north does not mean up

hurt

Kristina — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 09:25:37 +0000

I remember everything…

soil soil

Kristina — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:38:15 +0000

and I’ll be curled on the floor hiding out from it all

and I won’t take any other call

the cave

Kristina — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:34:44 +0000

because I couldn’t say it to your face…

teeth in the grass

Kristina — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 18:10:27 +0000

all of my days

Kristina — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 06:40:41 +0000

white noise

Kristina — Wed, 12 May 2010 08:13:34 +0000

heartbeats

Kristina — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 09:41:03 +0000

One night to be confused
One night to speed up truth
We had a promise made
Four hands and then away…

on our way to fall

Kristina — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:49:16 +0000

“we’ll try and try even if it lasts an hour…”

A Pretty Song

Kristina — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 08:38:50 +0000

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn’t it?
This isn’t a playground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.

Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on.

Mary Oliver

the love of travelers

Kristina — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:25:10 +0000

for Anna, Michelle, and Katie:

At the rest stop on the way to Mississippi
we found the butterfly mired in the oil slick:
its wings thick
and blunted. One of us, tender in the finger tips,
smoothed with a tissue the oil
that came off only a little;
the oil-smeared wings like lips colored with lipstick
blotted before a kiss.
So delicate the cleansing of the wings
I thought the color soft as watercolors would wash off
under the method of her mercy for something so slight
and graceful, injured, beyond the love of travelers.

It ws torn then, even after her kindest work,
the almost-moth exquisite charity could not mend
what weighted the wing, melded with it,
then ruptured it in release.
The body of the thing lifted out of its place
between the washed wings.
Imagine the agony of a self separated by gentlest repair.
“Should we kill it?” one of us ask. And I said yes.
But none of us had the nerve.
We walked away, the last of the oil welding the butterfly
to the wood of the picnic table.
The wings stuck out and quivered when wind went by.
Whoever found it must have marveled at this.
And loved it for what it was and
had been.
I think, meticulous mercy is the work of travelers,
and leaving things as they are
punishment or reward.

I have died for the smallest things.
Nothing washes off.

-Angela Jackson