True Life: I'm a ¯⁠\⁠_⁠ʘ⁠‿⁠ʘ⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Some of you are too young to remember, and some of you are too old to have watched, and some of you will know exactly what I’m talking about. 

MTV had this show called True Life, and each episode followed people who had a weird issue or lifestyle or problem.

Episodes were titled like True Life: I’m Looking for My Father or True Life: I’m a Fanboy.

And it was never glamorous the way The Jerry Springer Show was never glamorous, but I watched it and liked it and secretly wished to be on it, if only my life wasn’t so plain.

But that’s never really been quite true, has it? 

It just seemed plain on the inside.

Like study abroad. We send college kids to these far-off exotic places, and it’s often the most enriching, unique experience of their life, but for the sap in South Korea hosting, it’s literally just his regular life. They send kids here—there’s one four blocks over visiting for a semester from Germany—but we don’t often talk about that.

So what I’m getting at is sometimes it’s the things that seem most plain and basic, because they are always there, that people are most interested in.

I haven’t been on the blog much because, to be frank, I wrote a 170-page story, then a 270-page sequel in two months. I sent out the first to trusted friends to read—one finished, and all have been enthusiastic. The second one I am holding back because I don’t want to overwhelm, but I think it’s good. So good that, for a brief moment, I went down an hour rabbit hole of r/self_publishing.

I could do it. But it’s so much work to do it right.

Then I stopped at branding. 

Apparently you need to figure out your genre…your audience.

And even though, of course, authors move a little bit from genre to genre, it’s not by a lot. Neil Gaiman is weird and surreal. James Patterson is crime and law. Stephen King is horror.

I am ¯\_ʘ‿ʘ_/¯

Poetry? Personal essays on domestic existential horror? Flash fiction that tries to be romantic and sweet but inevitably twists into the darkest parts of myself?

This is time for a second True Life confession.

I tried to monetize my blog six weeks ago. I get a surprising number of hits for whatever the fuck this is.

Actually, can my genre be “whatever the fuck this is” and leave it to the reader to decide? Uh oh. The guide for first-time authors says no. You really should prep the reader like a gay man about to bottom—no surprises, let’s negotiate all the boundaries like a BDSM scene before you pay 99¢ for this detective noir to spill on your screen.

Anyway, I tried to monetize. There was a full review of my blog and—

¯\_ʘ‿ʘ_/¯

They rejected me.

My content can’t make money. Even GoDaddy ads and TaxExpert.com and Walmart don’t want two inches of screen with me.

Blah blah blah, something about sexual violence and drug use and grotesque body horror.

Whatever.

Hand on the Bible, all those were intended as romances. Whimsical lil tales of lonely people finding each other.

Freak 4 freak.

Asshole 4 asshole.

Douche 4 Douche.

Whatever the fuck this thing I made is.

Like when we had to explain our piece in high school art class.

It’s a fucking vase, bruh.

That girl just drew the Nine Inch Nails logo.

I made this but am now in the principal's office.

It felt like all the other times I had to explain what I made.

It’s all romantic if you look to the feeling and forget I said hard-on and acid. At least it felt romantic when I was writing it.

I petitioned the judgment on my content. Please, Google Ad Daddy, lemme corp suck you off. I explained it wasn’t about the words or actions but the 

~ f e e e e e e e e l i n g s ~

Any human would get it.

Google Ad came back with: ¯\_ʘ‿ʘ_/¯

They rejected my appeal.

Alas, I won’t make my lil 50¢ a day from you reading this, but whatever. I didn’t need it. I just liked the idea of some money from my writing—a few bucks I could hold up as some legitimacy trophy in a world where there are full, genre-perfect novels completely AI-written and sold straight from computer to Kindle like a digital rim job.

¯\_ʘ‿ʘ_/¯

I lied to a stranger yesterday—told a realtor I was 51. I lied up, and he said I look good for my age, and he said he was 60-something, and damn if I couldn’t tell if it was a lie or not because he looked my age. But he said he retired as a school teacher and had been selling realty for 20 years, so the math maths.

