2012 In a Blogshell

I feel as if I have some explaining to do.  It's been so long since my last post and even I am a little uncertain  of whether or not I can materialize sentences.  I'll try to explain a little, and I'll try very hard to make sense.  2012 in a blogshell

January:  Spent New Years eve with my grandparents drinking screw drivers on their balcony in Kaumana city while fireworks took off from coconut island in downtown Hilo.  It was a magical moment and i thought of how many new years they had brought in together and how many new years they had seen separately and i wondered how many new years i was going to see and who i was going to spend those years with.  went on a fishing trip with my parents, a private charter out of kailua kona.  dad caught a 200 plus pound marlin.  he was so happy; i haven't seen him so happy in a while.  Work lumbered along as usual.  i was still having difficulty with my co-leader but i tried to keep my head up.  the entire NRO (natural resource office) will be re-locating into nicer, newer buildings.  begin prepping buildings, cleaning, sanding, painting.

February:  writing and biking consume most of my time.  i'm thinking about graduate school but i haven't worked out what i want to go for.  i sign up for an online class as a perk from my employer.  at first i really enjoy it--gender and communication-- and i work really hard on the assignments.  it feels good to be working my mind in this manner once again.  going to the hilo public library alot.  checking out music and books.  getting into my writing.  met an intriguing female graduate student.

March:  Spend dad's birthday with him.  still writing.  still thinking about graduate school.  Trying to make it through work.  it seems to be getting a little worse some days, a little better on others.  getting closer with one of my co-worker.  one of my closest friends at work gets fired.  i feel lost and without an ally.  I hit the front gate at work with one of the work trucks, leaving one of the biggest dents ever seen.  i feel really bad.  co-workers get together to plan a few beers after work to make me feel better.  budding romance?

April:  My birthday.  my parents take me to the Hilton where we spend the night and enjoy all the beauty of being pampered.  I'm a lucky kid.  Friend at work buys me a kickstand for my bike which was very thoughtful.  i am slowly getting friends at work and am able to make it through the hardships of my own crew.  Still writing and i have decided that i want to go to school for journalism.  every time work gets me down, i try to remember that it is all temporary and soon i'll be on my way to a new adventure. 

May:  make a year at PTA.  can't believe i've been there that long.  things are a little better as i am gaining a strong ally at work and finally the higher-ups are seeing my co-leader for who he is.  one of the botanists that i was be-friending quits.  have a going away party for her.  feeling are brought to light under a bright KTA store entrance sign.  biking in volcano and biking at south point. the first time i have ever been to south point. 

June:  begin work on installing furniture in new buildings.  long days but good company.  installers from California come over.  working on graduate school applications.  narrowing down my choices to U of OR, U of MT and U of CO.  a little less time writing as most of my attention is on my new "special" friend.  bike mana road.  what a blast!

July:  ink drawing birthday gift and strawberry shortcake.  lovely.  work is better though another favorite friend of mine quits.  i miss her terribly.  installing continues and the buildings are getting closer to being ready. camp at kiholo.  first time since i was a little kid.  love it and have a blast with my new partner in crime. 

August:  parents move and i help them.  i like their new place.  still working on graduate school applications.  lots of fun adventures in between--hiking and biking.  also stay at a hotel and have a lovely dinner at the blue dragon.  i am very happy.  one crew leader is out on worker's comp and the other is on vacation.  i am the sole crew leader and must run both crews.  i do a good job and things begin to turn around for me.  i feel respect from the crew. 

September:  Mom's birthday :)  and a trip to Maui.  very cool.  a little fuss over some late night partying but all in all a good time.  longest competition to date.  also dad gets surgery.  he comes out of it well and is walking around within hours of getting up.  mom and i enjoy a nice room that overlooks downtown oahu.  i get the employee of the month award and things are much better at work.  help build a big rock wall planter box.  it looks wonderful and also plant an herb garden.  

October:  some hardships.  a strain that has been getting more and more tense erupts in a snap.  it's over.  trust is broken.  i feel a little lost.  join a yoga class and seek out others to hang out with.  get lots of work done on the graduate school applications in the meantime. 

