#26/30 - 2017

Hunger is a constant today.
Lunch eaten, snacks consumed, coffee imbibed,
and still.
I have a habit of opening things
in search of food
when I am bored.
I am like a squirrel that way, I think.
Or is my hunger the squirrel? Following me around
a few paces away--
safe distance--
creeping up when I am still.
Do you have any food for me?
Do you?

#25/30 - 2017

Fraught with possibility,

he describes the ream of paper that set him on his path,

bright green and overlarge, bidding.

The mute challenge of all that white space,

he says,
and I think I understand.
Possibility can be more paralyzing
than fear.
Potential can spiral wrong oh so quickly,
but if you let it,
that fear can move you too.
Harness the fear
move forward in spite
and go confidently.

#24/30 - 2017

Somehow, grocery shopping leads to computer buying
You want the one that's shiny, you say.
Your input is purely aesthetic, relying on me
for the rest.
Is this a good one?
I have to reach back
into another life, another relationship, another standard of knowledge
to help us.
The look on your face while I babble tells me
it doesn't matter,
it's a good one.

#23/30 - 2017

Guard your eyes against a world that is too bright
for the night you had.
Wrap yourself in white noise and highway rumbles,
ease away the slow knocking on your temples.

Left hand at 12 o'clock on the wheel, right hand lazily tracing a snag in your jeans,
I watch you sleep out of the corner of my eye,
and wish I could cover you with more than just a blanket
as a remedy

#22/30 - 2017

The eloquence with which I respond

is inversely related to

the number of vodka cranberries I imbibe.

So the third time I am asked,

Oh, what position do you play?

I simply respond,

"Girlfriend!"

#21/30 - 2017

I picked daffodil for a spring birthday
and brought it to a friend at a bar.
The daffodil was a yellow starburst, plucked
from my own back garden,
but on my walk with the blossom, I saw others
city-planted, concrete-stunted,
less buttery and more sickly yellow.
I wanted to wear a sign declaring the origin,
so that others would know I did not steal it--
but also, the secret to its vibrancy was me.

#20/30 - 2017

Thinking that
you have to make up for yesterday
is a dangerous line to ride.
There is a line between
endurance and injury,
one we are sometimes too stubborn to acknowledge,
wanting that thing so desperately,
the toll we pay to get there unimportant.

#19/30 - 2017

Some nights are harder than others.
Calves shaking, feet seizing at the wrong moments,
throat throbbing from a rogue shoulder check early on in the scrim,
a penalty assessed two jams too late,
mental toughness off- kilter.

Her foot caught mine
and twisted out my bad knee,
wrenching a cry from my gut.
The jam is called for me, my body betrays
and frustration spills down my cheeks.
Anger, disappointment, and just general pain whirl.

I haven't cried alone in a bathroom like that

before. 

#18/30 - 2017

A neologism is a made-up word
a placeholder for a feeling
as yet unchristened.
I used to make up words when I was a child,
but I can't remember them, now.
I like to think that I found what I was looking for,
needed a placeholder no longer,
I learned and filled in and rewrote
what before I had created and fever-dreamed and silver-tongued.
I hope that my instinct didn't die
it's just rusted, filmed-over, and geoded.

#17/30 - 2017

playing poem catch-up
stolen few hours by myself
words drip too slowly

#16/30 - 2017

lazy Sunday
enveloped by you
painstakingly extricated for Adult Chores
--groceries and yard waste to curb--
before returning, ensconced to my precious you

#15/30 - 2017

Slowly
we are making this place
Ours.
Spring cleaning is feverish and we move
in tandem,
rewriting our space in the plural.
My mattress of more than a dozen years
relegated to the curb,
replaced by yours, newer and more cloudlike.
Cross-stitches reclaimed from previous memories,
made anew by ours.
Coats hung, pictures framed, blankets folded.
This is a new place for Us,
a brand-new space for Us,
moving forward and etching togetherness over the cobwebs.

#14/30 - 2017

I hate leaving you in bed.
It is categorically unfair.
Your eyes barely flutter open as you kiss me good morning,
but your hands are strong as they pull me back down for another,
elbows locking behind my ribs
despite my half-hearted protestations.
Getting dressed is the last thing on my mind.
Your collarbone, bare, catches the shadows of early morning
and I want to lie down there,
wrap myself in your thick dreams and hide.
But the morning won't let me.
I am resigned to my workday, you enshrined in the comforter,
suspended in my mind until I return.

#13/30 - 2017

Tonight, I return to practice
under the weight of what I learned this weekend.
I must try not to let it stunt me
disappointing as my performance may be,
I must keep skating forward,
toward the next game.