As a young child—actually not that young, well into college—I was a pathological liar for fun. Like a hobby. Stuff that no one would know if it was true or not. Show up to work and tell someone I almost hit a bird on the way in. I didn’t. But I was interesting for a moment.

And they always said the truth will set you free.

But I think it’s the lies that keep us living.

Things like there’s an audience for this.

Things like this retinol cream will change my life.

Things like I’m not all that weird.

Things like if Kafka can be published, why not Caroline?

Then I step one toe out of my comfort zone and realize how quickly the world asks me to pick a lane. But I want my own.

Keep in mind, dear readers: This is just about the stuff I share, and not even a glimpse into the stuff I journal and keep to myself.

That's more like ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ ͠⁠°⁠ ͟⁠ʖ⁠ ⁠°͠⁠ ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

P.s. The astronauts on Artemis II had their iPhones with them as they went further in space than any man has before. What the fuck is that—going further than anyone ever has, and still needing a screen? That's the world I'm trying to live in.

P.p.s. Sometimes, I get delusional enough to believe I'm just ahead of my time.

Off Page.

    When you read a book—even a biography—not everything is included. Perhaps they don’t mention FDR going to the bathroom or eating a single meal, but you trust that, off the page, he ate and shit his way through the presidency. The editor decides these details don’t add anything to the plot, so they’re cut.

    But life isn’t like a book, and these little details actually do matter in making a life. Eating a solid meal to fuel your body, working out and feeling blood pulse through your veins, breathing fresh air—having moments just inside your stupid, human body, far more animal than any of us care to admit—matters. This is what makes up the bulk of living.

Ninety-nine percent of life is off page.

    We spend far more time washing dishes or taking showers than having life-changing moments. And yet even life-changing character development can occur off page. Say, in the last chapter, the main character has a particularly difficult day, and the next chapter opens with: “Over the past five years, Anton continued to regret this behavior, replaying that day in his head and all the things he could have done differently.” Five years occurred off page. Anton has clearly grown and changed. The author decided you don’t need the details—just the end result.

    When this blog started, I often went months without posting anything. There was so much off-page time. In 2015, I posted only three poems. At the time, I was a full-time caregiver to my first husband. I worked part-time. I taught him how to walk and talk. I emptied a shit bag daily. I bathed him. I cleaned an open wound, careful not to move too quickly. I was busy. I assure you, there was much going on off page.

    I barely even have a journal entry from that period. I was simply too busy with the next task to think—much less daydream, much less feel emotions, much less consider what I wanted or needed. I was consumed by a to-do list of care for another human being. My body shrank quietly while everything else demanded more. I reached a new adult low weight.

Being off page then was not a philosophy. It was survival. It worked.

    At some point, when I wasn't just surviving anymore, I became significantly more “productive.” I leaned into the blog. I leaned even harder into being on page. And for a while, it was fun. A challenge.

In hindsight, it felt inevitable.

As if by design, I turn everything I enjoy into something punishing.

    It happens slowly, through my own actions. I move fast, go deep, overcommit. I did it with alcohol. I did it with drugs. I did it with work. I did it with love. I reached bottom quickly, and then—just as quickly—scrambled toward relief. Only drank 5 years before I clung to sobriety and yet I still sit next to people in AA meetings who lived that life for decades. I don’t know how they survived it. My intensity makes me look like a fraud, even to myself.

    I don’t like hurting. I don’t like wanting things until they hurt to want. Over time, you would think I’ve learned how to leave before desire turns on me. But it's always hindsight, baby. One could say this was the primary reason for my divorce from my first husband.

    This blog has always been a repository for some of my darkest, most negative thoughts, and for a long time it felt like a relief to share them in a safe space. It was exciting in August 2024 when I wrote thirty-seven pieces. The productivity felt limitless. I’ve always been productive in some fashion—obsessive, overwhelming, too much. Or so I’m told. I only really notice it occasionally. A few weeks ago, I noticed it clearly.

