NaPoWriMo 2026

In the feathery light of a newborn day,
you prepare to venture far from home.
You have not much save for your bones,
a thumping heart and a peculiar mind.
You're a vagabond, it's in your blood,
and so you take flight like a fledgling bird.

Swooping down like a reckless bird,
A new age makes for a brimming day
that you might pay for in your blood,
but leads you to a kind of home.
Nothing is too much for your mind,
but you might feel it in your bones.

When it's time to fall, protect your bones,
keep them away from hunting birds.
You're in so deep you lose your mind
and spiral deeper day by day.
You've never really had a home,
that fate is written down in blood.

You've never quite been scared of blood,
it's brewing right now in your bones.
It's not quite time yet to go home,
you'd fly there yourself if you were a bird,
and you wouldn't have to wait a day
to cleanse your ever-turning mind.

Too bitter for the bitter mind,
your fangs seek out an older blood,
but while we wait for light of day,
you sit here in your sagging bones.
One year has left you like a bird,
reaching across to find your home.

Until you leave, it's not your home,
despite the strings tied in your mind.
In wartime, listen for the birds,
they sing about the fresh shed blood.
Your bones are stacked atop your bones,
the resonator of the day.

I'll build the birds a peaceful home,
I'll spend the daytime with my mind,
I'll love my blood and hold my bones.

The world is more beautiful in my eyes
than I know what to do with.
Some days it freezes me in place,
and I can't even breathe.

Infinitely granular, I'll try to learn it all
everything everywhere all of the time,
one thousand languages
and none of the words will rhyme.

There's the leaves and there's their veins,
and stomata, and the stems,
and the water running through,
and the vascular tissue.
There's the cardboard, and the floor,
and the wood grain on the door,
there's the walls stained yellow-white,
and the AC in the night,
there's a lot.

I feel everything at once.
It crashes into me at once.
I paint the warm, warm sky,
and it feels colder when it's done.

If you can see what I see,
the fabric stitch diffusing light,
and if you know what I mean,
I'd like to talk to you sometime.

Do you remember the early mornings?
Silent glow through the soft gray blinds,
young dove in the branches, mourning?

Remember how the floor, alight,
was cool against your roughed-up heels?
Your shadow stretching up to heights?

Recall the way your breath would feel,
in those first meandering hours all alone,
waiting patiently for the day's first meal?

Soon your life will settle into a home,
just as soon the dawn will surely break,
and soon your body, nothing but bones.

Don't let your fingers press the ache.
Before you are yourself at thirteen,
you must make many, many mistakes.

Time itself folds at your feet without breaking,
everything closing is opening right now.
I pay respects at the brink of awaking,
Everyone yields under the weight of your brow.
Seeking a story in the pit of a well,
nobody sees the rose petals as they form.
They only look out for a story to tell,
and thrust the weak out to the brunt of the storm.
The endings all curl into cute little bows,
the light that awaits us there never did glow.

The world is far beyond my thimble of knowledge,
my finger hates to be pricked.
Wasted days feel more real than anything else.
Once in a while, the world starts to close in from all sides
and I start to drown in it.
It's not unpleasant, the sensation
of water filling your lungs.
It's the panic that's the problem.
If we lived in a world where you could come back from death,
maybe people would learn to endure it.
So much time spent worrying about all the things that are,
what will be and what won't and what might
and what can't.
I press my hands to my face instead of smelling it:
The ammonia leaching into the street.
Panic is not the problem now;
It is the living that scares me.

In a house of a thousand lights
I wandered, waiting for night.
There is nothing but a blaze
between smoke and sunshine.
All that I have ever wanted
reaches to very great heights.
What is the point in waiting,
what is the point in thinking twice?

Nothing is left to my hand,
making shapes in a barren land,
slipping through like sand,
I have been waiting for years,
holding space for a thousand fears,
ones I can't understand.

I am content
with letting my words escape on the breeze.
The bark is rough and scratches
my knees.

Up on the highest branch,
You find a place to rest your feet.
You believe in this, I'm not sure what
I believe.

I cannot play pretend.
We're together but I'm not sure what that means.
My love is not unlike that
of thieves.

I sing a song
about the poppy hills and sorghum sea.
You think it's romantic,
not bleak.

I have deceived you,
and now up here it seems to me,
that it was not you I loved,
but the trees.

I am a scion cut from my roots,
I am the waiting, hoping for fruit
in a transplant, flown in from tropics to grassland,
made something new.
I have been grafted on to you.
I have been trained like a lab rat,
I am the shoot, pruned off my homeland,
born somewhere new.

Mixing, kneading the living bread,
I could make beautiful things instead.
Smashing colors in my spinning head,
I could make beautiful things instead.
Give it water or it'll be dead,
I could make beautiful things instead.

