Where I'm Calling From
I used to make sounds
full and heavy like stone, falling down along the side of my mouth.
And I used to watch you, from the wrapped edges of windows, thinking about how I would tell people,
what I would say when they came for you
emerging from the effortless blend of sea and sky.
And watching your soft arms, calling with their own sounds,
I thought about full eyes, I thought about dreams coming in the late June heat,
I thought about what the world looked like, the way it must have been was drawn and planned out,
long before we came.
Pale yellows come down from the top floor, and I only imagine
what the sun would taste like against the moon, my only friend now.
Restrained marked, even beaten now, shadows jumping inside of me and then back out.
Perhaps,
you were the last good thing, the empty opening only a sign, something more important, bigger
than my achiness, my aging.
Stronger than the aftermath of mental scrapes, making skies come apart.
Wind that is not wild, but black and bitter,
a space between then.
And where I am now.
Connecting the Surface
I know that the way you move when light hits,
the edge of your mouth
when you are dancing to a painting
unearthed.
That you are mostly holy
or at least godly
I’m sorry it’s taken so long
to be full.
And when I watch you dream, under my own eyelids
I can still taste what you were before.
Bitter, rusted, and rooted on the other side of here.
All this endless, all this horror
that flickers against your breastbone.
I wish there was something else I could say
But my moth freezes, iced over, grey like the November Sky.
I don’t want to lead you on.
This place here and now is smooth, glossed, glassed over and perfect.
But I have never been one to think less,
the crest of my lashes, hovering, hollowing, and leaving
you alone again.
I don’t mean it.
My own reflection just made my heart leap.
And I know you don’t understand this now,
wandering, lost, and in line, three parts working,
maybe fighting against one another.

Josie Griffith is a student of English at Northern Arizona University, where she specializes in
creative writing and rhetoric. She considers herself a poet, though that has yet to be confirmed
or denied.