    I tried to confide in this blog, my longtime confidant, but could manage only a few vague, petulant sentences. Cryptic posts. Fragments better suited to an AIM away message soaked in teenage hormones and quiet rage—as if I were daring the internet to notice me.

    I hope you understand this as I mean it: sometime around 2020, I became an obsessive documenter of my life. I can tell you every book I’ve read in the past five years. The tarot cards I pulled on July 19, 2022—Three of Wands and The Star. How many times I read the AA Daily Reflection in 2024. How many letters I sent, and to whom. I’ve even saved every letter I’ve received.

On shelves and in boxes: the Caroline Archive.
Curated. Cultivated. Composed.

    You’d think I were a U.S. president building a presidential library. As if historians will one day analyze the inner life of Caroline, minor figure, no body. As if I’m a bird Darwin is studying. Even though no one will read my planners or journals but me, the truth is clear: I no longer live off page.

I haven’t been off page in a long time.

    Not like I was in 2015—when I wrote only three poems but also threatened divorce, and my first husband threatened suicide. Eventually, we both followed through. So much can happen when you aren’t tracking, writing, documenting, cataloguing, talking, explaining yourself into coherence. Maybe if I get a little more off page, my life could begin moving again.

    What if I just made dinner, ate dinner, shit and pissed—did the things that happen off page—and lived without worrying where it was going? That strange, luscious, beautiful breadth of living I keep circling but never quite entering.

What if I simply took my two prescription nasal sprays twice a day?

Worth a try, for a bit.

Crack Open a Book (and Maybe Me)

Don’t touch grass; crack open a book like a cold beer!

Dear Readers,

Your author arrives today with trepidation—so much so that she abandons the first person, hoping distance might blur her outline.

Once, this was a poetry blog. At least an attempt. Anyone—from a child to a seasoned scholar—could pluck one of those crude, earnest posts and see them plainly for what they were: poetic attempts. Poorly executed, yes, but heartfelt. Over time the writing improved—like finally seeing the horse in the cloud once someone points it out. For years she pointed and insisted, “Poem!” Only recently would others nod.

Then, in the last year, something unraveled. But at least fiction felt adjacent to literature—still fumbling, but at least aimed at a horizon. A faint theme, a generous audience, a sense of direction. Until the whole enterprise turned on her. Like a cell dividing too fast, that direction metastasized into something else. Suddenly: personal essays (the horror—please forgive her!) splashing onto the page. A quick, disquieting devolution.

She fights with herself.

“No one wants to read about your stupid, co-dependent caregiving to cats,” she scolds. “They do! They do! Look at the stats!” she shouts back.

A confession: she saw the stats once by accident and swore she wouldn’t look again. Told herself it was all bots, or one poor soul clicking too many times by mistake. She promised she wouldn’t check. And then she checked every day.

Now she feels like a naked woman behind one-way glass, the world passing by on the other side while a small glowing ticker counts the gentlemen who linger. Quick—she’s fainting. Push a chocolate through the slot! Dickinson wrote, “Publication is the auction of the mind,” and God, does she feel up for sale.

She returns to the blog determined to write something meaningful, something not about herself. Anything not self-centered. And another diary entry floods out. She tries to stop it; she cannot. She has lost the plot.

Poem or short story or diary drivel… eight hundred and thirty-five posts later, she wonders: isn’t this compulsion to create unnerving? She can’t fathom how she writes so much, or how anyone could possibly find time to read it. A simpler answer would be: they don’t. But the tugging, creeping fear—what if they do?

Deleting it all is an option, of course. But God—over a decade of work down the drain! And the stats spark hope. Each past post viewed unexpectedly is a little gift of herself. “Look at this poem from 2022,” she whispers. She doesn’t remember writing it. But you, dear reader—you did. Unless you’re a bot. In which case: thank you, bot. She devours these forgotten versions of herself like a dessert made of desserts eaten in the dark. This must be what Dickinson felt, opening her bureau drawer and finding yet more small, secret selves she wasn’t sure anyone should see.

God! Listen to her now! Are you rolling your eyes yet? She is no Dickinson! This is a crappy little internet blog! Still, the writing simply keeps pouring out.