If I was a thing, I'd be hair,
then I'd be fertile soil in the ground,
and if I'm lucky enough I'd be air,
and if unlucky, I'd be yellow clouds.

If I was a thing, I'd be lungs,
then I'd be ash from a raging fire,
soon the steel of a ladder's rungs,
later rubber rubbed off a tire.

If I was a thing, I'd be tears,
falling down to become rusty pipes,
I'd be the intake of breath for you cheers,
and leave you tipsy on well-trodden nights.

If I was a thing, I'd be cells,
I'd be a match you can strike anywhere,
I'd be the algae bloom in your well,
and form the beating heart of a bear.

If I am a thing, I am Earth,
I am rivers and mountains and sky,
I am bones that return to the dirt,
what is yours will be ours was once mine.

I think when I dreamed of the future I wasn't specific enough.
I'll have to go back and have it changed. Make some tweaks. It
was foolish of me to think I could be here all alone in a state of
unchanging beauty, like a stone statue. We people are far too
messy. We break things all the time. I have sculpted this point
in time with my own two hands and still, it is not perfect. We
pass by each other on buses headed in opposite directions. I
tell myself always, there is more time. Tomorrow is not the end
of today. Later is not the end of now. I am not making some
vile error by tilting my head up and enjoying the sun on my
face. Even that is hard to believe, when everyone is always on
the run around me. I wonder if they ever tire. I wonder if they
ever get so mad when they see the fingers fall off their statue
and decide to hammer the rest of it into dust. My love is loud
and strange and directed at nothing at all. I don't think I can
be successful if I spend all my time drawing the grain of wood.
I don't think I mind.

Perching birds on the snow-swept stoop,
waiting around for the taste of fruit.

Some days they beg and some days they tire,
fluttering off to a smooth stone spire.

Scrapings of corn skin between your teeth,
you tore through those like hawks strip meat.

The city is lovely, it leaves you tired,
you fill up the birdbath and watch the fire.

Wasting time with a thick snapped twig,
Tracing lines and stepping on figs.

Back when rot was a careless thing,
and we need not care 'bout anything.

Passerine birds on the lakeside stakes,
A stronger kid would do whatever it takes.

Cut your mouth on the edge of glass,
all the days that flee you fast.

And what do we have now?
Your arms tire from holding back the sea,
My lips to your brow,
we wait out the end of the world.

No words for the day
humans finally scraped the sky
and found no sap left but rain.
You wanted to try;

You always saw the best in them
and so you held out your hands
for the too-warm water
too salty to drink.

We huddled together,
the tired, hungry masses,
and watched the sea swallow the land.
We took pictures.

Then we fled to the mountains,
climbed higher and higher,
but no distance could let us
escape ourselves.

I am quick to defend your mistakes.
Not for you
but for myself.
I want to lie on the ground
without people stepping on me.
I do not want to be an example.
I have not yet felt the freedom of being
ink bleed on a page. I have not yet
bathed in failure.
I am obsessed with words because I am nothing without them.
I hold them to my face,
scared I will disintegrate. I have not
grown up human, rather,
a shiny thing to be observed.
I am always right and somehow this makes me
always wrong.
They have words for this, society—
more words for the pile.
I am scared sometimes they will not fix anything.
Am I too much in my head,
or not enough?
Writing feels like living feels like
throwing up.—

Everything is sublime. Rain 'round the uyyale at night,
your hand curled up in mine. Same sound, the whistle, the rice,
the steam billowed into the vent. Pillows versus common sense.
You knew what it all meant. Car slowing down on the bends,
climbing into the air. The sun says not to be scared,
the trail will take us there. The solemn scrub jay stared
at my feet crunching the leaves. You knew what I could see,
you didn't know what it means. You never knew what to make of me.
Thick ropes of my hair, held them and said nothing was fair.
Nobody would care. You saw the worst and made me aware.
Tucked me into the nest all tight. Your baby jay, might she take flight?
Awake with those memories at night. Everything was sublime.

The sun does not know it is glamorous.
The concrete is not shy of its cracks,
imagine that, just living languorous.
Not blooming brighter for being seen.
Not knowing what anything means,
as it doesn't. Words without audience.
Time without consequence. All that is,
is. All that does, does. And if it doesn't,
so what? Imagine if nothing was.
You can't. The sun is god and the gift
is land. The flowers, if they bloom, if
they don't, it matters. Everything matters.
You cry at the movies but life makes you
sadder. The concrete is crap. There
are homes and mansions and shacks.
There are people with none of that.
To you, everything is. All of it means.
There's no escape from being seen,
or seeing. You taint what you touch.
Whatever is, was. Whatever could be
becomes. You're not sure if you're human,
but this feels like it counts. Who else
changes the flowers without touch?
Who else prescribes their own might
so much? Who else creates and destroys
whole words for lunch, and with feeling?
Who makes it all meaning? Whales and
elephants and us. We mean things,
we make things, so much, so much.
Terrible and glamorous.

