I pray dear sister that they burn us at the stake. Oh dear sister I pray they bind our hands with twine so when the flames eat at our wrists our bonds break free. My dearest sister I pray that with free hands we embrace and break bread with the fire. And my dearest sister the flame in our hearts will make the pyre around our legs seem nothing more than a campfire made by children in the snow. Oh sister of mine when our voices harmonize with the crackling of the wood I pray the town cover their ears and grow heavy with sorrow. Sister when they go to collect our ash their shovels will be bare. Because dear sister of mine you know better than I that our ashes are not theirs to claim.

I was an exception to the phrase "we were all born with a voice" I was born a mute, had it not been for my mother pressing her lips to mine and passing on her voice I would have walked this earth in silence. But my mother felt she had said enough in this lifetime and gave me a chance to shout from the rooftops and whisper to the ones I love. She spent the rest of her days scribbling on napkins and pressing her lips to my ears so they could feel her secrets.

When I was nothing but a small child I would chew on the tips of my fingers in hopes that one day I would grow up to a be a good boy. I wanted to grow up and stand straight while me and my wife served snacks to the crowd. But I was born in a different world and grew up with a bowed back. pockets full of phone numbers and the sin of other woman beneath my nails. I hid my passion in wooden boxes buried beneath the house and on the nights I held her hand I held back tears while I thought of how you ran from your mother and sent letters down the river..

He practiced the gospel every chance he got, turning the other cheek to feel the lips from the neighbors wife. He was known by many, but not in the way you and I would like to be known. The townspeople knew him as the man who rummaged through their mail, opening private letters from overseas, birthday cards and the occasional pre-approved credit card, looking to strike some sort of fire in his dried up heart. By law this is a capital offense but nobody had the heart to turn him in. They let him live vicariously through their lives, there was even an older man who would write the occasional letter full of scandalous acts for him, and it wasn't a surprise to see half a sandwich bundled up behind the readers digest. Visiting family and friends wondered why the townspeople put up with such nonsense and even in a small way enabled it, but nobody had an answer. It was an unwritten law, a sort of code one would say. They never turned their backs to a fellow man, even if he had wronged them in every which way possible. They were just common folks, no different than you and I, they read the same books as us and laughed at the television just like we do, they had their secrets, hidden taboos under the bed sheets and dark pasts but they were just better at keeping it hidden than him. And maybe that's why they tolerated his ways, because deep down he was more honest then everyone one of them, he put it out for everyone to see. And whether we admit it or not, all of us truly want that...to be completely honest with the world no matter the cost.

We were raised in a house of superstition, brother and I. Always putting the left shoe on first, keeping a bucket of buckeyes under the foot of our bed, or never breaking a twig on the Sabbath. Small things to the eyes of the world, but in our parents eyes these small traditions or superstitions kept the universe in tact. Folks felt sorry for us on account of our families odd habits but i'll be honest with you. We had a good home life, if the biggest thing they fussed about was us leaving our closet door open while the sun was still up I'd say we were pretty lucky, considering how rough others had it. I knew a boy in grade school who'd come to school beat to kingdom come just because he walked in front of his daddy. Growing up I questioned a lot, as most kids do. But I never heard my friends asking why they couldn't brush their teeth between 6:45 and 7:15. Mom and dad would sit me and my brother down and start to tell us about how the world used to be, how people took reverence in the small things and kept the world in order. But those ways were leaving, people lost their reverence and the ways of old were all but forgotten. And these traditions they were teaching us, silly as they may seem were greater than we could ever imagine, in a way they were keeping the universe alive. Now you tell two little boys that keeping two nickles in their back pockets is saving the universe, you better believe they never left the house without two worn down nickles. And even today, twenty-two years later I still got two nickles in my pack pocket. And I guarantee if you looked in that casket you'd find two nickles under mom and a bucket of buckeyes at her feet. Cause even on her way to the grave she stood by her beliefs, dad and brother were the same way. And the day someone is standing over me, talking about how I kept my bottom button undone or never broke a twig on the Sabbath I hope i'm just like my mom and dad. Going to the grave with nickles in my back pockets and knowing my family did they best they could to make the universe a better place.

And everywhere her bare foot stepped my words fell off her heels...

