I believe everything she says

He showed up in a flurry

His arm hair was even on end

And his shadow tore the child from her arms 

While pushing her here and there

I imagine on the front lawn where everyone heard 

Someone

Some Saint

Found the ruckus to be enough to put the situation into a phone 

His fourth charge

She says 

 battered and bruised and taken over and over again without consent and this night will be the last 

_her side of the story

I have been many different things in my life 

Today I have seven shirts on 

And it is very uncomfortable 

Jana

I was working through my own softness she said

There are things about the beach 

Seagulls shitting on our towels and pecking at our sun chips 

The color palette of janas dark smooth bark next to Floridas teal kool aid

An ocean of soft paint collecting over and on and around all of us the sea salt getting into the crevices of our eyes and belly buttons 

Why do they call it sea salt I thought it was ocean salt

In this sun we have a need for water and propped up umbrellas for shade the coughing of Pelicans as they glide like paper airplanes almost in reach above us

I lay here, more bare then usual more content with my body my life my aspirations 

Every good and perfect gift is from above 

Perfectly hand delivered to me is this day and the day we were supposed to arrive when I spent it with my dog in my lap and red paint climbing up my forearm 

Judging by all this goodness I bask in I would say his love is deep and wide and I pray for the same conviction and ability to see even when a day is hard and it feels my gifts are smaller 

But they aren't 

Thomas, 

He was not a beautiful man 

In fact his hair looked more like a woman's layered bob than a mans haircut and this is why is surprised me when he told me he owned a salon

"Well my wife is a hair stylist, I am not" 

His hair was a gold color and I don't trust old men with gold colored hair

You could tell his neck had seen the sun, there were pockets where the sun had collected and clamped down making it leathery and speckled 

His car (Uber) was clean and quiet 

Full of air and not many words 

Jana and I filled them a few times while propping the phone up so we could see where we were on the map because we were both sure he was about to kidnap us, instead there was 

Casual conversation about England and his want to move to Ireland where the police don't carry guns and the pubs are lush with kindness 

Earlier in the day we had met a kind man while waiting for our plane, with a pocket full of pictures of alligators and the ocean in front of his home. He had that eyes were still five years old, eager with life despite the age of his skin 

Michelle, a woman with sturdy legs and a lovely soul made our aquaintance had firmly planted herself next to us, sure this kind man was up to no good no good at all, and layered the air with stories of her kayaking adventures in the rivers of Florida, and how she'd been adopted at 6 months, and how she cared for her elderly parents 4-5 times a year 

This place reminds of me South Carolina with its sticky sap for air and the way it lays on you carefully collecting as sweat in all your pores 

Everything is green and sandy and the paint colors are colorful 

We walked to find food and ice cream and chicken and our legs took us everywhere even under our load of groceries 

& God looked down and saw how very cute we were and gave us the most beautiful sunset he put in some pink paint and orange paint and baby blue paint over in the corner 

I have never made friends with a deer

I have wanted to 

Once I yelled to one 

She was eating and when she heard my voice she would stop and watch me 

I think it is their grace 

Their soft soft surface

The still water of their eyes 

But deer are always running 

Cocking their heads 

Alert for danger 

They are rarely still

I am too much like a deer

Such curious clusters 

Bodies the texture of mint leaves

Always nipping at moms gold rings with their beaks 

Untying grandpas shoelaces 

Looking left and right as if there were hurricanes tornados burglars on the loose 

__chickens 

There are many parts of her that are untapped 

I want to know why there are scars across her arm and how she came into eyeliner with passion 

And Gods reason for putting her like a shadow behind me 

6 months

The river 

We took

And above the doorway in our minds 

We wrote the word 

home 

The teeth of a Queen Anne's lace 

The way she strains her neck in the most obnoxious ways 

_the way he pursued me 

She is soft 

Like a pillar 

Or a cave I can run into 

__the way I want him to see me

I remember their bodies were so large & clumsy pressed against one another like clouds 

Their knees were like mine 

Knobby 

Toothpick in appearance

It's a wonder how they held up their own bodies 

She took me directly into the cluster of them mooing and coughing and bundling against each other like lovers 

Belly to belly

It would have been the safest place to watch them from the fence post 

But then i never would have been able to write these words 

2. It was her father, the violent yet silent farmer

Who taught us to bail hay and to wear long sleeves when doing it

The machine clucked its way all the way up to the vagina of the barn taking each square  bail of hay to its resting place for winter 

It was also him who invited us down to the field to watch a chocolate colored cow slip from the womb, slimy and unstable with four knees

Home is 

The acre of raw 

Here grass was built 

Like my bones 

My body

My soul 

Home is a collection of all my memories

Ladled into an acre of land 

And the many strides it took 

As a child 

To cross the street

Into the wood 

Across the field 

Next to the Queen Anne's lace 

Where I named the bark of specific trees

That I looked on as fond friends 

I can still find a few of them 

I had crooked teeth then

And bangs like swings 

Rusty at the hinges 

And a voice as high and untamed 

As a mule 

I was an acre then

Raw 

Children & 

Their circus of hands 

How do we turn into men

I am a native of my mother 

She was my first home

When I forget who I am 

I look at her 

The way she lives

Her accent and the way she buckles her ankles as she sits 

How she stirs salad 

The gardener

I wish you could make my hands make like you 

You were the first door I pushed through 

The first fight I won 

The womb pushed me from you after I grew into myself 

But even though I am now woman

I still want my hands to be like yours 

They have changed lately

The skin is softer 

I noticed right away and the way your arms changed shape while your hair grew in pale 

like a flu 

At your temple 

But your eyes have become more and more brilliant 

The way you talk about the soil

And the gifts it gives you after you soften in like meat 

Tapping at its skin 

Together I think the soil and you have an understanding 

You both birth color 

This is where the fields come from 

The flowers inside me 

The want to create like you do

To pull something from the earth 

Like you pulled me from yourself

I want to be beautiful after all this work you gave me with your hands 

__the least I could do

You

Along with the rest of this place

Is like a corsette laced up

__too tightly