In between becoming,
I wait on the platform catching fireflies.
The train is comfortingly late, the ground a polished slate,
the bugs like pinprick holes in vellum night.
You are there, crouching on the bench,
fists enclosed 'round sprigs of daisies, wild,
a stubborn, silent child, you snag on softened wood,
and dig your nails in rot. The fireflies, abound,
are searching for the sky. You stay low to the ground,
and fly, you could, cannot. The stench of
cigarettes is searing, but it's slight. I wait
on the platform catching fireflies. The sun
is slowly rising.

These memories that mean nothing to you,
together they are everything to me.
I trace a path between them all like clues,
the story that's been my reality.

My brain so beautiful, my heart so soft,
Through times of chill has learned to melt the frost.
But oh, my mind which I have held aloft,
I've shaped you for success but at what cost?

Now all the world shall know what's clear to me,
And shame shall  never further cloud my heart,
Once blinded, now I have the eyes to see,
the hands to hold together what falls apart.

Never again shall I question my might,
I knew the way and so I sought the light.

My first love was not writing, but deleting,
erasing my indulgence, cleansing my tongue.
I scripted it for censorship, to take away the edge
of jagged lines and hurt insides, forever slowly bleeding.

I come back to the grounds that once were hallowed.
In poetry is power, the courage to bleed.
For drugs and delinquency, for suicide and sex.
You dig a hole into your soul and then you won't be shallow.

Everything ugly is written on the paper.
The scarring and the scalpel, the sutures and their knots.
In ignorance is hinderance, to kindness and to joy.
If you close your eyes and shut your mind your life is naught but vapor.

Do you still love deleting? Erasing what is you?
I get it's unsightly, it's terrible but true.
But these words are made for everyone,
even you.

(The days are done and dusted)

The swallows are asleep,
and all the things I thought at three are coming back to me.
I was a quiet queersome quail who quibbled to no end,
I bickered back and stood my case and dug my heels in sand.

The weeks are washed and weary,
the serpents are asleep,
and all the snacks I snuck to the trash are here now, haunting me.
I couldn't stomach certain things and had no way to speak,
and so I chose to waste them in the chance they'd make me free.
And now a decade later I must reckon with my mess,
When did my voice decide to hide and make of me a pest?

The months are mapped and modeled,
the salmon are asleep,
and all the friends I made for ends are choking me by means.
Each one is whole and crystal, in ways I can never be,
Though I've no want to run away, I fight the urge to flee.
When life is calm I find myself alone with my own mind,
And everyone knows devils like to make merry with time,
I fought so long to force myself to stay for squalid days,
But I can't make myself partake in misery for pay.
Does that make me a coward? Or a thief of only joy?
Am I a conning artist, is the ease of things my ploy?
Or is my armor broken, am I too weakened to weather?
If I stay back and take my time, could I one day be better?
In this world that we live in, they say recklessness is key,
But I would rather not endure it when the wreck is to be me,
Protect my peace or be the show I know they want to see?
I may not know the answer but hey, here's what I believe:
The years are young and yellow, surely, as the golden finch,
The seeds for them are scattered but you'll find them in a pinch—
Just look for all the moments that felt like they'd never last,
and add them to your quilt of wishing that they weren't past,
and when your breath is shallow for you're short of means to breathe,
You'll look up on your stitchwork and see more than every piece.
'Least, that's the hope in theory, but I cannot say for sure,
for the days are done and dusted,
The hour is no more.

Awake today, asleep tomorrow,
the days that pass like honey sweet:
My mind a cone both sharp and hollow,
no mice break bread on bones so weak.
I wish for days of cataclysm,
disaster cleanse my narcissism,
show me a life that's hard to speak,
and from my voice wear down the teeth.
A soul well built in cards and matches,
I wake from graves with glue of dreams.
My heart is splitting at the seams,
so find me when the craving catches—
Up in my house of copper wire,
the timepiece to which I aspire.

Sometimes I am
not quite human?
But a speckled thing;
Curiously shaped,
spinning in skates after
the lights gone off at the disco,
strange,
how everything comes back
to this place
for my bones and their weight.
Never quite so heavy,
never an escape,
sometimes I am the gap between words,
the space,
sometimes I am bird shit on a sidewalk,
the stain,
sometimes I am the way things happen:
Fate.

