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charlie,

my cat does the same thing. with the windowsills.

she's my favorite voice in the mornings,
when she steals electric blue skies in her
gray-green eyes and calls to me:
are you awake? are you still lost in a dream?
what are you waiting for?

(i hear music more clearly
in my sleep / but when i try to
sing i can hardly speak)

what can i tell you about myself, a poet girl
and a paradox lover? a pianist who trusts her
hands to touch the intangible but not the
warm skin of a quiet, offered question; a wandering
number-bound soul in the land of two-faced words?

at fifteen, i laughed and said: go on. test me.
i started to hate paper. i could pretend i knew
what the 'best answer' was, but i never tried to
act like i could explain why.

(i can tell you that fifteen is divisible by little,
that flowers have always been equated with smiles,
and birds with damaged wings still fly.
you go, love.)

i put trust in my hands again. i will wring poetry
from nothing and cut knives from icicles; i
set fire to a story and keep it locked in my heart;
and i will listen to myself ruining the semicolon
because rules are meant to be read & broken.

charlie, if i am a star, i am not a dependable one,
but perhaps i am molten and golden
like the sun and simply that
is enough.

with all the smiles of my heart,

rosie