November:  my car breaks down and will cost too much to repair.  with the help of my dad i sell it to a mechanic and start looking for a new one.  i get a black VW beetle and i love it!  also camping trip with girls from work.  kiholo is beautiful, the trip is so much fun and i am so, so happy.  kayaking everyday and snorkeling.  BEAUTIFUL!  thanksgiving!  just the girls and papa this year.  it is very nice and we have lots of fun goofing around.  took ma to the artists' walk in volcano for her birthday.  lots of beautiful artwork.  she got a few pieces.  accidentally dropped some of her birthday money on the ground but luckily someone turned it in and we were able to pick it up.  Finish up my applications and await letters of recommendation to come in.  a rotten egg within our department at work is finally let go.  the program runs much smoother without him. 

December:  Marni visits me from New Hampshire.  we have a WONDERFUL week and a half together doing just about everything.  Stay at Hapuna cabins and snorkel, swim, tan and walk on the beach at night.  beautiful rising moon between tall palm trees.  volcano hiking and the tide pools at kapoho.  also hiking at pololu valley and kayaking around bayfront.  so much fun.  amanda comes to visit and volleyball on the beach and frisbee too.  christmas with the parents and also with my dear.  a very good end to the year. 

home

rest my head upon your chest
temple-heart
mine, yours.
feels like home-

less, i've been
temple-aches
with far away dreams
when i had a home
in you.

separation part I

The mark you left on my breast is fading,

this territory has been abandoned.
How long will you be gone? 
Forever.

The mark on myself is indelible, permanent, fixed.

skin is more resilient than the mind.
How long will you be here?
Forever.

Hunger

My thoughts roam

wild and willful
across your Serengeti. 
They crouch and creep
hungry for you. 
Camouflaged and cool
night
hot and haunted
day
they prae. 
My thoughts are hunting you.
Licking their chops
dying to consume you

so i shall

degrees of pressure
and the velocity of action 
with everything in perfect measure. 
you measure perfectly. 
and your touch,
that soft, soft thing you do,
that slow, soft thing you do--
pendulum swing swing back loop, looping orbit,
orbit
orbit around you--
is the reason.

the soft touch,
the suggestion
the pause
the articulation of godly things
in the opening
and closing of space
between one
and the other. 
the embrace,
the fine-tuned meditation
of the palpable vibrations of the other.
the suggestion and open ended sentences,
the ellipses...
the commas, and run-on, run-on, run-ons

tell me of your past
and your dreams for the future
write it on my skin
use different colors
and please mix up your metaphors.
i come for the images, the lights and shadows
the depths and shallows of your being
a bluesy roll, a tete a tete
that's what i'm getting at
a meeting of the minds as well as the
finger tips and toes and legs and torsos.

i want to study the grain of you
each grain
each wave
i want time
to contemplate the weight of you
and when it's impossible to pen
i want to lay with you in dumbstruck bliss.

strawberry

go tell lacy at the lake that all is lost.  the 'l's roll like beads of sweat down my back.  i've lost my place in line somehow and am now behind a little boy who has never had a real strawberry.  i worry that i'll collapse before this place does.  what more can i do?  how is it that you must earn more than 50,000 a year to taste a strawberry?  surely there are places in the jungle where they live without HDTV, where one might be able to hustle up a strawberry?  Lacy doesn't mind that i've lost everything, everything including my mind.  it's an empty cell here, crumbling walls with starving rats that will scurry away with any food i might have had for thought.

it's not all that bad when you forget what a day was like.  i vaguely remember the sunshine perfectly meditating with the clouds.  but the sun is gone and the days are set, perfectly, calibrated to promote the longest life possible.  but all is lost and lacy knows it.  we don't wear sunscreen anymore because we all have cancer.  it's good to start at the same place i suppose, no one ahead of anyone else.  except inequality hasn't changed much.  the boy has never had a real strawberry.  it is a foreign concept.  it's not the light pink he thought it was, and not as sweet.  he doesn't want the true essence.  he wants the distilled essence.  but it's not his fault, lacy will tell you, it's not his fault that he was born into a world already starving itself.  starving ourselves of true essence.  go tell lacy at the lake that all is lost.  i'm withdrawing my last American dollars.  i will find a park somewhere, because that's all that's left, little green squares of lawn we call parks and i will set myself on fire.  i will hold the dollars in my teeth.  i pray to whoever is listening that someone will give him a strawberry.