Maybe you like it—maybe you’re the sort of sick, twisted little thing who would. Are you? Do you like this? Do you like seeing her so vulnerable and her not knowing a thing?

Is she just a little girl curtsying too deeply, showing the entire village her bloomers? Are you a voyeur?—but then, if you are one, so is she. She grew up on OpenDiary and LiveJournal, peering into strangers’ lives. She still loves historical diaries. She would love to read yours too.

And so she retreats now to read a book—something good, like a president’s memoir—anything not about her.

Maybe she could shut up long enough to write something good…
Dear God, Reader—let’s not get carried away.

Do Not Read if Allergic to Caroline

These are fuchsias—my favorite flower.

I decided this at a plant sale in a church parking lot. Their blooms seemed otherworldly—the first thing Spock would scan upon landing on an alien planet. He’d say, “Curious,” aloud to the landing party... but they’d never look up at him or ask for more information.

Of course, I begged for the $12 to buy the hanging basket, which died two weeks later. An elderly gardener said she was surprised it lasted that long. “Fuchsias are a delicate and fickle flower. Gotta attend to them.”

My mom said it was a waste of money. But I aspired to be like that—so beautiful and wanted that people would cultivate me. Admire how fickle I was. Work harder to make me thrive.

Once, when I was much, much smaller, I threw a tantrum in a Burger King, and my family left—disappointed I’d ruined something again. But only an hour later, the Burger King burned to the ground, and some of the people inside died. In disbelief, my mom said, “That could have been us.”

But it wasn’t.

I’m not saying I foresaw the future or saved their lives—though my mother seemed to think so—but I know that every time I’ve been upset and acted out, it wasn’t irrational. It was never without cause. It was always logical.

---

In May, I wrote:

“One of the few silver linings of being the second-to-last living member of your family is the strange freedom that lies ahead. Someday soon, in the not-so-distant future, you’ll be able to do anything—absolutely anything—without the weight of a family name to dishonor or voices of shame echoing behind you. They’ll all be gone.”

By July, my last family member was dead. Perhaps a lone prophecy.

At the time, I was dreaming of publishing, and my aunt’s scornful reaction to how I’d present our family—my mother, my life—seemed like a drawback. Now I know she was an excuse. I’m just not ready to be seen or known. Not really. Not like that.

---

If you’re reading this, it’s worth noting I never thought it would go this far. Sure, I’d picked up and put down journals and blogs and poetry since I was a child.

RIP to the Lisa Frank composition notebooks full of elementary angst.

RIP to the TeenOpenDiary that was purged of its sweet data at some point.

I can’t recall much about those early efforts, other than for one I used the moniker Enid Coleslaw—after Ghost World. The comic book, not the movie. But also the movie.

---

It all started in 2013. Jealous of my poetry-major acquaintances—friends-of-a-friend—who’d published a poem or two, I started a blog. They all had Blogspots; I thought that was the gold standard for modern poets. Or maybe it was just required for one of their classes.

That same friend gifted me a poetry-writing book. It took me ten years to finish it. In all this time the blog title never changed—A Boundless Place—part of a poem I have tattooed. A matching tattoo, of course, with—you guessed it—that same friend.

Years passed with maybe three, or five, or seven poems a year. And I was happy to pour everything into nothing—a little void to spill my feelings into and escape quickly.

Then, somehow, it became ten, sometimes fifteen in a month. Golly, I couldn’t believe it. I’d share just the poems I liked most with trusted friends—not all, as the quality varied—but the quantity always increased.

---

Over the last two years, I shared the link with four people. I think. Maybe just four at most.

By then, I was writing almost daily. I started short stories and fiction, and before I knew it, I began to fancy myself a writer. The delusion came on strong.

This could be published!

Not just on some crumb-catching blog, but in a real, God’s-honest poetry journal! Like those people I was jealous of—the whole reason I started the thing.

So I submitted one poem to one journal. It was rejected. And I curled back into the blog, happily pouring everything into nothing again.

