Our crowns did not create us
but can change us if we let them
can blind us to our sameness
when we set them and forget them
bake a hard shell of privilege
to encase us and protect us 
from paying for the damage 
done to those who would reject us 
for breaking every promise
made to change and to respect them 
not to hold so tightly to
golden blindfolds and neglect them
for when our crowns inflate us
sum us up and then become us
the solid ground we stood on
quakes so they can take them from us.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Yes, yes, the horrors.
Yes, the waste. Yes, the pain.
Yes, the way we crumpled,
how we huddled, hurt and aged.

And yes, the heavens mocked us
as they watched us twist and torque,
tortured by their constance, 
by their ease and by their work. 

Yes, the way we gathered
only loosely, not quite close,
while the bluish lights before us
reflected copies of our homes.

But yes, our shared resilience
lets us rise and stand again.
Yes, our hope. Yes, our yearning.
Yes, our body, voice and pen.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Little bells sound far away
     even held up to our ears. 
Their tiny vibrations stretch
     for miles before they reach us. 
Steadily they ring, beckoning
     our gaze, chin tilted curiously,
echoing in the valleys of our brain
like whispered miss yous in the wind.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

you know i love you even if
you puzzle over how and why
you know i love you even if
you let your horrors crowd you out
you know i love you even if
you cloud your sun and thunder when
you know my love surrounds you but
you can't yet bear to feel its glow
you know i know you love me and
you know you love you too although
you try to find a reason why
you shouldn't and i don't but no
you do you do you do you do
you do and i, i love you too

---

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

some random physics
will determine which
lucky air particle
will swirl sporadically
through open doors
and eager ducts
to feed my
oxygen-starved soles,
gently pressed together
in folded welcome,
while identical forces
leave other bits
of breeze and
atmosphere hanging, unused,
in my windpipe,
now so desperate
to dispel them,
let some wander
beyond these windows
ever upward and
feed others savagely
to the ravenous
orange flame set
before me reaching
upward, ever upward,
for its life

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love notes
a ritual to start the work week

breath-swollen hands open slowly
finger-cage to platter top: 
a morning offering

skin invisible: pitcher and 
planter, globe and lung, smooth-hard
delicate-durable

double-walled reservoir holds calm
potential in earth-basin,
flame flinches, thought-billows

complex gifts; one-and-one-and-one
is four, seven—I hold you
inside me even now: 

churn, settle, flicker, fill

---

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Where did you come from?
How do I know?
How do I trace you back,
follow footprints and crumbs,
take the twine, feel it slide
between my finger and my thumb
as I inch my way to the root,
dirt pushed under my nails?
Who blows the wind in your sails? 
And if I knock on their door
with the rain at my back,
hair slicked and mud-flicked
from my nose in your tracks,
would they see my filthy face
and open their arms
as you do? 
What earth nourished you?
What fire burned?
And would I feel answered
if I sought and I learned
how you love me?

---

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

When I asked you what I can give,
you just looked me straight in the eye, 
smiled faintly as you blinked twice
and said, “be whole.” 

I have nothing
if not myself. I won’t always
forget to breathe when the world plays
a hand for keeps and bets my soul.

Hold me, hold me, hold me.
So I can breathe, so I can see, so I can be.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

anchored well below
her power casts me
forward my shadow
ripples on ghastly
waves left murmuring 

net stretched and billows
jaw oped to catch free
streaming notes that float
teem unnaturally
swallowed and circling

fuel sickens unfroze
ice worlds drop crackly
returning screen snows
fizzle to wracked sea
soar on fertile wings 

With the moon at our backs we can voyage triumphantly through
dangerous and cold waters for the sun.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Restacking discs strewn about by some
not-quite-four-year-old’s temper tantrum
that toppled their tower and spread them
disordered across the playroom floor,

carefully placing these wooden coins,
stained red and blue, green and yellow — toys
cut and smoothed to tune small hands and spoils
to earn and lose, cherish and trade — for

now, at least, one atop another:
we realign what may fall over
again into rainbows, forever
arching fleetingly to something more.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Loops completing, now set right in the sky,
their recrossings, our regressions,
just a trick of the eye 

Frozen vapor-bits join with leaves, all dry,
and spiral back to earth, return
to warmth, settle and sigh

Cycles renew us, reroot us, revive;
when autumn reveals us, our bones
regrow from tears once cried

---

love notes
a ritual to start the work week