June First: Drawing Water

and what does it all mean anyway?  you above the fray, in the shadows, in the cool?  me in the heat, inside the sun wanting to lay in a soft bed but waiting.  waiting?  i'm exhausted, can you tell?  we are not similar nor are we close.  but you try.  and i try.  you've come quite a distance.  how kind.  now can we get some sleep?

***

i ask myself, where am i going?  am i the river rambling down the lane, rambling down the lane, rambling.  rambling.  such words invite ellipses.  i love ellipses.  if i could be  a mummy, i'd want a sarcophagus made of ellipses.  made of ellipses like running water, and the cascading of images onto a page beyond geometrical that it is geothermal, pulsing hot and echoing cool.  cool the pop of rock giving into perpetual motion.  per-pet-ual-mo-tion.  repetition, repetition, forever. 

what is any and all of this but nothing and sound?  mind sound that is melodic and magical.  a movement from the mundane is swept up in a helicopter's panting.  helicopter, helicopter way up in the sky, will you fall down?  down like water, rambling like pages of poetry pantomimed in paper notes, like wishes squeezed from a squealing child all flushed with the tickle of hide and seek?  i'm so surprised every time you're there for me.  presence is symmetry.  and delightful.  and novel.  every time a hand covers the frame. 

water from up.  water from down.  below and above ground.  in the sky.  a big cubic space of water.  all i hear is music. 

The pretty-nice-girl

You said my nails were nice once-upon-a-time 

I’ve been keeping them fine-tuned-to-you 
Since the beginning of this whole-peeled-and-washed-interlude of curiosity and a five dollar bill. 
Laid down on the counter with my-hand-up-your-shirt, getting a price-check! price-check!
Or so I hoped (dear-make-a-wish-foundation)
But you were always more-than-I-could    
afford
but I tried anyway because when a pretty-nice-girl looks at you
looks-at-you
you start filing your nails and washing your hair
taking a train into the city and walking 20 minutes for
a-pack-of-gum
but you were just a-pretty-nice-girl
that I could only imagine
dirty-teenage-boy-style
what delights were hidden behind the counter
it was mad-mad-flowing-summer-time
1992
when I became addicted to
Juicy-fruit
and bad-rhyming-poetry
but you were just a pretty-nice-girl
who went away in the fall. 

my sickness (2004)

During my morning shower I listen to it,

a slow,    progressive,    measurable    beat.
The leak from the toilet
and the coffee can,
bottom rusted through,
placed beneath the drip:
boring a hole into the wooden floor.
Sound swirling and sloshing against my body
pulling seconds—the cells of Time—
as the vibrations evaporate
into stillness.
dripping

            dripping

dripping

                                    dripping.

It’s returned again,
my sickness.

Is this line long, Lachesis?
Cramps in my left leg.
watch—others move fast
but    I,    I    just    barely.
Putting in and releasing the clutch
as I tap the gas:
Traffic jam.
push-in

            release

push-in

                                    release.

It’s returned again,

my sickness.

The smell of alcohol and cotton sterile pads,
squeaky white shoes, overcoat man.
Mat of red hair above his lip.
I touch his face to see if he’s bleeding
and he examines me.
The chill of metal running up
against my back,

my stomach

      my breast

        my breath.

It’s returned again,
my sickness.

Diligent,    deliberate,    it is mine alone. 

It bores through me, starting at the left:
left hand, arm, leg and foot,
toes and fingers—
numb.
Half of my body surrenders
while the other carries on living
as only half a body can.
Knowing the days are quickly passing
and feeling the shedding of beats.
It’s returned.

Disintegration part 1

“Stop!” her hand is on my knee, pushing down until my heel is forced to the floor.

“You know I can’t stand when you do that” she whispers between clenched teeth.  I look out the window; the green hills flow away from us like mermaids swimming, green backs arching and then disappearing into the metal frame.  There is freedom and there is distance, there is the cage and there are the mermaids. “Why do you do it?”  Everything is a metaphor in our marriage, a billion bridges from one thing to something else.  She looks at me, her eyes fierce as to say, “Nothing else matters so long as you answer this question correctly we can go on living together.”  Living.  Of course, we haven’t truly lived in ten years.  I know the answer; I’m supposed to smile, take her hand into mine and tell her I didn’t know and that I would quit right now just for her.  I should.  What could one more lie do?  Our whole relationship slept soundly on a bed of lies.