It felt nice and safe. After all, I don’t need external validation. I’ve been doing this for myself for over a decade. No need to change now.

---

To be honest, I always assumed no one read it. I doubted even the four people with the link checked in—maybe one, because she said she did once in a while.

I took that as a white lie, something said to make me feel better. Maybe she read one or two poems every few months, just enough to make it technically true. But surely the others were too busy.

So I just dropped poems into the blog like banana peels into the garbage.

Though, to be truthful, I sometimes go back and read through a few of them. But at almost 800 posts, I’ve forgotten a lot. I probably rehashed the same subjects and metaphors enough—struggled in those early years for form—that I couldn’t stand to read through it all... even if I wanted to.

---

This part is important, if you’re still reading and still interested: I never looked at the stats. Because I thought no one read it. I didn’t look because I assumed it would just say one or two page views a week—and those were probably me.

Until two weeks ago.

I was updating the password, and the stats were right there. That’s when I discovered many of my posts are viewed the day I post them—often more than once that first day.

There are people who check this blog daily. Not person—persons. With an “s.” More than one.

There are people looking at posts from years ago I’d forgotten. Views from states those four people don’t live in. Views from other countries. Countries I know no one in.

Who the fuck could that be but strangers?

Some posts have 500 views. Most horrifying of all, my blog has over 15,500 views. That can’t be four people and me. Not even five people over the twelve years I've been posting.

---

And I thought this would scare me. It was my biggest fear realized—to be seen in all this messiness I thought I had just thrown into the internet trash.

Yet... that wasn’t how I felt.

I felt relieved.

Someone out there wants this. At least there’s no other explanation. Who or why remains blurry. But someone out there wants this.

Even if they hate-read it.

---

Do I have haters?

Probably. I definitely have people no longer in my life, and the path there wasn’t pleasant for either of us. That could drive someone to hate.

If you hate me, it’s because I hurt you and drove you to that—and I am truly sorry.

(But I probably wouldn’t welcome you back into my life. This is a blessing for you. You really wouldn’t want me back either.)

Anyway—back to the people reading this.

It’s more than no one. Less than everyone.

In first-grade math:

No one < Blog Readers < Everyone

---

There isn’t really a point to this post, other than to say I’ve been more open here than I've been in both my marriages combined. More vulnerable than in most of my friendships. Definitely more honest than in all my family relationships, ever.

This blog, which began because I wanted to pretend I was like the poets I was jealous of, has outlasted my first marriage and my mother’s life.

If you are one of those readers, I may not know you, but you know me better than almost anyone else. And that’s scary. Even if you don’t know me—you know me.

And I hope you’re here because some part of you understands what I mean when I say that.

Unintended longevity.

It was never meant to go this far. I’ve been doing this for myself and enjoying it, for the most part.

But then I wonder—where do I even go from here?

Of course, the only answer is to keep posting things on the internet and pretend they’re not there.

Because, I guess, you never know the impact our stupid little actions can have.

A plant sold to a little girl can define her whole life.

A burger meal cut short can spook a mother into thinking her child foresees death.

A weirdly timed post in adulthood can seem to confirm it.

And sometimes, it’s a blog that goes on for way too long—

a blog that normally would’ve been abandoned a few months in,

but somehow, other people actually read.

Dear Reader, if you are still reading, know I pour my fragile, high-maintenance fuchsia soul in here. Please tend to me well.

Inefficient Healing

Writing, then reading my writing,

Then writing again, only to read.

Like the bug bite from May—

I scratched until it bled. It scabbed

By July, but I picked at it

Every month since. Now,

In August, a pink, round dot

On my wrist—probably forever.

If I’d left well enough alone,

Shown some restraint,

There’d be no story—

No scar to share.

