tide-taking

How do you do, said the man on the moon, and I asked him if he had the time - he told me to sing like the stars were the key and my singing would set them in line - so I sang to the stars and I asked them to tell, through their twinkling and circling paths, if the man on the moon would come back to me soon, and they said what an odd thing to ask - so I sang and I sang, and I wailed the night through, just a tumbling voice towards the sea, and the man in the moon must have heard my sad tune, for he found me awash in the reeds - set me down in the grass with the sand under skin, ocean tickling toes on the shore, he hummed soft in my ear and told me, my dear, from a man on the moon and a girl in the sea, in the tide we cannot ask for more.

philosophy of persons

i imagine i've met him before
perhaps in self-defense
so i don't have to bother meeting him again
and worrying
i imagine i already exist in an alternate universe
where the conversations in my head
the warm nods and laughing squint of understanding eyes
have already happened
i sit on my bed on a sunny day and say i already know the sun
why bother to go out and meet it

in my other life, the sun and i
chase clouds round the world til we can't distinguish one from the other

the day my best friend changed his name

i wrote my father last night, after talking for an hour with my mom
she waited until she said goodbye to tell me
thom's mother was gone - she'd been gone since yesterday morning.
my mother asked if i was alright - my father stood in the kitchen.
i said yes, and then said goodbye, and then i sat alone on the bed and cried
like i was five
and my dad just shaved off his beard.