Since the day of my birth I have been sick. A bafflement to the medical fields, I have a rare condition with no name and no history of it happening to anyone else. The place I was born is where I have to spend the rest of my life, luckily I was born in fathers study and not some cold over lit hospital. My steps have been limited by a house, and the farthest my eyes will ever see is out of sixteen windows. I have no visitors nor do I have any friends. When I became older and more aware of what my future held I started to write my dreams, thoughts, made up memories anything that came to my mind on the palms of my hands. At night I would offer to rub my sisters feet, my palms pressing against her foot letting her heels soak up every word. Sister never wore shoes when she left the house, her bare feet felt meadows, river beds, the cobblestone of the town below and even the shop floors where she defied all "no shoes no service" laws. And everywhere her bare foot stepped my words fell off her heels, soaking into the earth, collecting in the corner with dust or washing down streams. I was bound to four walls but my words had no boundaries. My nightmares were soaked into the flowers that men picked for the gals. Every made up friend was collected in the dust between stones. The fields sister ran through were now plowed, upturning all my thoughts. Seeds were planted and mighty rows of crops were produced. Corn with memories of my first made up kiss, tomatoes full of secrets about mothers hidden liquor bottle in the medicine cabinet. Potatoes holding witness to the first time I saw mother and father fight. Every ocean in the world had a piece of me in it. The creek beds riddled with the images of my father passing away and how sister sat in the corner not saying a word, just shaking her legs. Eager to run away, eager to spread my words. She had no idea that her heels were writing to the world, the morning before they put her in the ground I wrote to her. Telling her all that she had done for me, thanking her. I'm not sure what happened to those words, maybe they soaked into the casket and kept her company while she passed over. Maybe a few even touched heavens floor, I like the thought of them saints soaking me up. I have no one to spread my words now, mother will occasionally go out and i'll sneak a few secrets on her. But most of the time it's just me, writing on anything I can find. So when I pass on over and they burn this old house down, the wind will pick up the ashes and this little girl who never left the house will touch every corner of the world.

Ole tub water

We used to fill up that old tub in the back and share the bath water, when folks heard word of it they made a fuss but we defended ourselves. Saying "Ah, we're just saving some water, no need in wastin' two tub fulls" But truth is. We were scared. We were scared of washing off our sins alone, so we shared that tub. Scrubbing at every little sin we could find, and if some were to stick back on our bodies when we got out..well, that'd be fine, cause we'd be carrying them together. And Lord knows we could use all the help we can get.

I was seven the first time I sewed scripture to the cuffs of my suits. I was attending my uncle’s funeral. I say uncle because legally that’s all he was to me. I don’t even know his name, mom had this to say about him: “oh him? yeah sweety(I hated when she called me sweety) he’s your uncle. Wanna have a little secret? before your daddy married me your “uncle” used to make kisses on me” I ignored mother that day, I ignored mother most days. Now don’t get me wrong, I loved her. But I did not love her words. I haven’t loved someones words since I was three. The last words I loved I heard on the radio “we offer a discount on towels” we offer something about those two words stuck with me. Anyways. I borrowed thread. I kidnapped a needle and I sewed a chapter of Habakkuk to the cuff of my “dashing suit” thats what my aunt called it. She’s the type that calls everything dashing. Makes me sick. I sat in the pew of a musty church, pinching my leg. stepping on one foot. occasionaly peeking at my scriptures. I do the same thing now that i’m older. My wife. when she picks me out a shirt she asks: “Hey babe, what scripture do you want to wear today?” I never answer. She knows. That was a day. Thats what I would say, “That was a day” I never learned descriptive words. Later when my age became larger I learned that “weird” would have been an appropriate word. “That was a weird day, I saw my first bra, dead person and realized I look nothing like my family” You’re probably wondering what my age is. Well by calender talk i’m 27. But in the world of science i’m only 13. I never paid much attention to science. Why do people want answers for everything? I have to stop talking now, sorry for such a weird ending but I have to sew.

Evelyn made sure the sleeves of her sweater or the hems of her skirt never rose up around the other children in school. She wasn’t ashamed of her skin, Evelyn used to sit in the tub on the nights she was allowed to use water admiring the fairness of her skin. But that was before her mother started losing things. That was before Evelyn sat up at night pulling off the sins and memories that stuck to the bottom of her mothers foot. Ones that had slid off her body without her knowing or even if she did know she no longer had the strength to hold onto memories or sins. Not after the “storm”. Not after the night her mother came home crying with two men from the Police station all wrapped up in a blanket and led to her bed to sleep the storm away. Evelyn didn’t want to overhear the Policeman as they left, but a child’s ear is a mysterious thing. “I’ve seen her before, she never was a lady of the evening..but she also never favored the mornings.” Evelyn’s ears made no sense of what they heard and that was for the best. A child’s ear has no need for ignorant words. She stayed up with her storm battered mother, reciting her poems, singing made up songs and counting the hairs on her head. Now things are much more complex, her mother never recovered from the storm. She lost all her memories, the humanity of sin, the grace that lived in her. It was falling off her as she walked, washed off her wrists when she scrubbed the same dish for 20 minutes. But Evelyn walked behind her, slept at the edge of her bed and drained the tub for her. Collecting all the memories, grace and sin that she so unwillingly lost. Evelyn saved her lunch money for a ink and quill set so she could take all things lost and write them between her thighs, under her arms. Covering all her flesh with her mother in hopes that one day she would want it all back. And if not..she would walk this earth with her mother on her skin…