R’lyeh Dreams

“The more he withdrew from the world about him, the more wonderful became his dreams; and it would have been quite futile to try to describe them on paper.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

Heated nights devour my mind—
hexagonal dreams, terrors.
If I believe it, my sheets are wet
with sweat. I can’t remember
anything. Not today, not last night,
not yesterday—not who I am
anymore. The landscape, jagged
like distant, abandoned roads
you and I will not see—not for lack of want,
but lack of access. What do I want?
My cuticles crack and bleed—
and even when they heal,
they bleed again.
My teeth and nails slowly pick,
peel, and prod
at an edge that expands—
ever so—expands like the universe,
expands like my nervous:
vast and tumultuous,
too much for my mind
to comprehend. I’ve seen the ocean
and the moon—in real life, in photos—
but I’ll never know
how small I truly am.
Still, it weighs on me.

Tell Me No

Is getting a gun permit in Alabama

as easy as getting a marriage license

in Indiana—

both a government sanctity,

to have and to hold?

I’m not sure.
But rejection feels more likely
when you're trying to publish a poem.

One poem. One rejection.
That’s 100%.

A true Libra—indecisive,
relieved someone else called it.

I love rejection.

Tell me no, and I can lie back—

no work, no hope, no follow-up.

No more what-ifs.

No juggling.

Don’t ask what I want.
Just tell me what won’t happen.
Not now. Maybe never.

Maybe a gun permit in Alabama

isn’t like a marriage license in Indiana

at all—

maybe it’s not even like a rejected poem:

filed away, too tired to explain.

Just know
you could tell me no.
Tell me no again.

No. To a gun permit.

No. To marriage.
Or yes—twice.
No. To a poem.
You make the call.
I'll accept it.

I couldn’t defend myself—
no gun, remember?
Couldn’t run—
households are heavy.
I could write.
But who would read it?
Two people.
Maybe. Maybe not

Impressing Who?

Write something else no one will read—again.
End of Month Reflection:
“Really productive,” you write.
“Wrote a lot.
Progressing a lot.” Progress—
as if there’s somewhere to get to.
As if there’s a finish line—
a destination waiting just beyond the next sentence.
But you’re a Jeep, wheels spinning in the mud,
and the mud is infinite.
Pretending this has always been the route.

So productive. You wrote a lot.
Progressing—for what? The stark reality:
face it—head-on. For nothing, for no one.
Another lie, filed neatly with the rest.
Never revisited, not even for audit.
If you really wanted to be productive,
to be progressing, you’d spend that time
on your family. On your job.
You know—something that might matter. Or not.
Lady's choice.

ladybird

cigarette

I'm a Nobody? As if!

I’d ask ChatGPT
what Emily Dickinson might think
of transgenderism in America today,
but I’d prefer to know
if God blessed her writing infinitely,
with unending inspiration,
though she mostly wrote for herself.

And I wonder if all things
done alone, for oneself,
without an audience,
are likewise infinitely blessed
by God. ChatGPT would say she might
support challenging gender roles,
her resistance to norms
leading her to seclusion,
her prolific poems left unpublished.

But she did not experience writer's block—
    just periods of creative seclusion.

Yes, it’s in rejecting society
that we’re embraced by it
for centuries to come.

Ha!
        I knew it!

You Aren't Maya Angelou So Go Take a Fucking Shower

"The glamour of the night before is all gone, and only the stink of the morning is left."

It doesn't have to be perfect,

or good, or even understood

to exist.

Not if it truly needs

to be here—

even if just a small, small, small

part of it. Maybe I'm like that too.

Feb-brew-wary

Heartbeats in the sand,

     A headlock on land,

Where did the inspiration go?

     Tore up the paper

and dissolved it in water.

     Purple pen ink

made it so pretty 

      in the toilet

as I flushed it down.

Symbiotic Spaces in Books Where We Could Both Reside

I don’t believe in twin flames

or soulmates,

but I believe in novels—

the kind set in outer space,

with alien casinos

on distant planets,

where a woman,

in a formal gown,

chases a younger girl,

a girl in trouble,

hoping to save her.

The woman tears the hem of her sequin gown,

exposing freckled, fragile legs—

legs that climb a lattice wall of flowers

and slip through a balcony window

of a high-rise villa condo.

Remember, this is an alien world.