“Because it bugs you.”  My Id shouted.  I never had a big prick and perhaps that is why she is so unhappy, in fact, I don’t have a big anything, not big ambitions or dreams, not a big ego, not a big chest and certainly not a big bank account.  I don’t know why she married such a modest man.  I just assumed she wanted someone who, when the end came, would be easy to consume, a weak one who wouldn’t put up a fight and a little fatty so the taste would be better.  When the apocalypse comes and all the animals are gone, you’re going to have to eat your spouse.  I would not put up a fight because I always believed that my life would be short and unremarkable.  Not all colors can be bright.  

“Hills, they turn their backs.”  I said ignoring her question, “Hills the color of mermaids”.  “Hills?  What the hell do hills have to do with this?”

“We’re losing…”  I drop off because it isn’t worth trying to explain something she can no longer understand.  I try again, “What I’m missing…” I turn my face from the window and back into her eyes, metal lids closing me off.  “Life” I say finally. 

“I want a divorce” she replies. 

4 Short Poems

Speed train, speed train-

empty eyes on a speed train-
wrinkle free clothes-
and dead animals-
on a speed train.

***

Sentient beings

We clothed and covered and closed
Held from one another

***

Burning vacuous.

You are a paper tiger.
I am not afraid.

***

Drag queen mountains

dress in lacy fog.
A costuming.

same-ness

Stalking the morning, I tumble down from sleep.  I find my still feet chilled in my shaking palms and wonder if I’m of use anymore.  Of use.  Of used orientation.  One chases the other who chases another who in turn is chasing me.  My toes are shrinking from too much pavement dogging.  The tread of my existence is worn.  Does the dog ever catch his tail?  Is this a closed loop system?  Heartbreak, seizure, seize the system, break the chain.  The dog sits and licks his paws all bloody with want, want, want.  I soak my feet in a river whose frost does not bother me.  My feet have no feeling of other, they know not the line where water meets skin.  Then I realize the adage is wrong.  We’re always stepping in the same river because "the river" is an illusion. 

enjambment love

shut my eyes
to awaken
the new sun
makes hills
blue raw clay
we lay in dewy pasture
open skies
kiss
your lids
soft pansy petals
heart
clutched downy chest 

interpreting the spin

"What?"

I ask myself questions.  I interrogate myself, hold myself to the light and try to see through. 

"What is intention?  What is purpose?"

The questions are as diaphanous as the gown on some foreign goddess and yet they are as real as my skin.  I know I am the kin of this dawn, of this haunting place, this high, low land of mountains, of this large rock.  Pohakuloa, long, large rock.  Grounded but not.  I feel unlike myself coming into myself, a stranger.  A coin, I am, perhaps.  A coin spinning on it's axis, close to the table's edge, will I fall on my face?  Time will tell.

The spin is not premeditated.  I have not calculated it, have not figured it, did not forge it, did not grasp it or set it into motion.  (Manifested it?  Maybe.)  My parents are most likely the source of the spin who forged this coin with colliding atoms, from some want of curves, some hunger for the feral feast of pheromones, from the heat of human coalescence; it was they, really, that got this whole thing started, or was it their parents?  Who started it all?  And did they know that they'd one day be making a coin that so precariously spins on the table top of this long, large rock called Pohakuloa? 

The grain of this place is precise but my knowledge of it is absolutely imprecise.  I am getting dizzy here.  I haven't quite learned to close my eyes and humbly accept that part of my destiny is as a physical object among physical objects.  The lighting of the world brings clarity to the page like progressive pictures of a ultra-sounded-out baby.  Tell me there are more than two sides to everything.  Coin I am, coin I am not.  Spinning I am, spinning I am not, one thing like the other, one thing and the other...

And the question remains, when the coin stops spinning will I be face up or face down?  When I leave this physical place, I predict it will be in a manner of symmetry.  I should think I'd exit as I entered, sunny side up with my life wrapped about my neck. 

haiku for the rising sun

fog intersex land
these places come into themselves
boisterous bodies

Two Shells

My mind is clicking, clicking like the ticking of the night.  Restless fireflies or some edgy eddies in a river too unknown.  Oh how confusing it's been, how blissfully confusing.  I try to keep my head upright but it's as if my boat's been capsized and turned over and over in the spiralling web of some waterfall spider who will consume me early next morning.  I am spinning round and round, reaching the surface  long enough to take a shallow breath before I'm plunged into the dark world once again.  I'm tired, aren't you?

