i nearly poured water into my pasta bowl today

i was moving through my motions too hastily 

i'm wearing green and have been bleeding for a few days now

there is so much happening in my body, automatically 

everything is a miracle 

Iron

    Her house is made of iron. In the iron house, she sits at her favorite window. Her chair, in which she rots, is iron. Cold, against her. The chair shivers back. A symbiotic relationship. There, she remains, every morning. The window looks out unto infinity fields of wheat and shrub. On occasion, an animal in the distance will meet her iron eyes. They'll look into her iron world and tilt their heads. A split-even moment of recognition followed by their mindless carrying on. "The animals forget about me. They always forget about me. They don't need to tell me for me to know." A sigh is enough in the iron woman's lungs to replicate steel factory routine noise. Metallic functioning. Parts hard at work. There is no release here.

    Sitting at her window is what she likes to do. She likes to see the animals grazing far away into the distance. Their hides, their structure, their aliveness. If she does not sit and look out of her window every day, she feels less human than usual. The iron woman feels a unique smallness. When she gets tired of sitting and looking out of the iron window of her iron house, she precedes to mop her iron floors. She dusts her iron shelves and makes her iron bed. Irons her iron clothing. That's a nice button-up. Eating her iron food, it goes down like pennies down a pipe. Solid, loud, clanking. Like a slot machine. She is unsatisfied. 

    When she puts on her iron shoes, her feet ache and sting inside. The iron chair is cold against what would be her skin. In the winter, the wind knocks against the iron house and she longs for a real blanket. Closing her eyes, like a prison door shutting for the night, and dreaming of cashmere touching flesh. She lifts off into her mind. After her return from subconscious, she meditates on the iron that surrounds her. "Do I have an identical melting point?", she freezes in careless thought. In a regress back into her iron chair, looking out of her iron window, out into the tussled shrubs, she knows that this is all that she is. A rodent in the distance tilts their head and wonders about the iron lady. 

    A day comes, while she sits in her window seat. A day that held shape the same as all that came before. Fate knocks like a new neighbor asking for sugar. If only our iron lady could taste sugar. Naturally, she hears the door knock with grace. As if the hand against the iron were singing. There hasn't been a visitor in a very long time. This frightens her and so she ignores it. The knock visits again, with less singing and heightened hope of an answer. The iron of the house echoes deep and absent of feeling. Stiffly sitting up, she makes her way over to the iron door. When she opens the creaking thing, the gleam of a beautiful woman sends her into an abyss of hypnosis.

    She had hair the color of dark hay. Where eyes were supposed to sit, she had pools the iron lady wished she could swim in. Think of how horribly she'd rust. Her nose was prominent and strong. The iron lady could almost see the Slavic ancestors of the woman in her every feature. She was heaven down to every cell. Her skin so pink and brand new. She wanted to take a nap inside the curl of her cochlea. The enchanting visitor traced the iron edges of the iron door frame that arched overhead. The iron lady couldn't speak to her. She had never learned any language at that moment. She terrified the iron lady. The door began closing on her innocent face. Her face knew something that the iron lady's did not. It knew of life. It knew of the forever tango between density and lightness. It knew how to dance without drowning in the weight of either one.

"Please. Please do not close the door."

    She wanted the beautiful visitor to witness her and to move on, like the animals do. But she wasn't an animal. She was human and she was good. 

"Please. If you own this house, I yearn to speak with you. I want to live here. I want to buy this home. Don't close the door."

    It was as if her voice was made of freshly whipped butter. All of this living-it felt like too much to stand in front of. She found her shaken voice and spoke out of her iron mouth. 

"This house is dark, cold, and lonely. It is absent of flowers, cookie crumbs, and linen. It is a cell that holds me captive from the world. If you live here, you will find yourself without visitors. You'll freeze in the winter and melt in the summer. The walls will rust and you'll spend your life cleaning. You do not want this home."

"Do you not see what I see?", spoke our angel, "Your home is tall, the windows large and bright. The sun must float in with enormity. The foundation seems so stable and promising. I pass by this place when I pick apples down the road. It never leaves my mind. It sits there making me restless with intrigue."

