I’m not putting a collar on my mind. If I lose it, I don’t want anyone bringing it back.

Near the border, owls hunt bats. Here, we hunt each other.

Water thick as cotton, the lake a drowning mouth. Swallow. Spit. Swallow.

I notice this pain. I feel this pain. I acknowledge this pain. I give myself permission to release this pain, even for a moment. I give myself permission to let this pain go.

Vial my longing. Flush my joy. Pump despair from my lungs. Displace the air that holds me up, even in water, that lets me float like a buoy in the cottonmouth-thick lake. Sterilize me. Ethereize me. On Prufrock’s table, label me. Tag me. Take whatever makes me.

Mamallian nightmares. Chelonian dreams.

Always write before you can think.

You were one leaf once, whole. You are still whole, even with that hole. The hole is part of your whole now. And now. And now. And ever. Good morning.

In three of the locust’s leaves: perfect circles chewed away; perfect holes; perfect absences. What remains, what surrounds, what the altered leaves tell us about presence and absence. Here and gone. Now and then. An encircling. A staying. A leafing anyway, with and without. You were one leaf once, whole. You are still whole, even with that hole. The hole is part of your whole now. And now. And now. And ever. Good morning.

Things I’d rather be right now: a cushion, a brick, anything that doesn’t ache.

The wind is styling my hair.

The leaves tell us to be alarmed by the wind.

Darting: critters, thoughts, molecules. How can we not be here for all of them?

I went outside. And that has made all the difference.

Just a few more minutes, and I can start dipping into tomorrow’s calories.

All night, my knee remembers the tear in my jeans: freedom of air, comfort of warm light reaching skin.

Crown me. Drown me.

Crown me dead. Crown me listless. Crown me longing. Crown me timbered. Crown me felled. Crown me lonely. Crown me. Own me. Owe me.

I’m a thing. A thing made of mud that speaks and eats and sleeps.

I don’t know when trauma took my life. Was I five, seven, thirteen? I’ve been dead for at least four decades.

I hear the rain but only see one drop.

Living with. Healing with. Loving with.

With others. With(in) ourselves.

It’s all the land I love.

I’m at risk of being overly involved in the lives of animals, the life of the Earth, and the lives of humans—especially my chosen and biological families and every child who enters or has entered or will enter this hairy, hoofed world.

Dear girl-child: Where do you go when you’re nowhere? Everywhere?

Those who other conditionally still other. Under what conditions are you willing to be othered by those who conditionally other?

Failbrella: When your umbrella flips inside out in the wind then slips from your hands in the wind then manages to open inside your passenger seat as you’re driving then gets stuck in your coat some goshdarn way when you try to open it after emerging from your vehicle to brave even more rain and wind.

Jungbrella: When all these things happen right after you’ve seen your Jungian therapist, so you can get all deep-myth about every single mishap.

Love is a non-count noun.

Our bodies are rentals. Our home is the universe.

Chronically Ill? Read poems.

(Chronically, I’ll read poems.)

There are two kinds of people: those who love you and everyone else.

PrairyErth. We are one.

As astra per aspera.

Just abandoned a poem because it’s past my bedtime and I don’t have time to wrestle with it. Come easy or go home, poems.

An attention difference thing I did: Googled “on-ramp” to see if it’s hyphenated, accidentally typed “on rap” instead, then spent hours learning all about the history of rap.