What does it all mean?  These scribbles in my notebook?  The morning is cold, cold and I've been thinking of you since I don't know when.  I've romanticized you.  Oh the horror!  I'll never come up for air again!

I have two shells in my pocket for you.  I'm waiting.  I want to give them to you but how and why?  Because I think you'll like them, because I think they're beautiful, because they remind me of a freer time, an uninhibited time, because I cannot give what I want to give.  I only have these two hard shells, white with affection.  Two shells to say everything I can't explain.

splat!

macabre dancer in the company of macaws.  sugar plum fairy and a cough in my throat.  trying to expel something, expel something non-linear and non-secular.  half moon lights upon my right hemisphere begging release of the sun from the confines of my corpus callosum.  in day dreams i feel you.  what if you passed me in the grocery store while i priced cheese?  so much is known about cheese and so little is known about you. 

so many things

the road to Zion was never easy. 
i expected it to be lined with cherry blossoms.
i expected it to be mind. 
but there were no cherry blossoms (though it does shine, still) 
it was glittered with glass
that i soaked up in my heels
and hurt myself
a very pretty thing. 

(i miss
you vision is
nothing is
nothing
and in-
complete)

it is not easy
to write poetry
and even if it is true
it is not necessarily poetry
but it is
most necessary
and it is
you


 

Gloria

Gloria was your name, is your name, will be your name.

***

Dear Gloria,

You had me going so that I didn't know how to stay still.  Legs swung off the tailgate like a body hung and shaken by the wind.  What was that place?  Looking at your hair as it covered your eyes, I saw that you didn't want me to see.  You were dying.  But aren't we all in some stage of death, daily, hourly, moment-arily?  And when it does come to a close, is there a purpose anymore?  Of course, I didn't ask you that, just as you, in your final weeks, didn't tell me you were afraid, that you couldn't stand the sight of me, that you would have rather we both turned away before the whole thing got ugly.  I listened to your breathing, harsh and troubled as you exhaled.  We were sitting on the edge of this tailgate looking out over the ocean, high up on a cliff, waves crashing under our feet.  One of us was ready to die while the other, swinging her legs, hoped for a miracle.  It's cruel how some creatures get more time on this earth than others.  I put my arms around you and nestled my face into your fur.  We promised to meet again.  You whimpered and licked my face as the cool evening air rushed against our backs.

***

I fell in love with you the moment I found that you could talk underwater.  I was born underwater and never surfaced.  It was important, though difficult to find others willing to communicate with me, to chance opening their mouths even a moment to release a sound.  They feared, and rightfully so, the vast expanse of liquid depth, the dark blue deep, the weight of meta-living, that would fill them so completely that they would, undoubtedly, be inseparable from their watery context.  Most won't choose this life, but you, you and me, we're hopelessly sunk, so embedded in the metaphor that there would be no returning to the surface.  And who would want to return?  How we revel in our octopus' garden, swimming in and out of stone castles on the sea floor. 

***

Whose memories am I writing?  Whose stories?  Mine?  Another mine?  Gloria, who are you?

coffee orange sky blue

So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow and the glint of the paint in mid-afternoon showers.  I know this.  And still I smear the paint.  What a mess it turned out to be.  Why do we do this to one another?  So harsh, so brutally objective with the emotions of the other.  You push me to say the things I do not want to say, but want to say, but shouldn’t say, but must say because you demand them.  You bring out the brute in me.  I am not, by nature, a biting creature.  Yet here I am, snapping at you with regretful sighs and salt water in my head.  Why do we do this to one another? 

in the library

I wish I smoked sometimes, I feel that would impregnate my silences with some sort of meaning like I was brooding intentionally, not the reality which is I can’t remember or I don’t know.  Lovely.

You’re not from around here are you?  Automatically you think that.  It’s easy for me to go with.  That.  Why not?  No, I’m not from around here, but yes I am.  I grew up right around the corner, I went to school up the street, I wore a mu’umu’u in a parade and sang Hawaiian songs in a choir.  For the first time, I don’t feel blasé about someone not knowing that I’m from here.  For the first time I feel a little strange. 

