How to Have Fun

First published in Literally Literary

There’s only one way to have fun.
You’ll need to get a dinosaur.
That’s definitely step one.

Hop on it and take a ride
off to an exotic land.
If you see monsters, hide.

Then make a daring escape.
Yes, make your way to a boat
and hide inside a crate.

Live the life of a stowaway
until someone finds you
and then say the word, “parley”.

Make the captain laugh
so he puts you on his crew
then gives you half of a treasure map.

The other half, it’s been foretold
is in a nest of giant birds
whose eggs are far too big to hold.

Climb a mountain to get to its nest
and when you see the missing piece,
reach for it, in hope to find what’s next.

A bird will grab you and carry you off
high above the ocean, where a —

“What’re you doing?” She asks me with a tired voice.

“Nothing, sorry I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“Are you writing something over there?”

“Yeah, just a little poem.”

She giggles. “I love your poems. You can finish up, I don’t mind.”

I feel her smile on my back. While she starts to doze back to sleep, I set my phone down for the night. Snuggling in, I say, “It’s not important.”

She kisses my back until it tickles, then smushes her face into me. Her breath, a metronome, ticks me back to sleep. Just before I doze away myself, I smile and whisper, “Who has more fun?”

“Nobody,” she whispers back.

Then we fall asleep.

To Draw the Rain

First published in Moments Pub

When I was young
I always tried
to draw the rain.

Page after page and
dot after dot I thought
the only way to draw it
was drop by drop by drop
by drop by drop

But all that got me
was a page drowned
in scribbles.

I didn’t know
that to draw the rain
you can start by simply
placing pitter pats in puddles
or tracing silhouettes of trees
made shapeless by the mist.

Not once
did I think to draw
the little sounds found inside
quiet times — those times
when life slows down
to wait for refreshing smells of
sighs from hard-won years
to trickle down, relieved,
beneath the wetted leaves.

Never did I know that,
if you want to draw the rain,
you can illustrate old furniture
missing from the patio
we sold once, long ago.
I never knew that
would fill in the space
between those
blurry lines
of water.

Who knew to draw the rain,
I had to just draw life
with spaces in between.

There's No Need

First published in P.S. I Love You

Words are cheap

Buy them for $.99
at the grimy corner store
then tuck them under the
missing leg as a crutch
and lean the full weight
of your comfy couch
sitting on top of fickle
“I’d do anything”s and
“Yes dear”s

But when the apartment sells
along with that couch
and that old vase
and that armoire
those words wind up
in the trash

And when our bodies
lie in their boxes
far below our
once-tilted couch

Our hands intertwined
and days spent filled with
silent smiles, comfortable, will
ink a book that can’t
be bought or sold