collaborative storytelling that is equal parts critical and creative

It wasn’t for nothing

         They sweep the shed snake skin, the now-cold ash, take down garlands of dried marigolds back and forth and back and forth our rubber wheels back and forth

onward, North, and onward, East, and onward, Apart

a recipe made mostly of silence, mailed Salsify, the memory of Mullein, what percent melancholy?—I shove my terror into waxed cardboard boxes and stop picking up the phone. It was winter, it’s winter now

It wasn’t for nothing

   I yell at a box overfull of grapefruits softening to rot, feeding fruit flies

back and forth and back and forth across peach colored patio stones back and forth

I’ve been here for weeks now / mere minutes / long enough

You throw a wilting bunch of kale and I kick it, midair, watch it land on red, sandy soil, think about the end of the World—the thirst and the hunger and

the franticness of making it home

                                 It wasn’t for nothing

         We’re building again, holding our own hands and staring across a cold dinner of something doused in sour cream, back and forth and back and forth and back and 

forth—you’re home, I’m here, I’m hoping for water mud milk wine seeds

cells, it’s the first of November, can you smile in this direction. I ask you to cut my hair: it’s important and it feels wrong, it's been years [the snip snip snip of the almost-entirely-dull scissors]

It wasn’t for nothing

         You slide the door shut, push the lock down, we talk about tomatoes, words and hands remembering Sungolds and Yellow Brandywine and the way we                                     cried between rows, back and forth and back and forth—but

today I wake up burning, wanting for wind and the memory of church, ready to fall silent easily and to place old tears in the vacant arroyos and wait without you for rain

                                 It wasn’t for nothing