I am flared jeans
and oversized band shirts.
I found out much about myself,
good and bad and neutral
through listening —
listening to those imposed as teachers
and guardians, but more importantly,
the ones just as hurt as I,
musicians I didn’t know I understood
beyond the sensations they pulled
from my body with each plucked note
and word sung.
Music, perpetually filling the air
with some hymn of life and loss,
saved me as I went from sleep
to wake to sleep, cradled
in the echoing noise.
I am broken records
and burnt corners.
I started writing poetry
to make sense
of the world around me.
What I didn’t understand,
I wrote down, hoping the
pages and pages of inscriptions
would aid in my learning.
Little did I know,
writing was my music —
my saving grace.
I am no weaver
but I feel her curse.
I wish to return to the black river,
to slip from that fallen log
and be baptized by the rushing current,
forgiven.
I would take my great love there,
someday,
to the playground of my younger years,
wanting to share the trails
that my feet ache to remember —
wanting to explain the caves
and bats and other things
that come up as they lean into
the multitudes I contain.
I am bunches of rosemary
and a field of columbine.
I don’t forget easily,
holding on too tight with
a rebel’s fist and a golden heart.
It might be my greatest
character flaw or endearing quality.
This is why seventy percent of my memory
exists as song lyrics melded with reality.
A single song can place me in dozens
of flashbacks, some more welcomed
than others.
I am fossils
and forgotten sunglasses.
Too few letters combine
to tell you the story of everything.
I am held together with glue
and clamps, metal wire and pins.
I wish I could write every memory
onto the sides of a paper lantern,
to set fire to the past
but light the way forward.
So It Goes 