sleep writing

I used to bury my nickles under mothers porch so the aunts and uncles of my father wouldn’t steal them from me. I buried my shoes behind the old truck that dad pretends to drive. I cover the cuts on my ankles with the mud from the hill. In hopes that one day I will grow roots and become one of those trees that sit so safely in the distance.

3 nights ago I was sleeping in granny and papaws old bed while dad slept on the couch, I woke up that morning and was throwing my pillow around trying to find my shirt and I found this wadded up piece of paper that I had scribbled on. I seem to always hide my sleep writing under my pillow

How Whales Communicate

When I was seven I knew a man who collected paper cuts. He traveled from library to library adding to his collection. The collection he hid on his spine and under his socks. When I was eight he showed me his spine. riddled with cuts. A spine painted in fiction, horror, living and children's books. When I was nine he would lay on his stomach and let me read his spine with eager fingers. That's where I learned what a kiss was. What it is to lie to your parents. How to grow flowers in a tub. By the age of twelve I had started my own collection of paper cuts. "How Whales communicate" was the first cut to sink itself behind my knees. When I turned fifteen he let me peak beneath his socks. He wouldn't let me read. Just look. He promised by my eighteenth birthday I could read the cuts between his toes. By the time I was seventeen he had moved on. He hadn't died, in fact i'm not sure if he was ever born. He simply moved on. Leaving me. a young man. a young man with knees full of paper cuts and fingers that craved a spine.

When I learned of how mother cut her tongue on those pages my tongue cried to feel the sting of sacred edges. My bones ached for the breaking I knew those pages could bring. hit me. cut me. rip my sides out. I would scream at her locked door. The door she hid behind cutting her tongue on those sacred edges. The day mother let me in I walked in on all fours with a hunger for anything she left. But mothers tongue was gone. Her bones were no more. She licked all those sacred edges. She was broken by every last page. She was no more and I fed upon her flesh. But a child shouldn’t feed upon a sacrifice such as this. A child. me. a young girl. never left that room again. never tasted the sacred edges and felt the breaking of pages. I just was and never could be. For the rest of my days until my spine was worn down by the windows light and my legs married the dust.

I used to ask my knees why they smelt like the sea, I only asked because my knees have never seen the sea. But somehow their wrinkled faces held the scent of traveling winds. I used to know this man who carried bottles by his side. Bottles full of truths but he bottled them up. to afraid of how they would make people feel. I used to be the type of sinner that only prayed for my forgiveness on sunday afternoons. I used to be the type of sinner that held hands to tightly and left bruises on toddlers wrist. I was a vessel of holy water with not a drop to spare. And when you came crawling out from under my legs I knew your face. I knew your wrists and I remembered your thighs. But you remembered not. You didn’t know my face or know my wrists.

I never asked to be accountable for all the sins my father committed down in those mines. I’m sure if he knew i’d be the one paying for his wicked ways he would have thought twice about doing them. At least that’s the way I like to think about it. Nobody wants to think of their father as a wicked man. Last month he put on his nicest pair of slacks, took the change from grandmas rainy day bucket and went down to those mines. That was the last time I saw him. Cracked hands digging for a few quarters, pennies and mistakingly picking up a button is the last image I have of him. Days later the post man came, the one with the limp that seems to switch legs depending on the weather. He brought me a letter. Boys like me never get letters, I get the occasional Happy Birthday card from my aunt in the city but it’s nothing more than an obligatory gesture. I stood on that porch with the heaviest letter my hands had ever held. My old dull schrade knife slide right through that letters spine only to find hundreds of paper scraps all with black bold face letters on them. My fathers sins. They mailed me my fathers sins. I carried that letter till my hands were just as cracked as his. I carried that letter till there no longer was any rainy day money in grandmas bucket. I never married and I never became promiscuous. I never wanted children. I never wanted them to receive my letter full of scraps of paper with black bold face letters on them. I never wanted them to be accountable for my sins.

