glockenspiel toenails.

i don't know what to do on these days when i can't shut my mouth, trying frantically to clamp my lips or teeth down tight but my wicked tongue keeps getting in the way. this is no excuse. i thought maybe i'd gotten better, but i think it's closer to more extreme, higher highs and lower lows and these swinging arcs of our frustrated paths crossing. intersections are the more dangerous, after all.

that xylophone, i can feel it in my toenails. impatient tongue and cheeks. malicious and comforting belly. the gentle swoop from yr hip to yr waist. painting parties where we'll fling pigments past paper cranes. the intricate reverse origami of how i unfold around you / the world unfolds around us like a map of all the gnawing nudging misgivings and plans of this whole seething confusion.

fingers & words

too many cups of good, strong coffee, and i was happier than necessary about the shape of these grey skies and these beautiful wilting trees.

i like words like careless and wistful and soft. stumbling and fumbling and mournful. giddy, easy, familiar. transience. somnambulance. osculation.

my cut-up hands - my twice-zested thumb, index finger caught in the chain on my bike. other thumb slit open on the plastic packaging of a bar of mango-scented soap. other cuts from nowhere that startle me when they sting unexpectedly. black lines of grease in the folds of my palms. callouses from bikes and knives and espresso machines.

north carolina

blue peaked roofs. that's all i can remember. wobbly tables that quiver with every stroke of my pen. hardware stores just might be my favorite places in the world, especially after mornings spent snooping in bottom drawers for yr stashed love letters, tattered secrets, and every birthday card i ever drew for you.

there's a significance in our friendly obvious gestures. i get so tired of necessarily haughty eyes.

dark leafy greens, brown rice, deep red slices of beet. what could ever be more beautiful?

and the scent of all of our less-than-apprehensive unspoken thoughts. the lingering aroma of memories we'd like to fling at each other just to prove we can. the exhausting dialogues of new again every time, almost. (i can't believe she didn't recognize me, after all those years of muddy riverbanks and faces drawn on chins. i still know the winding road to her house, still remember that narrowly-missed head-on collision that one day.) and the way nothing could ever feel more natural than bikes on small town streets, the easy interludes of stoplights and left turns and weaving across lanes.

i think i was telling the truth when i told them i'd buy the house slowly from them, fill it with summers of lush tomatoes and juicy blackberries, winters of fireplace inertia and all the requisite cozy sweaters we can pile on. i wouldn't mind. really wouldn't.

winter here isn't even cold. winter here is a blissful clear sunny day and wide highways for me to push this heavy old bike along, standing to pedal up slow graceful hills.

vienna airport

vienna nights clinging to my hair and my boot soles. chocolate dissolving on my tongue. (these days i always crave my chocolate darker and darker, my garlic stronger, my blankets softer and more

and when we all go to dark places full of collared shirts and fog machines, when the music gets worse and worse but we just keep on dancing because it recalls those first few weeks and the growing familiarity of all our giddy limbs. (that's when i remember why sometimes it's better to just say yes.)

christmas came three weeks early this year, or so i'm told.

mittens changing into chocolate bars.

pickles changing into mint leaves.

what used to frustrate me about my lacking vocabulary is now a relief of some sort, the comfort of not having time to worry about what i say or to wonder at anyone's reactions because the mere fact of the words coming out in a correct and legible arrangement is a satisfaction enough. sometimes i say things i don't even want to finish, or i don't even need them to understand, and then when they want the end of my sentence or want to respond i'm not sure why we're not just letting it slide away. i hope i've learned more patience for stumbling accents in my own language, too. i want a german-speaking friend in chicago to let me stay in practice. i want to label everything in our house with these words i'd like to keep on my tongue.


i'm kind of scared, is what i mean, to leave this city and this language and all these new ways i was learning to align. i'm going to miss vienna.