"Have trains ever collided?"
a young boy asks his mother.
I am watching them.
She pulls him towards the door of the coffeeshop by one hand. His other digs in his pocket for the answer.
It is an urgent question,
a question born immaculately
in curiousity,
a question that must be answered.
"Yes," she says, after a moment.
And then they are gone,
leaving me to write that there was a time before I knew of train crashes,
of crashes at all,
of tracks and streets criss-crossing horizons like tic-tac-toe games
destined to end.
There was a time before x's and o's
a time before letters,
were magic, their permutations endless.
but this was before i could count
before numbers existed,
before seasons and seconds.
before minutes and planets danced pirouettes on an axis of time
like angels on the head of a pin
before religion
before a need to explain
before death and birth, and day and night were divided.

Then, there was only the pulse of silence.
and it pounded like pencil on paper,
like rain on pavement,
like the heart of a train.

And two thoughts collided,
crashed in the criss-cross of nerves that carry consciousness!
and light sparked in the darkness of the inside of the universe!
and i lived in a body inside-out
my hands reached out, suddenly needing nothing and everything
the big bang at the beginning went off like a gunshot,
took hold like a wound
bleeding life in the middle of blackness.
The crash had caught fire,
and my eyes burst open
and began to see.

Labels: By Ana

I came to the beach to be alone.

My feet left lonely footprints in the sand,
and the sand left lonely sandprints in my feet.

To me, these patterns look tiny, like freckles or stars,
but if I were small, even smaller than sand,
they would be the crators on the moon, the grand canyon, the great lakes,
and they would make me feel so small, as I looked out over their emptiness.

But I am human, and I watch, instead,
the rain clouds blossom above me,
like a bouquet of faces,
like the family submerged in surf,
the grandmother's turquoise t-shirt washed into watercolors,
a perfect rendering of sea and sky.

Further down the people become silhouettes,
statues dedicated to the muses of finding seashells, of wandering till getting lost, of leaving footprints in the sand,
gray monuments reminding me I am not alone.
I watch them fade into the shadowed, hallowed place where earth meets sky,
the gap in the atmosphere where the universe was born, and is reborn every moment,
where lonely statues evaporate like seas, like dreams, like memories,
as words bloom in the air
like clouds of rain.

Labels: By Ana

Do old loves have ghosts
like ancestors? Do they move
like water, cold? And
will they ever fall to Earth,
like blackened leaves, melted snow?

Labels: By Ana

In Elementary school, I stuttered.
W’s were worst.
Like wolves, they leered at me, bared jagged teeth
from the pages of fairytales.

So teachers sent me
to experts in office back rooms
with flash cards, fake wood tables, books.

After several sessions, they said
my mind moved too quickly
for my mouth to catch up.

I've always chased my thoughts like raindrops
spiraling in breathless air,
scaling me, their eyes shining, scared
of shattering.

I'd watch them fall across car windows
from my car seat, stained like storms.
And as they'd race toward the edge,
I'd hedge bets.

But inside, I move slow as time,
as Earth
red rocks and rising tides
climbing down and up
in lines
you traced with your fingertips.

When you left me, you moved like my mind.
You trembled over me,
violently
crumbled me,
finally,
the darkening tranquility
broken,
fallen open,

frail as rain.

As if I, earthly, only weighed you down.

Since then, I have found
a canyon,
that sits between my ribs,
small and silent,
a spoon-sized grave
shaped like a raindrop.

And I think it’s always been there.

And if you held your head against it,
(like you used to,)
you'd hear the ocean,
gently rocking you,
washing you
away.

Labels: By Ana