Cara Writes

Lying asleep last night I met my muse. I almost missed her because she is fairy-quick and hides quite frequently. I grabbed her wrist, tugging on her copper corduroy blazer; she turned and looked at me. She spoke; I heard it with my mind. "I like that you're trying to write a story about me," she said. "I don't know what your story is," I said, "I only know what you look like. What do you want? Where are you going? I don't even know your name." She smiled, put her free hand on my cheek. I let go of her wrist, and just like that, she was gone.

God met me at the bus stop. he held my hand, commented on my sweater and said I was good to be prepared. I climbed on the seesaw, the thick metal digging at my thighs, but I carried on for childhood's sake. "I'm just going to look at the view," he said, "stay where I can see you." The tour started moving, making way up the hill. I dismounted the seesaw, imagining it was a horse; a longing pain in my chest. I scooped up my black backpack, trudged through nettle as tall as I am, cursing under my breath for the itches on my ankles and the narrowness of the road. I followed trustingly, like a donkey led down the Grand Canyon. Moans gurgled in my throat, I didn't want to take this journey. One foot pressed on leading the other. one, two, one, two. Ahead a chestnut poked her head over the gray stone. My aches melted, the grunts subsided. I stroked her face, looked in her marble eyes like a traveler sees water in the dessert. I pressed on to Sylvia's grave,...

Christine sits sinking into the left corner of the olive green couch. She handles the latest sociological book or Time magazine over her neatly folded legs. Tortoiseshell glasses slide lower down her nose; her glass of wine sweats in her right hand. Christine is upstairs, mending the bed so the sheets will be cold when she retreats for sleep. Her head lulls into her chest, a slight snoring ensues. I crawl in the space beside her, flip through the channels on low. My heart skips quickly when she grasps my hand and holds it.

Christine Christine once told me she would never describe herself as sweet. I wondered, then, what does she see herself as? Her middle name, Lee, is a version of Lena, her grandmother. And my middle name, Lenore, a version of Eleanor. When do we stop becoming versions of one another? Lena is a name I would describe as sweet. I think that will be my daughter's middle name. But not a version of it. Other people describe Christine as generous and giving, that her heart is in the right place. Some describe me as that way too. It used to bother me that she didn't think of herself as sweet, because I see myself that way. I guess I need to stop thinking of myself in versions of Christine. Brooklyn the sun rises, the morning glory opens its vine climbs up the harsh criss-crossed metal, a symbol for the city which contains it. children run their hands along the fence, the occasional flower casualty springs a foot on my chest. I pick up this fallen warrior, ten years later make it perman...

This pigment creeps; It turns my pallid skin into shades of smudged charcoal, Breathing Black. Ink. I'm sinking in this puddle, my body a dying star collapsing in on itself only to expand again and diffuse into the universe I wonder if you notice the ampersand of my mouth every breath giving birth to letters and numbers forming mushroom clouds beneath the ceiling-- Each breath is potential every gaze a new word melded somewhere between this life and the unrealized Cool finger tips caress along my meridian lines tracing out the next stanza of a broken hearted widow or a school girl named Jaimie. I writhe with(in) this ink like a carbon copy pressed to metal, the pressure subsides and all that is left are faded imprints of the original There's a question mark on my forehead, it refuses to break loose.

I don't know enough about the world to write poetry. I don't know about foreign lands and broken bridges and the pages of history I never turned in high school- Maybe I should have turned them. I don't know all the animals that have sex for fun, or the ones that don't have sex at all, all I know is that both of those have described me. I don't know how to write fiction; I think fiction, I am fiction-- its potential string of words grabbing me into a black widow's web, tantalizing that soon I shall die, or it shall die Or at least suffer from the slow sting and poison. I don't know about anaphoras and hyperboles and all the words we assign to movement trying to explain the inexplicable quickening heartbeat and waves of hot blood flooding into our veins as if we suddenly feel ourselves alive and this is the first time we noticed all day. It's lucky if we notice at all.

Alabaster silver, Barcelona red, Hybrid colors of half fueled thoughts Too cheap to go all the way And run on electric dreams The spark plug ignites. The left front door is gone, It cries in protest. There is a foreign body Named “Jewel” in the backseat. She doesn’t fit in the red car, No, They thought her bubbly persona Went best with indigo .