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.