Even When You Cannot Taste Your Favorite Kind Of Tea It Is Still A Soothing Friend Tending To You In

Owl music is playing on low tonight Predators, I think, are soft spoken I whistle back, it's not the right tone Owls don't whistle and I don't hoot They don't pay me any mind Don't acknowledge failed harmony Who are you speaking to? I am asking them via my chirping No fluttering, no rustling The owl music sounds further away Don't stop completely, don't stop Who is out there tonight? Who is calling me? I want to be called Like an owl, quietly and discreetly Invisible yet something to be feared

Maybe you're wearing that winter coat Because you're not used to Places that snow Or places that make other people feel cold

And when you exhale all that smoke I can see your breath Air out your mouth Air coming out that makes no words

Maybe you're wearing that winter coat Like downy armor Standing so close and still so far from me In a jacket so lovely

I don't think of you I don't look for you Blink, you're here Blink, you're gone

I walk through my day I go about life Step, you appear Step, you fade

I curl up in bed I sleep and don't Dream Inhale, I breathe you Exhale, I let go

Let the wind take it Dissolve into the air The remnants of our Horrible affair

Let the storms have it And with force blown away So I won't think of You for one more day

This Is not a Love triangle Just a bent line I'm not connecting

The inspiration For fiction Brings just A hint of truth

The battlefield The origin The turmoil Becomes a fable

A fantasy world Deeply rooted Sprouts from A very real seed

I write my own universe inside a snow globe Where fields of lilac and rows of holly Coexist without juxtaposition Where a mother is also a sister And a sister is someone I can trust Where truth and reality do not conflict With any of my own personal truths or realities

Shake me hard, turning me this way and that I am in flux, I am inside the water That from the outside looking in poses as air The winter birds and the summer birds Perch in the same trees, eat the same seeds I am dreaming here with eyes open Love does not perish here, not in my delicate orb

I will be whatever you need to see in me today, My body a canvas open to interpretation. Here I am soft, delicate as silk; There I am sharp, rugged as stone. I am shifting, gliding, reshaping myself, I am swimming through the waters of my gender, Moving from room to room In this house I am calling my body.

But I am twisting in the hallway, Arms and legs spilling through every door; I am too much at once and so never quite enough. Tell me what you want, I will shape myself to fit. Make me compatible with your desire Until I forget the shape of myself entirely.

(In your rejection I’ve flooded our home, Drowning in the rooms where you once wanted me.)

I watch the spider Weaving fresh webbing Because spiders don't Have five day forecasts This spider doesn't know How soon it will rain That all its hard work Will have been in vain

The wolf spider Accepts the advances Of her strongest suitor Knowing as she snatches And savors her final meal Soon her plump body Will feed her children Dozens of her a copy

I watch the spiders My eight legged allies I see them hatch Love them living here Knowing in a year Or much sooner I will Find them delicately Crumpled on the ground Lifeless and so still

Where do moths live in winter? Where do wild chickens go? I see them out now that it's spring But how did they brave the snow?

How do frogs slow their bodies To sleep within the ice? Who else shelters in the walls With the warm and cozy mice?

I wonder if the fish feel cold When all the lakes freeze over Now I welcome back the friends I haven't seen since last October

Though the finches and the foxes Have been here all year long I just saw the first chipmunk Since all of them had gone

How do rabbits breathe In all the ground they are under? I guess that I could look it up But it's more fun to wonder