Before sister was born brother and I cut down the old weeping willow behind our house. We made sister a crib out of that old weeping willows bones in hopes that it would save her from falling between the cracks of mothers worn down bed.

After sister was born brother fell from the kitchen table with rope around his dry neck. And a note stuck in his sock. “I got the job”

After brother was buried mother started dancing with the pastors who carried hollowed out Bibles. She wore long dresses and no longer hid in her worn down bed. Mother left a note on the kitchen table. “I took the job, feed your sister”

After mother took the job I fed my sister leaves and fresh water from the stream that runs under our porch. Sister and I never left notes about jobs. We never ate at the kitchen table and our beds never became worn down. I grew old. She grew up. She married a man who already had a job. She had children who never feared falling between the cracks of her worn down bed.

After sister married. After sister became her own. I left a note on the bathroom sink. “I never could hold a steady job” I fell between the cracks in mothers worn down bed.

My mother counted coins on the kitchen table while father brought home letters from other mothers. My sister hid her novels under blankets and sheets while brother hit his girlfriend in the living room of grandmothers. Our family held no secrets. Shame was not our thing. Uncle called our sister while our power flickered out. Brother begged for his inheritance in hopes to move away. Brother moved away with camel cash and a used out zippo. Mother read the bible but never read the words. Sister still hid her novels. Father kissed the floors of bankrupt restrooms. I sat. I stood. I watched and I cried. I was I and they were they but in the end they saw us as them. My attemps to break out never prevailed. Until that day. When the wrecking balls came. Tore down my flesh and ripped up my legs. I was a house. I was a broken shelter. You thought I was a child but your thoughts were wrong. I was four walls with a ceiling and a scared floor. I had four eyes one on each wall and a door that never offered freedom.

Your tattered legs all stained with salt while mother clutches rubble and calls out fathers fault. You sat on uneven legs in sister marys chair, she combed your nails while you bit your hair. And for seven years you wore bandages on your knees in hopes of removing them in your brothers sacred seas.

You wore a borrowed dress to the party of senses. Your skin crawled. Your bones ached and your stomached cried for the comforts of home but your arms went forward. Your legs craved the attention of the floor. And your eyes preyed on the ones drinking their elixirs and smoking their poison. You were caught up in the gusts of an age in which an existentialistic heart was the only thing that could get you by. Your fingers danced on freshly washed linens while your legs dangled on sheets stained with tears. Your eyes met the ceiling. Your feet never touched sacred ground. Your palms full of paper cuts. Your eyes full of dust.

I haven’t washed my lips since that night I kissed her casket. Since the night I hid behind the pew and waited for everyone to go home so I could stay up with her all night and play one more game of checkers. Hear one more story. Make sure she didn’t need a glass of water. And after she let me win at checkers. After I fixed her flowers and sat a glass of water beside her bed. I crawled back behind the pew and hid till the sun woke up.

Smacking the alarm to hush it’s cries I slowly wake up. My warm feet pressing against the cold ground. Sleeping lungs awoken by the afternoon air. My suit laid out on the chair ironed and ready. I dress myself in the mirror making sure not to miss a button. You always made fun of me for missing buttons: “You’ve been doing this for fifteen years and yet you still miss a button, silly man.” All my buttons aligned. Tie tied right. Pants and belt on. Jacket resting on my shoulders and a freshly combed beard. ”I sure hope her parents don’t bring up grandchildren again.” I whispered to myself while fixing my hair.

The gate cired like it always does. Your father and mother in their regular spots. I sat across from you and adjusted my tie.

“Your mother liked her flowers”..

“I still think your father hates me”

Twirling my fingers while I stare at my shoes.

“Well..the place on Elm is still for sale, I know we can’t afford it right now but it’s nice to dream.”

Fixing my already fixed hair.

“I’ve missed you at my place, you left your brush on my nightstand. I was going to clean it for you but I know you like to do things a certain way”

Looking forward.

“You know I love you..right? I always will. I always have. Jenny and Ted invited us to one of those dress up parties. I know you hate those kind of things but I thought it’d be nice to go”

“Yeah you’re right, let’s just stay in tonight”

“Sir. Sir.” I look around to see a man in his blue jumpsuit with part of his supper still in his beard. “Sir, it’s after 8 I’ve gotta close this place up.” sighing. “A few more minutes?” he gives me a look of obligation. “Sorry sir, it’s cemetery policy. not mine.” “I understand” I say while brushing the dirt off the back of my pants. “I’ll see you tomorrow dear. Sleep well, I’ll be sure to say night to your parents. I still think your dad doesn’t like me. Night”