indiana-w

The pale winter sun fell warm on my ear and whispered to me

I'm dreaming dreaming of days with full clean sunbeams to fall on our thirsty skins and brilliant wildflowers to bathe our eyes I'm dreaming of the earth, regnant and resplendent, her womb open as she delivers life to the soil and the sea My sleeping thoughts are of hope and goodness, peace, goodwill towards men and women, and the people who don't look like this movie star or that politician My freed desires frolicking, they take the shape of mouths filled (bellies, too) and bodies warm in homes big enough and hearts big enough for all us lost people to live in

when did i become a poor baker a man who shapes malformed loaves when did i become the one whose souffle always collapses whose puff pastry fails to rise whose cookies look pale, sad, spiritually sour as if plucked from the cradle of a plastic carton when did my ginger bread stop starting from scratch and my soda bread become bitter the flour on my apron is stale and the stains are lonely for newcomers tortillas shape too slowly beneath my rolling pin they are thick and not round and too small for tacos

sharp crack on the head gravity both felt and heard shiny round apple

soft, naked, and pink cradled between two bodies newborn's quiet cries

I refuse to shed tears 'cause society told me I'm too smart, too much, too stupid, too fat for love. I wipe my eyes. I go on loving and losing, learning that life is a double-edged sword, poised and pointed at my soft underbelly, at my heart. My heart, with its mollusk valves, and my ears with their gills, those Eustachian tubes in which I have to equalize pressure when I'm freediving: Love is just like freediving. You jump or fall into something deeper than you are tall, where you can't breathe and reason does not escape your lips, and you have to figure out how to walk and swim through the thick substance of dizziness, carry the weight (

twisted limbs grasping oak tree; young, gnarled, swiftly blooms catkin offering

Holding you in my arms, I cradle the brightest thing in the universe. Between us, my hopes crackle in fingers of lightning. Your skin feels like my own, cool and smooth.  I feel our breath in the movement of our arms and legs. I feel the memories of your tears, kisses, pleasure, and warmth falling on me, raindrops, wet and mingling. Sometimes, making love, the light is just right, and the world falls away. Almost every time with you is like that. I want to be the one that holds you. I want to be the one.

I curl, a climber-tendril around her shoulders, curling around the pain and the pleasure inside me I curl around her Sometimes I weep in her hair and feel my eyelashes touch hers, damp I unfurl, a new leaf, stretching out to my green soft edges and feeling the warmth of the sun, her love I plant roots in her, around the softness of her, around her heart I want to shade her from the world and leave blossoms, petals, bright colors on her skin surrounding scars and bruises and tears and fears which have no name, but can only be remembered as nights spent awake crying for help with no one listening but now I am here and I listen and I touch,

Bullseye concentric rings of black and white where the world pins people-butterflies to the wall for a collection or exhibit the pin in my forehead gives me a migraine and the label outside my box reads "queer, pagan, neurodivergent, liberal, fat, druggie" but inside I have different concentric rings, an oak tree inside me with layers that say things like "loves beauty" "likes to run with dogs" "smokes medicinally for chronic health problems" and "survived many abuses" The butterfly-people in the natural-history-museum-zoo of the world all have concentric rings inside telling stories but they are not black and white or set in binaries and a