Weather for Headphones

I felt like the original version was incomplete. I like it better now.

i had a riot for breakfast-
doused the flames in maple,
scratched butter ditches in the
brown. I love mornings when

your eyes open extra wide, like
snowflakes out the door
catching your tongue, melting into
cars, each leading to another
adventure. It’s like

when you ask if we
are going to live
today, instead of dying. I
don’t have any answers, but

your smile covers me up
and down, down, down.
Like cars falling
into water. We’re alive.

i had a riot for breakfast
doused the flames in maple,
scratched butter ditches in the
brown. I love mornings when
your eyes open extra wide, like
snowflakes out the door
catching your tongue, melting into
cars, each leading to another
adventure, like when you ask
if we are going to live
today, instead of dying.

Sometimes I have dreams where
I feel more awake than asleep
the cold, cluttered past melted
into sensation. I want to live here
in this dream, in this place
of red autumn and blue winter. You
are in that dream, and when
I catch the light you open
your eyes. My dreams feel like
closed eyes in summer light,
then opened, the sepia tones
rushing past with the wind. I forget
that sometimes love
is not enough. I forget that
I cannot be like the other birds,
singing, silent, singing in the face of
blue winter. I have spent nights
awake, wishing never to dream,
waiting on the sun. It always comes.

If we write words in the sand,
who will read them? How will we eat
with our dirty hands, our scuffed feet
buried in seawater, wiping shell and bits
of plastic pails, broken on the tide?

If we write poems, who will ask
what they mean? Does one contain
the meaning of life? A scribbled scratch
on the underside of a classroom chair:
bio 128. this world is too late.

If we sing songs to the night,
will they echo? How will we breathe
with the sound in our ears, our eyes
leaking leaves and fireflies?
One last song, the dark fades
and we hold hands beneath the stars.

i’m going down
to the place where my hands stop shaking
where snow melts in sunlight, tomorrow

it’s hard remembering
when I was little, I wanted to fly
i told myself the clouds were cotton candy

i remember
closing my eyes in the back row, pressing
breathing eye rainbows for home

somewhere between
today and yesterday, i died
i was touched, i died, i tore my body

i was born yesterday
is what they tell me under covers
it’s what i’ll know until i wither

i want to find
the smile in your fingertips
the kiss, your warmth-spread smile

i want to see
your face one more time, before
the lights steal me home

take me home,
to where the snow melts in sunlight, tomorrow
you’ll take me home, tomorrow