My niece! Took! Her first! Steps!

!!!

Oh another joyous adventure with these migraines of mine; trigger instant here: the heavy dousing of a suckerpunch perfume by the patron at the table next to me. I’m at the coffee shop and now will have to leave(at least I had the brief tea and writing). My nose, my system, both so sensitive this is what it comes to–try to tough it out and stay here as I am completely comfy and in the midst of scribbling or save myself the inevitable head pain and depart. Trying to make my decision without breathing too deep. I want a shirt that just speaks: “consider scent.” My own private joke, the little corners clipped on my efforts. How I wish I didn’t have them.

Leaving the olfactory trigger center now. 

My thoughts and their thinking—

If it’s one thing solitude has taught me

Apparently,

 my brain is great ground for breeding.

 

Morning walk to work—I’m a mess.

Nobody around me

Can walk in a straight line

Inside-out umbrellas,

Damp slack hems

New year’s confetti melted

Looks like snow scraps on the street.

I take the same route

From the bus to the building,

Every day.

On the ave I pass porn stores,

Art galleries, pharmacy,

Drug store mobs, classmates,

Loitering in solidarity between

The trashcans and the doors

I have to keep looking up

I know some strangers by the color of their coats

Or the baby in their arms

I notice new hair colors and conversations

All of these phones ringing around me

I feel like I’m trespassing in a hundred different kitchens

Trying not to listen when there is nothing else to listen to

But one-sided dialogue

Sometimes being on the bus feels like

That day in math class when some kid sitting next to me

Made fun of my lips, my mouth’s attack on a dollar store sucker.

She called me a monkey, shook the word in my face

Until I took the sucker out of my mouth

I even tried to tuck my lips in because

Looking down my nose I could see the slight rise of them

Some days on the bus I just sit there

Waiting for some kid to turn around and call me monkey

I bite my lips in without realizing it

The little ghost of the stupid crap

That for whatever reason we can’t seem to

Ever forget

Even though

we know

It isn’t important,

It wasn’t then and it surely isn’t now.

 

 

 But in the end importance has very little to do with

Relativity, bad haircuts, homecoming queen sneers.

We are only falling short so that next time

We can reach farther forward

I am no dynamite elixir with my words of choice

I am just living

I am just making mistakes

I am just borrowing books and crying over holes in the heart

There will never ever ever be

Enough concrete

So put yourself in check

Read back over the wishlist

Rip it up

Find your realistic

In breakfast and in the peek-a-boo pulse of the

Left wrist

There may never be another promise

But so what

Aw hell

We’ve always got ourselves, self—

We’ve always got ourselves.

One of my favorite bands to see live–if you get a chance, see them.

Hangar 18. The sound isn’t perfect, but it isn’t really the point. You can still grab onto their flow and hang on. Caught them live last May–so much fun to watch.