    She stepped inside, past the iron woman, touching the walls and floors. Bending down and back up with ease. So slippery were her joints. She was young, limber. She was beautiful. Everything that she met with her jeweled-over eyes sighed in harmony and pleasure. The woman toured the iron details of the environment as if she were already intimate with it. As if she were already home. The iron lady could not seem to focus on anything else but how genuinely she looked inside of the place. Maybe if the iron lady's eyes were pools, like hers, she would see the same house that she saw. This house was all that the iron lady had to her name. Metal hands on the clock ticked. Time is nearly up for the iron woman. 

    The angel thanked her for letting her see her home. She asked her to consider selling it to her and her husband as they recently were blessed with news of a baby on the horse-ride out of the ether. Before her departure, she took the hands of the iron woman into her own. Dormant feelings of wonder emerged into her iron-sealed heart. The woman's hands were strong, earthy; simultaneously quaint and tender. The lines of her palms smiled against iron hands of tiredness and longing. 

    "My husband and I love each other very much. We are floored in the presence of the love we get to share. We have worked very long and hard to save for our first home. This feels like our nesting place.", the flower petal of a person muttered. 

    The iron lady's iron shirt felt soft against her as she listened to the woman speak of her life. She had something that our lady does not. The woman told her that she would give her anything she had if only to have the home. In her iron brain, she tried to rationalize why she would pick this house out of every house in the world. She looked at her and felt high with visions of her heart. There lay sincerity and lightness. The angel had never had a nightmare and was never touched by an ounce of greed. The iron lady trusted her with every inch of iron inside of her. Touching her shoulder, she smiled, surprised she didn't shudder at the iron touch.

"Return in one week with your husband and belongings. I will leave you the key outside under the iron pot that houses the iron stem of the iron flower."

    She kissed my iron face and let out a whimper of love.

"Bless you."

    A week drags by, as time always will in a house like this. During this week, the iron lady sat at her window. Every day, she sits. Now, with new sentiments. She feels ease. She is dying. The rodent in the distance watches her as she shrivels smaller and smaller. She folds into herself. The chair underneath her starts to soften. The walls drip iron off of them, like a mud-riddled child steaming in a bath. The floors begin to feel wooden and warm underneath her iron feet. Her shiny silver hands shrink into the armchair that they rest on. The chair begins to swallow her whole. She begins to fall back into the cushion while delighting in the vivid red color of the chair. Sensations arise and deflate only to rise again. Softness against her cheek. Incredibly foreign feeling. Flesh had returned to her. She was going somewhere else. All iron had vanished. The home was bright. It was alive. All of the iron lady's life had transferred into it. Symbiosis. The only iron remaining lay on the iron key to the home. She took her final look at the house and sighed, thinking of the beautiful woman's womb that was growing the child who would grow up in this home. She ached with satisfaction. An iron tear falls followed by one of salt. 

"Bless you."

    The family lived there for a long time. 

    The rodent thought of the iron lady every day. 

Jam

I am bothered

All of my poems start with "I"

See here

What I loathe

What better to say when each word starts in my eyes

With each glance at life

Every oozing ounce

Filtered through my "I",

I open doors of my mind with my "I's 

I tell you the feelings in the front seat of my stomach

and you ask me what "I" want-

I want to return to Earth more often than lately

To fold back into myself when I walk too far away

Birth Death Revival and Decay 

Apples falling from trees

I saw one rotting between the street and the other street

I saw myself inside the core

I crush the sweet fruit with my firm shoe 

It's jam now and the children run across it

I am just jam

I am my every happening mashed into one body

A body that "I" am only borrowing 

Ancient teachers tell us to be swinging doors but how am I to be anything 

when there is no me at all

There is no me for them to find and no "I" to evolve-

Revolve

I am just jam

I Want to Face Desert Wind

i do not want to cry about my father anymore

i want to eat a plum instead

i want to roll on the floor 

back and forth 

for a very long time.

i do not want to look at my hair in the mirror and sigh

i want to hold my belly after a meal and say, 

"should we head home?"

i want an old woman to divulge her love affairs unto my ears

i want to braid my sister's hair but she cut it

i want to face desert wind again 

i want to face desert wind.

i can't have my cabin yet

cut off from the world 

a holy ground away from clutter and quick thinking 

warmth emanating from within 

damp soil, loose strands of my hair

it will hang- it will trace the tops of my shoulders 

like a lover's fingerprint 

the cabin where i will write my books

the cabin where i will age in front of myself