Creaky bones sighed beneath the stretch of stringy, wilting skin that beset her weary body, singing in blind faith as only the most devotional of hymns do, stretching the silences like painstakingly hand-woven quilted blankets. Her handled crutch inched forward languidly, she was in no rush to live, or to remember. Breakfast was a stable subsidy of the not-so -distant future, and the wide, perpetual grin congealing her cracked red-stained lips gave confirmation to this fact: she was not afraid of death.

Genavive moved with the slow reason and humility of forgetful grace, stringy oyster hair giving glimpses of scalp while her gaping, toothless turtle mouth sculpted an inexhaustible smile that seemed to give away her merciful joy. That same jack-o-lantern smile was fixed on the recollections of the sincerity of spring rather than aches and pains, no matter how prevailing or arresting. She held the steaming mug close to her hollowed chest, which was still gently rising, falling beneath her cream blazer; the pantyhose crumpling under her open toed sandals, balling near the pinky toes, seemed to sing of the rings of years past like the innards of the most archaic, judicious of redwoods. Her peach silk shirt rustled in diplomatic complacency as her napkin stippled her face in an effortlessly stately manner, pooling into a lingering and unwavering gaze that emanated contentment.

She sat in the bay window alcove looking out over the neglected yard and once-garden she could no longer afford the strength to sufficiently maintain, no tinge of regret visible in her eyes, all forlorn debris wiped clean by reverence for life and all it brings. Her dry whisper of a cough barely made a ripple in the gentle air of the pea green house with its teal and coral trim, brittle like the trembling age-spotted hands and sunken wrinkles of time etched into the corners of her eyes. There was an immeasurable dignity in her gestures, the clutching of the warm mug with two hands, grasping the cup as if it were a prize, a small treasure in peacefully delicate times. She always drank hot apple cider in the summertime even though it made sweat gather and bead beneath her nylon stockings;it stirred a peaceful familiarity within her that reminded her of years past, cold winters in her old New Jersey home, back when she could still bounce for hours on the oversized trampoline with her eyes closed. Soothing to the soul.

Staring out clasped in dream, she soaked up the scenes of droopy green landscape, with cracked tin watering cans, rustling brass wind chimes, and rusting wrought iron gate lines, posts pointing skywards in silent exalt. The old wooden swing swung and creaked lightly from the unfolding hands of the largest tree branches shadowing the sloping hills of yard, its frayed yellow rope peeling away like slivers shellfish skin and quivering in the humid breeze. Genavive's children lived halfway across the continent and never bothered to visit. The grandchildren they had blessed her with were already too old for swings, but even when they were still ripe with youth and budding with energy, the swing had hung lifeless and empty from the sprawling elm arms, a device she had appealed upon a strapping teen boy in the neighborhood-teeming with moxie and the need to build, move, create-to decorate the lands of her lawn with. She had hoped it would help entice more children to come and play within her viewing distance, so she could watch contentedly from her window, absorbing the purity of ecstasy and echoed staccato bursts of laughter. She was a happy woman. But even the happiest get lonely. Perhaps those that are capable of containing the most powerful of joys are also prone to the the heaviest of isolations.

But of course, it helped to have Erica. Erica had been her saving benefaction for many years now, had shared these long silences bridging tighter and wider as the days grew quieter. Erica had been with her, by her side, for the most lackluster of nights and the most aching of mornings. Erica had faithfully walked beside her every cool evening, down the road to the edge of the the grass knolls above the wide expanse of clearing that Genavive so adored-although not as much as the feel of the soft down of tight chocolate curls of her companion underneath her wizened hand. There was one lone tree that stood strong in the dead center of the valley, a tree of unknown name and breed that proudly shed its sheath of leaves in winter, reveling in self rebirth, and turned fire copper at the onset of autumn's sigh. This tree was very special to her. For this tree, Genavive had a place of the highest veneration perched on the pumpings of her heart, right next to the spot in which her beloved Erica remained.

Before dinner every evening the temperature allowed, she slowly worked her hips specifically to make this walk, for this tree, with Erica traipsing alongside her with no lack of loyalty. She would always stop her journey at the boundaries of the lush precipices bordering the trough, wishing she possessed the same balance, virility, and sturdiness the tree maintained, so that she could venture down the uneven terrain of the hills and cross into the mossy lowlands where the tree lived and breathed the Southern air like sailors inhaled the sea. But she did not lose herself in the wistful longing, she did not burden herself with ruefulness. Instead, she lived through the tree, from a distance- she lived its history, its honor, its growth, its vitality and veins of salted earth. She would remember the feel of another's fingers with her own. She would relish in the tree's whispered secrets, and the way that all existence ceased to exist when she spoke with it, from afar. With Erica always sprawling in the shade near her feet, sometimes panting and squinty eyed when the sun bled just right, but always watching her, Genavive would pray for love to always remain, and for each day she once again opened her eyes to reveal to her the world.

tendrils

my marrow's spiderweb tunnels echo with your walk of life. across the wide red river grains of the Southern Provinces of the Sahara and within the staccato outlines of the museums of Old France, you drive my smallest bits to become something infinitely more powerful than religion.

my pigtails ache for your alternative medicine.
soaring through the high reaches of arches in the dirt crosswalks of the Capri Islands
or building bridges across the muscled bronze contours of a new breed of David-
you were felt in fibrous existence even months before your bang thrust persistence
of entrance.

