she hiding? Was she being forced to be my therapist in this tiny room somewhere? Why was I in therapy? Oh, right.

During one of our hour-long bi-weekly sessions, she asked me to recount some of my earliest memories. I ignored the chilly nip of anxiety at the base of my neck in response to her instructions and sat up a little straighter in my seat. Earliest memories. The memories you can’t tell if they actually happened or if your stories are just re-written blueprint. 

So I told her. I told her about my first splinter, getting stitches on my nose, my third birthday cake (it was an alligator - it was sick), and that time a worm busted out of my blueberry. My defaults. She encouraged me to go deeper. So I dove.

My attempted memory felt like a colorless wading pool. I was waist-deep in black matter. Past me was nowhere to be  found in the archives of my mind. I told her stories about my brothers’ football games and their Halloween costumes. I told her about my mom’s friends, and my dad’s over-arching quietness. I told her all the ridiculous stories that circulated in my middle schools. I told her about my family and our falling leaves. Not once did I just mention me.

Eli interrupted me, “You are speaking in other people’s memories. Tell me what you remember and how you felt about it.” Of course, my immediate response to her call-out was to spout tears. I was an observer. I noticed how other people felt before I felt.

Today, I feel. I feel everything. I’m not entirely sure when that switch flipped, but I’m glad the light came on. Sometimes I feel too much, but that’s okay. Backtracking in time feels like regression sometimes, and that’s okay. Today I am busy walking through my memories to tell the silent, observant versions of myself to feel it all before there’s nothing to feel anymore. 

Today, I remember. I remember what it was like to be five, eleven, fourteen, twenty, yesterday-days-old and counting. Static lemon-blonde haired. Rolly-pollies in Michigan. Thursday pizza-nights. Trampoline talks. Hot-tub snow dives. Volleyball brush burns and violent teenage girl victory. Boy band craze and ice cream tubs. Abandonment and Christmas wrapping paper cuts. Crushes and after-school runs. My room upstairs with the purple walls that I picked and painted.

Every detail matters, and it matters that they are mine. My memories.

Drink the colors, palm the rage, hold the heartbreak, praise the love. Today we feel, today remember.

Variety Chairs

October 23rd, 2023

Variety Coffee Roasters, on 7th Ave and W 25th. Fourteen tables with black chairs crammed in the seams between. Chocolate leather-back booths and espresso splattered on white tile. Maple syrup drenched wood frame skeleton. Whale bellied ceiling and thick window panes fogged from the clash of winter wind and tea steam. A static stereo and cider in the fall. Laptops and journals, conversation and contemplation. New York City pockets these spots, a lung on the street corner, where people inhale and exhale out the doors all day long. I could sit here from open till close, as long as I have a cappuccino and my little green book. 

At each table I sat, a girl forged from curiosity and a crippling caffeine addiction.

The fourth booth from the door, a girl begging for a friend.
By the pastry case, a girl who understands how vital a song can be.
Thirty minutes before close, a girl from Brooklyn who didn’t understand the crucial difference between the A-line and the C-line.
Sharing the first booth with a stranger, a girl who recognizes lonely.
At the round table by the milks and sugars, a girl who doesn’t know she will build a life with the little blonde.
Distracted at the community table, a girl who thinks she’s a shit writer.
At her favorite table, a girl who thinks she’s Patti fucking Smith.
At the table the little blonde likes, a girl who has a shackling secret.
The booth below the last window, a girl who feels like a woman.
The lone table by the entrance, a girl whose knees click. She’s so tired, but energetic in the legs.
At the table by the bar, a girl writing love letters, choking on truth.
Little blonde’s favorite table, a girl giving in.

Many visits in between.

Today at her favorite table, A woman, a writer, a lover.

To the little blonde: I bet you didn’t know that I frequent your spot this often. After that evening we met for coffee, I couldn’t help but crave Variety and the high I felt talking to you.

New Music

October 15th, 2023

White t-shirt on my summer-faded October skin.
Cider in my coffee sipping
new music to listen to.
My hair is growing in.

What if I told you I never know what I’m writing about until you read it?
What if I told you that despite the promise of summer, I live in the cold?
With the door closed
window wide open.
Heat pouring onto the streets
bones shaking in winter deplete.

How do I tell the world I am terrified of change, when that’s all I ever do? 
One moment never the same —

         Life used to be leaf piles and sword fights on Henning Drive. Now it’s night shifts and expensive flights,
not being able to make it home in time for the holidays.

How am I supposed to listen, when my hands mitten my ears in the corner of my mind every other night?

How am I supposed to hear the honey?

There will always be new music to listen to.

Hummingbird Seed

October 6th, 2023

A fogged morning of red pom pom trees and sweet earthy rainfall. Mosquitos and deer congregate in the long grass at the foot of the yard, the woods’ edge. My mother’s summer flower pot contents are starting to shrivel. Recoil, calcify, perish into the prettiest brown decaying purple. Honeysuckle hummingbird seed. I think to myself, Where do the hummingbirds go during the winter? Surely their hollow boned snare-drum chest can only play for a morning’s worth of miles. While the geese and robbins may be in Georgia by now, the hummingbirds are probably over on Blue Farm Lane.  Minutes away, miles to go. 

Sitting at home, I think of home. What a gray concept. At the surface murky, clouded by a film of mixed up memory and churned soil of a locational body-count. If you were to take a dive or a shallow step to wade, you would pierce time’s mossy muddle. I assure you the clayed water-floor would be visible. Roots naked and abundant, ready for the soft touch of your sole. 

I think of home, and I think of my mom. Her perfume and how it changes with the seasons. Her martinis and meatballs. She puts fresh linens on the bed and flowers in the vase everytime I return – be it for an evening or an ever. When I was a young girl, she met me with the same excitement every morning. Put me in purple corduroy overalls and pigtails. The rest of the day was our’s. 

Where are you from?

My mom lives in Pittsburgh, so that’s home right now.

The days she made to be minutes and seconds to be eternities. Memories and Motherhood. I remember every detail of her face, every silver and gold choice to be made.

I am her hummingbird. Tiny with a sweet-tooth. A need to dart between honeysuckle home and New York City. No matter where I go, I’m always here. Whirring around her head, hovering around the idea of home.  I could never leave. The seconds I suck are sugar, and no matter how far I go I’ll live as if I’m just down the street.