A rose makes righteous ruckus up in
Spring, the sun the wheel that turns
and tumbles, reaches down and humbles,
fumbles all the days in Spring.

You close your eyes and see in Spring
the years go back and back and back.
You've never put down roots before and
that is why you feel so lost in Spring.

Enjoy in Spring, forget the frost
which follows you from place to place.
The chipmunks race the birds in Schenley,
they play their part and lose in Spring.

The cautious king is weary in Spring,
he wields a blade of nothing good,
the callous crow so crudely sings
in Spring, a raucous rhymeless ring.

It's always about the fangs in my mouth
and not about blood even though I have it, too.
It's always about the bite
and not about how my teeth ache with it.
I walk around with fangs and it's all people see
but never what they talk about.
Am I invisible? I have to wonder. But no,
I am seen, just as the moon is seen
from only one side. I will bleed you out
but I will bleed too, don't you see? It hurts
you and it hurts me. We both lose and
the world wilts and the sky tilts and everyone else
goes on but I can't. My jaw is tight and my gums
raw. I saw the end and it's still happening now.
It started when I came out
with fangs in my mouth.

Everything's easy for you. Everything golden
but you're always holding too much, too. What might it
feel like, powdery blue. What it might taste like,
kesari, cake slice, covered in truth. All of it happens at once.

All of those feelings at once. Denim, demons, drinking
juice. None of it's easy for you. The world's not working
for you. Buzzing head in a brightly-lit room. Trace
a path west and the rest will surely follow suit.

Like seeing everything always? Like being there for the
details? Grain of the wood and the wrinkles? Gray in your
hair and in pictures, high definition, always for you.
Water and winter, always for you. Everything splintered
open for you.

Today I saw
a robin with a
worm in its beak. It
was beautiful    to
nobody
but me.

I have this recurring dream
where I'm driving in the car
and I fall from a great height.

Breathless and weightless,
I scream into silence,
squeeze the wheel 'til my knuckles turn white.

I've always been weird,
so pretty, so queer,
so spacey, so blunt, so brash.

I wait for the days
my mark is erased,
consumed by a crippling crash.

I spend most my life waiting,
like time is a trickster,
like morals are maggots for fruit.

The juice is the living,
I won't play your twister,
my mind will make mockery of truth.

I'll live in the spaces,
soft sharpie to sheet,
the scrawlings so stark on the wall.

To you, I am falling,
my future is bleak,
but you do not know me at all.

When the day comes

that I am no longer welcome,
and my words cannot help them,
and they tied up the curtains,
and my blood is a burden,
and they locked all the doors,
and they've wiped down the floor,
and my name is an insult,
and they've hidden the pistol,
and my soul is a curse,
and my head in a hearse,
and my art is made ashes,
when they take me where the trash is,

they won't find me,
I'll already
be gone.

Hair is just a burden not a feeling
not a thought left behind in the
clearing between trees and twigs
spent hours with the ceiling
hanging over our heads, four sides
blue sky stealing your breath but
I never imagined I would get to be
healing with your hands in my
hands in your hands one day keeling
over and falling flat arms back
clutching the curtain, grab the scissors
if hair is just a burden.

A rewrite of "Cape Cod", originally written in 2024

The sky is beautiful—
I almost missed it.
Got lots to do today, but I might risk it:

Hop on a bus and then
get carried away;
Shout all the things that I've wanted to say.

Because, between the floorboards,
I've built a life,
and if I let it, it might grow up twice the size.

I practice it a little,
the "letting go".
Trusting the driver up front to bring me home.

Don't need control, just need to
just need to breathe.
And I'll be nothing if that's all I'm meant to be.

Don't need to know, just need to
just need to see.
I can be nothing if that's all I need to be.

My soul in letters comes
to your doorstep
damp with air and misery,
you never read

the paper. You never fold the
clothes, you trudge past me in
sargasso greens
and all the leaves a cloak 

around your neck.
You hide from me each chance
you get to,
up on that plane you 

stay the same
and I'm here, writing to you.
The ink will smudge your
skin, you will read my 

wishes, my soul in stitches
on your brow.
You never read the paper.
My soul in letters,

another, again.

after James Baldwin

Home is not a place until you leave it—
And you will not escape,
home will live in the fragments you take,

You take to dreaming,
calling and wanting and weeping,
sprawl ain't a thing to be missed but in leaving you wake:

Home is not a place until you leave it,
hills that turn yellow are fleeting,
few and far,

Everything you knew like stars
fixed in your eyes like they're who you are
and should you believe it,

you will not escape.
Time will build palaces with your waste,
life will dig elbows deep into your grave.

Music plays after it fades to black,
once you have left, you can never go back,
and it's pain:

All the pieces that you cannot pack:
once you have left, you can never go back.

—