(in Rome we walked the alleys of rippled drumbeat breath circles,
i sensed you growing wild in the distant reaches of my secret Arcadia,
in every shadowed brick crevice.
moonlight illumination.
between the book bars and coaxed cafe Campari hushes,
i taste a real woman's soft whisper meditation,
her chocolate serenity,
and watch her shoulders curve just the right way on the stairway:
and already an effortlessly blinding birthing of light grew on my pixie rings of peace,
my self salvation germinating.
we push our approbation through the lands of search-
barbarian bus stations and Jesus sandals that wrap our ankles and break our bread,
and somewhere a slice of my head is simmering
in the juices of your pre-bliss preparation;
beard saturation &
rainbow recollections
that lead me to believe every step was one in accordance with the laws of
Lot.)

pigment

there are times I feel it wash over me like the crests of distant oceans,
when corrosion is nothing more than a few days worth of eager impatience-
waiting to stack the waning wood piles high with gasoline coatings as the
old foreigner blue jays sing,
vicious, soaring libertines-
supposedly spiritual symbolism that sometimes spontaneously
chokes you:
distant and mocking.
Yet a resonance of your stretched taut smile,
under the history of darkened Southern lit streets, in the feared fluorescent grocery aisle,
morphs the memories of false whimsies
into shades of future paintings-lights in the mountain villages and trees,
trains that only flee onward into the invisible cities of blue hour vagaries:
suddenly-
it is rather unthreatening,
recalling
the reminders of days you felt the sting
of ambivalence shake your roots like an unrecognizable pair of eyes
in a red lipped smudged mirror
after night mist
(set in and settled in your calcium-deficient bones).
Only now they creep upon you like the reposed recognition of happiness,
outpourings of admittance and proliferation like spring showers
in the beckoning field light
of morning,
when the drought is at its weakest
and the terrors crouching belly-flat beneath the floorboards of home
are only quivers of earth, now
like miniscule, mysterious seeds of delight,
meant to rattle the lungs and flat land plains of familiar territory
with new fight evident in their book-end fringed eyes,
(pages upon pages of beautiful, poised artifacts, now alive)
becoming echoes of folk tales around fires,
succumbing,
when everyone knows exactly when the bean stalk begins its growth,
can sense the dirt shaking beneath their curled toes.





(like water for chocolate),
i will be
your carefully contemplated ambivalence towards technology,
your favorite instilled and installed gift of ideology,
your specialty ingredient, fresh-baked cakewalk reward,
your sexually explicit diving board,
your 1000 years of solitude,
your pre and post creation music mood,
your freedom river waterfall walk,
your bedroom artwork stolen chalk,
your everything free-falling, flying, and flowing,
the children you raise beyond candlelit autumn sowing,
the movement of your point to point,
the oil that heals each premature creaking joint,
the learning that blossom-feeds your large cowboy-hatted head from every (forgiven) ego driven instance,
the conquering and delivering of every new country's distance,
the softly inhaled dust of your centuries birthing ancestry and crossing blood lines,
the building of villas and vine-strewn gardens that embody the beginnings of family wines,
the seeping of your silent stillness,
the raging of your self nemesis.




(like connect the dot chakras in mediation),
you are
my canopy of zipline refuge alongside fresh mango strewn leaves,
my shifting season-weather skin metamorphoses,
my pureed purified water pancakes (not flawless in shape but perfect in taste) upon waking,
my gleeful, leaping jump into epic leaf piles after heaven sent sweaty afternoons of raking,
my homemade salsa, immaculate enchilada cravings fulfilled,
my mid-winter hot spring dip sigh of relief involuntarily spilled,
my inexplainable, irreversible "chemical reaction,"
my sunburned headrush of simple, pacific satisfaction,
my home brightening houseplant leaves and blooms, purified oxygen,
the foreign sunbeams & moonrays coaxing my eyelids open upon the lands of every place i've been,
the hand constructed bridge for Mecci's pond,
the unexplained lightshow through the glowing horizon fog,
the magical realism growing wild,
the triumph attained with each unpaved mile,
the dictionary of favorite nursery rhymes,
the rocks that pull me skywards on solitary and shared mountain climbs,
the gleam in my masked eyes above naked flesh deep within November wood,
the absorbent petal protection, my goblin Robin-hood.





the most organic, timeless phenomenon
has lit the wicks of my life.
and around every corner i find
more reason.