Dripping-Leaf

 There I stood in the snow, my breath hanging in the air then disappearing. It had been falling for hours; the snowflakes whispering their sweet song to the Earth, putting it to sleep for the winter.  Snow blanketed the Earth, its icy grip slithered up my legs. The trees were covered in a thin coating of ice, and a few icicles hung off the branches, giving each tree a mouth-like appearance. The trees surrounded me in their crystalline beauty, and bowed. The wind shook them and the snow fell off and landed in piles. I bent down, and reached for some snow. I packed it into a small ball and threw it at the trees, in hope of getting one icicle

 We share the blueberries Mama left for us, the juice staining our fingers and our lips. We eat them with the solidarity that figure skating partners would give their perfect souls for, and in the ecstasy of our union stained with blues and purples like the hues of the skies just before sunset, we are content. It is 1984 and we are barely able to comprehend anything but each other. "You need friends," Mama whispers with her venom-like breath and her love belied by her lack of understanding. She does not understand. We have friends. We are friends. The simple harmony and the symmetry that breaks only with the soft marring of birthmarks on my

I page through a ratty copy of People magazine like it really means something, it flutters by as I stare at my shoelaces in the pale green lobby, faces, places, so slow, Sweet-N-Low… The doctor comes in ringing his hands like a Grey’s Anatomy actor, “we counted 36 pills so far… she’s going to be okay but a little sleepy” and the number 36 echoes in my head when one of those raw pristine moments takes me away and “Chuck E’s in Love” comes in over the monitors… Do you remember when you made fun of me? Do you remember when I had a crush on Rickie Lee Jones because she rhymed “