I held a copy of the application for the Vermont studio of arts fellowship, a print out that I needed.  Due in a week.  A dream, come to term, or not, but will be forced out of me because some sort of omnipotent force has deemed it ready.  And in my other hand a book of poems by Ginsberg.  She knew him or knew of his work I should say, and so she felt it only necessary to inform me that she was a poet as well.  Lay her beside Ginsberg and she would say he’s taking her limelight.  One of those.  A confident artist.  They always seem suspect to me. 

Then we started talking poetry as I absent mindedly folded the application into the pages of Ginsberg.  Perhaps I was hoping he’d rub off on me.  We talked about poetry and about poets and about slams.  There was a degree of arrogance and yet I continued to swim in her pool sullied by self righteousness because it was pool with a poet nonetheless and they seem to be in short supply round me lately. 

I dreamt of connections, human connections, emotional connections.  I dreamt of you and you.  But not you.  I stroke my neck softly in the hopes that my hand will transform into someone elses, yours or yours.  Meet a real writer.  I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.  Someone who has been through it, someone who knows.  Knows?  The pain, the despair, the desire.  I know these things.  There is a projection I put out that I’m not happy with.  Are you from here?  Aren’t you young?  I’m feeling underestimated and misunderstood in my time.  signs that I will be a great artist someday.  Surely.  To look at the milk as less sour and to suck on the chunky bits because.  I waited for the writers and they were nowhere to be found. 

human noise

they are gone, the big black bumble bees.  i liked their hum, their base, it was comforting in the way sighing is comforting or fingering the rosary is comforting or listening to mother's heartbeat is comforting.  but there are human noises now.  and they are cacophonous.  there is a difference between human-made noise and the sounds of everything else natural.  the sounds of nature meld nicely with one another, the waves rumble and the bees buzz and the birds chirp.  there is no need to take over, no need to negate the other.  but human noise--the sound of a car door slamming, the alarm beep of a unlocking vehicle, the ting-ting of an aluminum can hitting the side of a metal trash barrel--takes over everything.  it's sharp and loud and demands precedence.  it's deafening.

seeks other

comfortable
knowing the respiration's of another
breath soft downy feathered owlet,
go up and out,
draw in,
up and out,
draw in.
revel in another's life,
alive in the inhale. 

a Congo rages inside
alive with many tropical birds
and many rivers
and many banyan trees. 
won't you walk inside me? 

the bomb that almost went boom

He kicked a grenade.  I wasn’t aware of this until after the fact, until after I watched him sprint, hiking boots beaten and swollen from where his ankles bucked and yawed against the sharp and shifty lava they traversed each day, soles nearly scuffed out of existence, his baggy blue jeans ripped in the knees and the wand of his backpack sprayer trailing like a tail scared of being left behind.  He didn’t shout, just sprinted, like a scream would slow him down, or perhaps there wasn’t enough breath, perhaps there was no room for excess, only energy enough for muscles pulling at tendons pulling at bone pulling at survival.  He kicked a grenade on purpose, he later admitted.  Obviously nothing happened or else I couldn’t be writing this.  The unexploded ordinance, or UXO, was a timed grenade which responded to a particular number of rotations.  At its birth, the nascent projectile catapulted through bright Hawaiian skies, ticking off each rotation much as a click of a trigger in a Russian Roulette playing revolver.  Perhaps the soldier responsible for its deployment had dust in his eye or maybe someone bumped him, perhaps the ground jumped, whatever the reason, the grenade touched down before it could complete its rotations.  So they supposed it was a dud or maybe they just forgot about it, either way, the volatile little thing slept in the dirt waiting for just the right amount of movement to awaken its mission.   

He thought it was a dud too until he kicked it and revealed that the little guy was far from dead, rather just hibernating.  Even if he did shout, it wouldn’t have helped; we’d be dead anyways, nothing more than projectile plasma over some jagged rocks, as liquefied as the herbicide on our backs.  Isn’t life a miraculous thing?  What if he kicked a little harder?  How many more rotations were left on the little guy?  You won’t believe what I get paid to scoot around bombs; I’ll tell you it isn’t much.  Not worth a human life.  Or maybe.  What’s the going rate for a human life these days?   

Sunflower Eyes

You are spinning face-

flush
to the sky.
Arms spindling outward
from the center of my eye.
Wrapping everything in your whirlwind
tattooing tree bark on my skin.
You make me see differently
sunflower eyes.