A spaceship carried her here,

to rescue the girl

from an ancient cult,

once symbiotic creatures

implanted deep in the girl's belly.

After the parasite’s removed,

the woman wraps the girl’s torso

in the tattered tulle remnants

of her gown. Only then

does she look up at the sky—

the stars shining down blessings,

that she was saved. She was the plot all along.

Both will return to the home planet,

on the small spaceship,

together at last.

The back cover describes it as "a tale

of epic friendship."
I’m not sure about all that.

I don’t believe in twin flames,

or soulmates, or even epic friendship,

but I believe in a story like that.

Similes like Dickinson

The maternal instinct,
sharp yet soothing—
like an airbag filled with chamomile,
deployed straight to the face.
It’s a punch, then a gentle cushion,
both forceful and tender.

Our friendship,
like the worn cutting board
I’ve not yet replaced,
though any hard surface would do.
It’s a worn-out thing,
perhaps overlooked, replaceable,
for now, it serves its purpose.

Take my annoyance,
like sharp-clashing bangles,
cutting through the air,
each step announcing discomfort,
a constant, jarring rhythm
that I can't ignore.

In the messages you send me,
like opening the mailbox,
hoping for a letter— a card—
but finding only junk and bills.
It’s muscle memory,
reflexive disappointment,
each opened envelope another letdown.

Please, wrap yourself in restraint,
like a blanket of each thought or feeling,
a gift meant only for you,
hermetically sealed tight around you.
Yes, sometimes it aches,
the need to share,
but perhaps silence is safer.

Once more, I am engaged,
like a bird trapped in a garage,
the door wide open,
both able to leave and unwilling to fly out.
The freedom is there—
Instead, the bird beats against the glass.

Gulps

Poetry—  

you twisted menace 

who I wish to devour quickly,

yet must savor slowly,  

like ice cream through a straw.  

I wait for it to melt in the cup,  

tasting it one drop at a time.

I must confess sometimes I fantasize the world will fall in love with my brain

So we’re in agreement:  

An MBA makes the most sense—  

For me, for now.  

A practical, a smart choice.  

But inside, I’m daydreaming  

Of poetry classes,  

Of a professor who recognizes  

My raw artistry—  

The 21st-century Emily Dickinson,  

Voice of a generation.

Blah. Blah. Blah.

Color in grandeur.

I’m whisked away to publishers,  

Then podcasts, then late-night shows.  

Critics would be horrified  

By my interviews—  

Sipping a pint of cow's milk 

Or sweet tea,  

Shooting a BB gun at the opossum  

Raiding my garden.  

      "It only hurts them. 

       Doesn't break the skin.

       But he'll remember me."
How Hunter S. Thompson!

But fans would be enamored— 

My feral cat rescues,

My antics,

And the part-time job  

At Home Depot

Even though I have

A cult following.

The biggest fans

Have adopted a cat

And bought a hammer

I happily sign

If bought from me—

The closest they will get

To owning a piece of me.

How Hemingway!

Someday,  

I’d die, yet still be  

Some freshman's favorite poet— 

They're in the hipster college phase.

But then I remember:  

If I could’ve, I would’ve  

By now. Afterall,  I set goals  

And reach them. Did you know  

I’m getting an MBA?  

It just makes sense—  

For me, for now.  

A practical, smart choice.  

then i wince muncie

mugwort floating on top of tea. always lemon

and sugar. hot water. 7 of swords reversed, again.

composition book for journal. bits of my dear days

pasted in-between. routine is a ritual.

                                       ritual is a spell.

                              a spell is enchanting. 

the air and fire. the earth holding up. twin snake.

it's always been there. even back when we lived

by train tracks. a whistle outside an apartment. 

split rent. a candle flame. she likes the smell.

even then she said i could be a real poet. i believed.

picking our rooms. picking out paint. children drunk. 

feeling so grown. cheap wine. hard floor. wood floor. 

feel this tomorrow. music faint from a laptop.

battery dying. open windows. across a laundromat

it's was closed the day we moved in. then one day

i was sober and washed a load with a first husband there.