origins .

The idea of staying never occurred to me. Not in any serious sort of way.
I was raised on an island but I was not born on one. You were. 

The idea of leaving comes to you in a romantic sort of way. 
A "maybe-someday" that you poke at when things get dull. 
It never came to you as it did me: as a necessity. As a very act of survival. 

We are two different species, I'm coming to understand. 
I killed myself loving you, and it's taken me years to realize that we do not breathe the same. 
To realize that when you say "home" you think of one place and not thousands.
To realize that I can love you in spite of this, but it will kill me. 

You have built your life in small things. 
You let an ocean you can swim become a barrier. You let mountains you can climb fence you in.
And it's taken me a while but I think I understand why, when I left, you didn't do the same. 

You were born on an island, and I was not.  

S. 

{Photo: Tamara Lichtenstein Photography}

Creation .

I am made of dirt-caked carrots from the backyard garden, 

            of scars that I can live with.

I am made of classic rock 

            on roadtrips with an old man. 

From the oceans push and pull, 

            missed curfews and long goodbyes. 

I am made of real maple syrup and Sunday comics, 

            of slammed doors and inaudible apologies.  

      

I am made from skinning-dipping in early May 
            with a boy who 'wasn’t right for me' 

                                               (he wasn’t). 

I am made of packed bags and packed houses, 

            and the restlessness that comes with staying now.  

From a phone call made across the world 

            that has bittered the taste of everything I’ve since known. 

I am made from still moments and negative space, 

            from the sound of steady breathing in a single bed for two. 

I am made of words that someone else has penned, 

            when no one knows me like a stranger. 

S.

{Photo: Melissa Lunar Flickr}

Astrocytoma .

Iridescent and belonging to all the light  

            of the constellations, 

This was how she used to be –   

            a luminescent contrast to the greytones. 

But there are chemicals taking her now 

            capturing the luster of youth and  

coating her body with a blankness:

            A canvas untouched, 

                                or since faded. 

Her mother remembers her as a flame 

            There’s nothing wrong with being still 

                        she tells herself, 

But she remembers when her girl would leap 

            with all the energy of the sun. 

There is heaviness layered behind 

            pale green eyes 

That sprung up somewhere between 

            test tubes and CAT scans and negative results. 

She can’t fix this. No one is fixing this. 

There is a fault in the framework – 

            they’ve found the problem but not the answers 

So what’s the point in all the dim rooms and 

            holding tight to words like ‘hope’ 

                        if everything perfect fucking dies? 

S. 

{Photo: Jacob Sutton Photography}

new territory .

you are a country i want to learn. a culture i want to bathe in until my fingers prune up. i want to carve your language into my walls until they've been chiseled so deep they have nothing left to do but crumble.

you don't scare me with your history. with the wars that have already been fought and lost upon your ground, leaving you scarred beneath the wreckage. i don't mind the mess.

i want to discover the secret places. the ones the ten-day tourists never find. i want to know your safe areas and the ones i'm not supposed to go to after dark has fallen.

i don't want to just visit. i want to live in you. to walk every day with your air in my lungs. to search you over without a map because i will make my own. i will rewrite it a thousand times and i still won't get it perfect, but it will be my life work to try.

i want you to be the last country i go to, and me the last traveler you allow within.

i want to find my home in you.

S. 

{Photo: Margaret Durow Photography}