When I can’t find the answers inside,
I go outside to look for them
I strap on my sandals
And if I’m feeling really lost,
I put on my sunglasses and a hat,
that way,
the people won’t see me walking in circles

Or maybe they still will

I put my headphones in my ears,
and blare some hard, rugged song
that takes me from my path
of daffodils
and empty fast food cups
and old men on bicycles to
some dusty old road in the wild
wild west where every man who
passes is a young, dashing, sensitive cowboy
and there isn’t any litter at all

I walk like I’m on a mission but I
find myself slowing down in front of
people’s doorways,
peering inside for the answers
to all my questions

Today I saw a house tucked way
back behind a grove of cedars
It was all dark in the windows
like there wasn’t any electricity
at all and it made me feel at home

There was a hose all unravelled and leaking
water slowly onto the lawn and I looked into
the damp green grass and I saw home

I wondered if it were really me and
my lover who were on the inside
And if the house were really some
place western and lonesome
As the song I was listening to ended
I realized this was not some lonesome place
but was still right here in the city

I passed another house and there was a young
woman bending over, pulling weeds from a garden
I could see her brunette braids and I wondered if
she were really me but
I couldn’t see her face because it was hidden
behind a blue hat

After thirty-minutes of walking
my legs shuffled me home and I stepped
inside, still exhausted
I hadn’t found my answers,
save the realization that I’m just
a confused little girl who strongly desires
to be a woman

Hey,
I guess that’s something.

We were twenty-somethings
Early, twenty-somethings
Lying in the late day sun
With nothing but an ashtray and Vicki’s
yellow bikini top between us
We were greasy and sweaty and loaded
We’d been there all afternoon,
spouting words that had begun to
make no sense, the beer and the
desert heat making it all the more difficult
I don’t know how I’ll ever make it to fifty, I laughed
Vicki looked over to me, lowered her
round 70’s style sunglasses and said,
Ha, I’m not even tryin’

So I left him

Not for good,
Just for the night
Not for the night,
Just for an hour at the most
I just went out to the bar for god’s sake
I was on the fence so-to-speak before I left the house
I wondered of the circumstances of my leaving
But I assured him I just wanted to be alone
He told me that was fine but he had tears in his eyes because
I’d spouted this and that about how he made me feel so inadequate
sometimes and how once or twice he actually made me feel unloved
The way he was looking at me made me think twice about that one

I said, I love you, quietly as I walked out the door into the night
I hoped he had heard me
Something was all caught up in my throat
I got to the bar and I ordered a beer and that feeling
in my throat got all flushed out but the thoughts in my
head needed some working through so
I opened my journal and took a stab at rearranging
the thoughts with the blue ink of my pen
I failed, I think

I looked around at the people sitting
At tables, on the barstools, and standing
They were mainly men, twenty or so of them
I looked at them and I found every single one repulsive
It was nothing personal, just my mood I suppose
I hadn’t gone looking for men
but I was looking at them then and I couldn’t help
but notice that very few of them were nice guys
They may have been nice guys yesterday
And they may be nice guys tomorrow
But that night, no, not that I could tell

Too I was sitting there picturing My Guy
And how he is that nice guy
One guy, up on stage,
he’s a nice guy too
You can tell just by looking at ’em I swear
But he’s not My Guy

A man came over to talk to me and
I bit his head off before closing my journal
and heading home to My Guy

Sounds of the early morning are
so different than sounds during
other times in the day

Midnight’s silence is broken at
dawn by song birds and, inside,
the sounds of silverware drawers and
cabinet doors opening and closing
with care, as to not wake sleeping kin
It’s all so…deliberate.