#12/30 - 2017

Active alliteration with sounds reinforcing the sense--
a meta-prompt if I ever did see one.
I have always found felicity in active alliteration,
intentional inscribing of matching mouthfeels,
tinkling rhymes triggering rhythms,
calling to mind a song or phrase,
loading it onto the mental record player,
round and round until they sound like words no longer

#11/30 - 2017

home again home again
not-so-lickety-split
three planes
three time zones
two layovers and
two travelers, patience worn threadbare
delays and mechanical issues
stomach pains and what-if-it's-lost luggage
we are ready to be home.

I have never been away from you
this long.
Not in our whole relationship.
I can feel my skin twitch with
the nearness of our reunion.
I stretch my legs in the spacious Ford Explorer
impatient to be stretched out next to you once more.

We pull back into the driveway,
I see you waiting on the porch
phone in hand.
My throat catches.
As soon as the car hits Park
I am out the door and across the yard and into your arms
like I never left.
I missed home.

#10/30 - 2017

"What's in there,
you think?" she said,
peering into the cave.
We'd climbed down from the bluff
to Shark Fin Cove,
removed our shoes and set about exploring.
We reversed a waterfall's direction, climbing up
and back into its mouth,
light dimming and water chilling, the farther in we went.
"Monsters, animals, humans, or dead bodies?"
I laughed and shifted closer,
iPhone flashlight doing nothing for the velvety blackness,
taking comfort in closeness
"How about we keep exploring and not find out?"

#9/30 - 2017

Tournament Day Three
Last Game
Hardest Game
There are only fourteen, so
everyone plays.
My feet get tired and jump back in
when they aren't supposed to
and I end up in the box.

#8/30 - 2017

Tournament Day Two
Two games, one day.
One hundred and twenty minutes of
your very best roller derby.
My friend's feet fall apart
so I skate in game two of the day,
feeling progressively better though still
relatively ineffectual.
This is the hardest thing
I have ever done.
I wish my lungs would cooperate and give me enough air
I wish my feet would cooperate and keep moving
I wish my head would cooperate and stay on the track.
My mental game is loosening
like a too-often-used hair tie.
Not the loosening to a perfect wrist fit,
but the loosening to a possible drop off the hand
if I'm not paying too close attention.
I need to work harder.
I need to practice harder.
I need to skate harder.
But I have made a showing
a starting point
and there's nowhere to go
but up.

#7/30 - 2017

Tournament Day One
Game One
Roster One
my name is there
black and white for my team to see,
the possibility encompassed
in those ten letters.
My nerves compound my congestion
I wish I was feeling better, clearer.
Deep, slow breaths as I assemble my gear,
strapping it on one velcro at a time.
Until the first whistle blows, I am
self-doubt incarnate
held together by the weight of all I feel
I have to prove.

#6/30 - 2017

And so begins the travel
two flights and a layover in Phoenix
before reaching our Final Destination.
Public transport always makes me feel
like I can do anything, make it anywhere.
A shuttle to a metro to a bus to a hotel,
to begin the trek to Boardwalk Empire

#5/30 - 2017

The room where it happens
A wooden stage in the theater district
An American musical made flesh and blood and brocade.
Come in from the rain,
come see history (re)made.
The lights dim, your hand in mine,
we take a deep breath and ready ourselves--we know
all the words.
We get to be in the room where it happens
and look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now
you andme, and Hamilton makes three

#2/30 - 2017

I relish the look on your face
when you are surprised.
A single tear, TV-actor-slow,
proceeds down your cheek.
You had resolved to go home early,
overtaxed with family birthday dinner,
and then we showed up,
and your face glowed anew.

#1/30 - 2017

Saturday's a rugby day!
Early to the pitch,
cold spring sun unready to warm,
muscles quivering to do it themselves.
I am become Team Girlfriend,
Keeper of the Dogs.
All plans of work dashed,
as I submit to muddy not-quite-lapdogs
and cold sunshine.

#4/30 - 2017

History of a chronic over packer
Over thinker
Over worrier

How many pairs of athletic pants
are too many?
Four jerseys are better than two?
What if it is hot or cold or my bags get lost?
Luckily my thoughts are orderly, able to be set down and paused
and no spinning out
into oblivion, piling and whirlpooling into panic.

#3/30 - 2017

Sometimes, lying next to you,
I can see outside myself.
I see the first time you smiled at me that night
from under your windswept hair and sunburned cheeks.
The blue in your eyes glinting in the fire
when you offered me a ride home, sly smile appleing that burn.
I see the first time your fingers threaded through mine,
and I slip mine through yours in remembrance.
Sitting next to you I can see forward, too,
and I like what I see.