I imagine what it must be like to stay hidden, disappear in the dusky nothing and stay still in the night. It’s not sadness, though it may sound like it. I’m thinking about people and trees and how I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine, and how it’s hard not to always want something else, not just to let the savage grass grow.

How strange this silent longing for death, as if you could make the sun not come up, the world's wheeling and wheeling its seasons like a cruel continuation of stubborn force.

I denied it,this new land. But love, I’ll concede this:whatever state you are, I’ll be that state’s bird,the loud, obvious blur of song people point towhen they wonder where it is you’ve gone.

I am not obsessing.I am just sitting hereperforating this post-itwith a push-pin.

But somehow,I’ve stopped praising you. How the valleywhen you first see it—the small roads backto your youth—is so painfully pretty at first,then, after a month of black coffee, it’s justanother place your bullish brain exists, botheredby itself and how hurtful human life can be.Isn’t that how it is? You wake up some daysfull of crow and shine, and then someonehas put engine coolant in the medicineon another continent and not even cryinghelps cure the idea of purposeful poison.

I imagine the insides of myself sometimes-- part female, part male, part terrible dragon.

Mostly, I enjoy my failings. Until I don't.

I'll be the strike anywhere, the reckless match you can count on to claim a life, or to save one.

Isn't it funny? How the cold numbs everything but grief.If we could light up the room with pain, we'd be such a glorious fire.