Sometimes, I shower in the dark
and let the water burn away my sleep
and pretend my body is not mine
and the the world does not extend beyond
the tub.

I tend to get lost a lot
I don't really pay attention to where I am going,
and once I get there the adventure becomes
finding my way back.
There are places I have never found again,
except by accident
and there are places I can not remember if they were real
or if I only dreamed them.

There are women in the park
with wide brimmed hats
and Chardonnay,
the wind sticks their hair to their lipstick
and their knees are folded beneath them like a
Jacob's ladder.

I have never been a lady;
I would rather sit on the front steps,
wet grass clinging to my ankles
and graphite on my nose,
and crack open a pomegranate with chewed nails,
staining my palms and my
smile,
snap dragons pinched on my ears like a
queen.

I will use my dress to wipe up my drink,
and keep poems on the backs of gas station receipts
in my pocket
and never worry about the women in the park
and their beloved
'etiquette'

I will stick my head out the car window like the dog
and let the wind comb my hair
and dry my tongue
and steal my laughs,
which I will find again back inside the cab
where they have been waiting
streetlights painting the backs of my eyelids.

When I was a child I would prop a red three-legged stool
against the old pine tree in the yard
to reach the first branch so I could climb the rest
and string a red bucket over the highest limb
and fill it with rainwater from the wooden barrel beneath the drain
to water the clouds that seemed just out of reach.

I am good at wishing,
on the curling lips of sneering waves that snap their jaws
in salty spite,
on kamikaze stars who dive out of the night and to their deaths
on green pennies tossed over shoulders into the rotting well.
I will wish for super powers,
and dumb girlish thoughts,
and for days of happiness that will slip away
like sand in my clenched fist
no matter how tight I hold on.
I am good at wishing,
even if no one is listening.

Sometimes I steal windows from the curb
and paint them with my fingers,
not wanting such a petty thing as a brush
to come between us.
I like to paint my own reflection in the glass,
who is painting me from the other side
with her pomegranate palms
trying to make me look
believable
as human.

I hate poems that aren't about anything
I write them all the time
and just pretend
there is a deeper meaning
for you to guess about
while really I am still lying
and wishing on moldy pennies
that you are out there listening
to me ramble on about distractions.