Seriously? my mom asks
I’ve written all over the walls again
I try to blame my brother but
my marker-stained hands reveal
the real culprit and even if they didn’t
there are words all over the walls
large words small words wonderfully strange and exciting words –
stray words that I decided to keep after
they followed me home from kindergarten and she knows
that it’s me and I sigh
as she hands me a wet rag to clean up
the mess

the sunlight spills over the mountains like hot red soup and my math teacher says
stop thinking
about differential equations on fractals
in metaphors
but why not, I think
and the sunlight melts into the fog

I wonder how many places I’ve already
visited for the last time, she says as we
sit on the grass under the tree with leaves rustling like scuttling mice and
he says they say there might be entire
universes tucked away in black holes
and not just deformed space-time and I say

holy crap you guys look
and the stars look like ocean spray
on black sand and he says they kind of look like speckled
blood and she says like blood melting
into the sky and I say
like snow
and suddenly the stars are specks of blood melting into the sky like snow and
he says that we’re strange but we already know and
we’re glad we’re in the same creative
writing class

it’s four a.m. on the plane back from
Oakland and I’m looking
out the window into the stars, remembering
the moon is cold and burning and white and I’m remembering and it’s
surrounded by ash as it rises through
turbulent skies and she says stop
thinking about differential equations on fractals in metaphors and I
say all right but I’m thinking that
the moon looks like a cigarette burn in
the night sky.