Calcination

Fire, that immortal blacksmith,
forever forging its shimmering blades.
They rise from the darkness, cutting and separating,
destroying an impurified husk
to leave just what will be essential.

At first it turns black.
Black like the soil beneath our feet
where everything we know came from.
Black like the hidden corners of my mouth
where the words i meant to say never moved.

But this too burns and turns to ashen white
Its structure surrendered,
a mound of remnants, homogenous and unpatterned,
a gentle chaos with no identity,
dead and stirring with the wind

To Kip, undeterred

It's bitter cold out here before the sunrise.
The power lines are humming with the lake a distant 40 yards off,
and we're here, sitting in your car at 5am,
wishing the world would stop spinning.

"it's getting cold," you say, and I grasp your hand. 

The diesel smell has dissipated, but I still smell your hair in this stillness.

"Do you know the reason I call us by our celestial names?" I ask.

Years ago, you told me a story about how vast and distant everything is in space

How things move with a great clock marking the time.
And as it ticks, we all dance to its beat.

You and I were always off time, eclipsing and countering each other.
We never stopped orbiting, and we still inch closer.

Someday we will have to pick:
explode from a slingshot or conjoin into one.

Hold tight to my gravity, and i'll hold to yours. 

And let's see where we land.

To Lin, after

I found your necklace the other day. It was napping on the bathroom sink with the toothbrush and the comb. It hadn't caught my glance in the night, but when the sunrise bent its beams toward the gemstone's faces, I watched it unfold it's splendor like a Phoenix from ash.

it isn't often that I get a reminder of those moments only you and I know of. After all this time, I still keep you hidden in places I forget. Just today, I was cleaning the bookshelf and I found letters you sent while you were in Cambodia. There was even one where you packed a little clipping of a rice plant in a bubble mailer so I could feel and smell what it was like. That was a special kind of love I hadn't known before, and the electricity of it all still puzzles me.

You haven't heard from me because I am changing, and in the midst of changing I've forgotten who I am and what is important. It wasn't fair of me to give us an expiration date. I drew the line and told you to prepare yourself for what was inevitable. I wasn't sure how serious I was until you insisted that the line exists. And since that point I've yet to fulfill my promise of letting you in.

I cannot divulge everything at once. Some things take months to explain and at this rate I'm sure it will take even longer. I admit that being so miserly with your patience is not fair to you, but please trust my saying that when the time is right, you will understand why I am not so quick to say what it is that troubles me.

Intro to Surien

I raised my head toward Surien. How it bared its twisted iron shell across the sky, perched in heaven like a black crown of thorns. I wondered at the people who created such a vessel. What must have driven them to leave the comfort of their planet and construct their new home from rocks they found in the desert of space. I thought about Palinan and if we might do the same if our planet's currents ever slowed.

As I got closer, i could make out some of the larger pieces that had been fused to the hull in a rush. And as we drew closer I could make out more and more of them until I couldn't count them anymore. It was ugly but altogether a marvelous feat of astronomical engineering. The crown of ten thousand asteroids stood before me, with vastness greater than my imaginination could ever produce. This was home for a great many people, and I would soon be among them.

Tawn

I write to you with beams of light.
And they have become a ritual.
I've learned to crave each glimpse of you
Between the accreting stars.

When shimmer swindlers beckoned for the sun you gave me,
I gave myself to them instead.
You had always given me enough and more.

Now empty-handed, my fists are full of the medium we swim within.

I beg the heavens for something improved but I find less at every turn.

I write to you with beams of light.
And now, from this other side, 

I can see what you have seen. 

I only wish you were here to tell me about it.

It's you, the one the night calls friend,

You, the girl with faceless dreams.

Perch yourself beside the moon

And you will see the girl I see.

Who can wake you as a rose

Nodding kindly with the wind?

The trees will find their fingertips

Before you bare your breast to them.

My fingers beat upon the table

Against the grains of time and space.

I watch you dancing in the minefields

And pray one day you'll find this place.

The Jiyu

    I wished my old tree good morning as I rustled my way through its branches and set my back down on the slope that its trunk had been building. The sunlight had just begun to lift the dewdrops, slowly making room for the songleaves around them to transform the new morning breeze into the music of the spirits.

   You cannot hear the first note of a jiyu's song. There is no grand entrance or catchy hook. It's more like a choir of thousands of distant voices all entering and exiting at different times with their pre-ordained notes. When you start to hear the song, you realize that it's been singing for a while, only your mind was not clear enough to focus on it. No mind has been or will ever be clear enough to know which of a jiyu's leaves sang first. Only the tree can know, and it will forever keep it secret.