1.

Breath against blue.          Sky,          sigh     —    silence,          the soil

From which sound springs.          Not a violent

Word, spring.          Misleadingly elastic,          a promise

Of better days ahead.          Nevermind the blossoms,

Shooting through branches.          Nevermind the stem, piercing

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The dirt.          A needle           and the softest part of an ear     —

Can you hear?          Something is always being broken.          

2.

Prescribed tablets of despair.          That’s not what doctors

Call them.          The point           is to stomach          the sadness.          

Welcome to my body     —     a mid-latitude ritual,         a forest          

Through which all seasons pass.          The pills are not for healing,          

Only weathering          the storms.          The doctors do not wonder  

Why they’re getting worse.              

3.            

A compass sinks to the bottom of a lake,         as out of reach          

As tomorrow.           Downward,          our earthly fate.

The surface of misery,          smooth          as the head          of a drum.

Who dares break through?          When trees carve wind,

It howls in pain.          No one to the rescue.  

In one hand is what you know.          In the other is what you want.

How terrible          to be a creature           of habit.

4.

One day,          I was a dandelion.

The sun left bruises          on the clouds.          All grown up,        

I ran away           from myself.          Scattered

As ashes.          Maybe it was for the best     —     to be rocked

In the arms          of the air.          Far away

From what happened,        I listen         for my cries          in the distance.