fourteen raze hair down. shields up. no coffee in my coffee cup. playing spider solitaire. i almost never win. writing short fiction on her desktop computer, always with some cruel twist at the end. her dog crying to the sound of the dial tone amplified by the answering_machine, and me singing a melody under that steady pulse. making my voice a low string instrument. a cello or a contrabass. walking home from school with "solsbury hill" in my headphones. letting the world become the backdrop for a song that creates a world of its own, that doesn't need another world to live in. her bedroom. her sliding door. her white futon. the smell of cigarettes in everything, everywhere but on her. the black eye she says she gave herself when she was reaching for a glass in the kitchen cupboard. i don't believe her. i think he hit her. i don't know what to do about it. precambrian instrument of rage transmuted into absolute stillness. nothing is happening. everything is about to happen. wet hair holds what hands won't touch. i want to be where you are, but i don't know who you are anymore. 210731 ... ovenbird At fourteen he is approaching the furthest extent of his orbit—travelling away from me so I can barely feel the gravity between us. I believe that he will circle back one day, but now I must watch him move out into the distance where he will discover who he is and bring that knowledge back to me. I send him messages using the technology that connects us across the vast expanse of space. I deliver my queries and he responds with one word answers: fine. sure. ya. He’s still a couple inches shorter than me, but not for long. He’s consuming calories like a bear preparing to hibernate, his body is dormant but about to wake up. He still says good night after brushing his teeth. He still lets me hug him as he’s heading to bed. The stuffed monkey he’s had since birth still lives on his pillow. I’m sometimes not sure if I know him. His thoughts and feelings are a mystery to me. He keeps everything wrapped up tight inside himself and won’t let me see the shape of his heart. I make myself a sturdy thing, a heavy boulder, unmoveable, moss growing along my back. I’m here, I try to tell him. I’m here and I will always be here if you need somewhere quiet to rest. I know how loud the world is, how it asks you to accommodate yourself to its uncomfortable edges, how it sows its seeds of doubt in the furrows of your mind. I’m here if you need a retreat, if you need a witness. I don’t know if he will come to me, but I keep the path between us clear so he can make his way unimpeded. I make myself still and strong, place orange blazes on the white bark of the birch trees, sit in the clearing my love has made, and wait for him to find me. 260209 what's it to you? who go blather from