The hushed voices of considerate early risers
softy interrupt the sleeping ones muddled dreams
They speak to each other and their vocal cords are
harshened and coarse from their own recent restful sleep

Then eight a.m. comes around with its
black hole sun and screaming-loud morning traffic
and, like a freight train’s horn, drowns the sound of
people’s calm tip-toeing

Mothers who had stolen just a moment,
or, no, taken what was already theirs,
look again and force pretty grins at
their swollen husbands and gurgling babes

I’m feverish with anxiety
Feverish over you!
I feel it most
In the pit of my stomach
Where there is a ball of fire
I’m practically exhaling flames
Puffs of smoke
Spew from my nostrils
I am a dragon
I’m crouching, shaking
In the foyer
Of my dungeon
You will arrive here soon
How will I not kill you
With my breath when I say
Hello to you?
How will I not eat you
When I get hungry?
It is so my nature.
I am feverish
With worry
I am a great danger
To you
And you
Are about to
Arrive here soon

Was a little blonde toddler
with large sky-blue eyes
Born to Ernie Green and Sally Martin
in a modest home in Fort Worth, Texas
then passed off at three to an aunt and uncle

She was charming, cute, she couldn’t get
enough of that thing we call love
She grew into a bright adolescent,
achieved high marks in school
She slept on handmade pillow cases
and played with redwood dollhouses
her Daddy made her

As a teenager she started noticing older men and
the way they looked at her in her cheerleading skirt
She started sneaking out of the house

When she was home she ate wholesome meals
and after dinner her artist mother would photograph
her wearing vintage gowns with fur collars
in black-and-white film
Her mother thought
she was just beautiful
And she was

At eighteen she was in so deep her
parents persuaded her to join the Army
She did but was sent home after two weeks
for bad conduct

My mother met my Dad on a camping trip
and attached to him like a leach
He didn’t mind at all and next
thing you knew they were pregnant
My father proposed while sitting with her
inside the Nova and they wed down
at the courthouse, she wore a blue dress,
I’ve seen pictures

A year or so later, after I was born,
my mother looked around the little house
with the fire needing stoked and the
baby needing fed and she said,
I’m nineteen, to helk with this
She flew the coop and changed her name
from Darlene to Brenda

Sometimes I imagine she’d chosen to stay,
and got a decent job as a nurse or a receptionist
down at one of Crescent City’s little clinics or something

That didn’t happen
but I do want her to know,
We never wanted you to go

Don’t look at me
Don’t talk to me
I don’t trust you
What reason do I have to?

You came around but
then you let me drown
only offering your hand
when I had already reached the shore

Don’t open your clear eyes
Keep ’em closed,
fixed upon the trail ahead of you
I’ll forge my own path
You shouldn’t even have spoke

Years ago, I was listening to the radio in my kitchen
A song came on, and it just had the most pleasant sound
Its chorus said something like,
I love you like a mountain
I had to stop right there and rest my knuckles on the counter top,
and soak in those words and that haunting tune

I kept thinking of those lyrics,
of that song,
for days, months, years
and I thought of him,
I thought of saying that to him,
saying,
I
Love
You
Like
A
Mountain,
but we didn’t really know each other back then.

Like a mountain
With its peaks and meadows
and its birds and sky, hidden behind the treetops
With its black conifers and yellow-leaved aspen,
looking like butterflies,
frozen in time on the horizon.
You are as mysterious,
as sacred,
as powerful as a mountain
and I love you like a mountain.

Tonight,
I listened to that same song again
I watched outside our window
as the hills faded to black
and the trees faded to black
and I thought to myself,
to no surprise,
I still love him like a mountain
Only now, I can sing it out loud,
I love you like a mountain,
We came up the same,
we were both the same

I Love You Like A Mountain, by Timber Timbre:

Love. It.
Too cute!!
I NEED this. Where can I get it?!?!
My husband and I HAVE to go here!
Totally love this!
I make this cake every 4th of July!
Every girl NEEDS at LEAST one pair of red shoes
Eek! I can’t wait until we go there! Just one more month!
Got these in pink for my wedding!
Love, love, love!
I love beagles!!
Where can I buy these?!?
I totally had these in middle school
Perfect for my trip to Paris someday!
We have the same hair color<3
OMG she’s so pretty
love bun hair, so classic and pretty!
I ate grits this morning…lol
Looks like my hair if I don’t straighten it
Jenna, this one reminded me of you:)
She’s SO beautiful
I wish I could do this, my hair’s too thin
Would DIE for that body
OMG, plaid capris, yessss

Ladies…shut the fuck up.