
shatterproof

Writing of Stephanie McManus
All the reasons the heart couldn’t form,
a humble stem/kitsch in your mother’s attic:
there’s a hundred hours left
still,and the sun won’t really set
just sway into someone
a world away,
looks like you, looks like I,
holds a star like space holds/
limitless.
Even how love, was the baby frog I kept
in my pencil case to bring
along to school,
‘little buddy,’ because the softness
of empathy is there before words
get in the way
but only realized when we talk about it.
It’s likely not many notice
the beauty of someone young
holding their space fully/
or how outside of god
we hold the words of many gods
we have loved in our memory:
I still will sing
at the end of the world
walk into storms the same way
a ghost can only be ghostly.
Eat the cake! I really think it is fine
and to love peculiar things
like tiny frogs and funny-nosed sloths:
because love informs when chaos
gentle at the gate is hot
and all-too-ready.
Truth is to forget underwater
how the waves crash
beneath the seam
how the waves crash
truth in seconds
how under
the shower I crash
how in dreams I
collide with colossus
and tragedy and conquer/
uninhibited, un-able to
drive seed to
stem. Truth: I forget
to crash beneath
and end up above
the waves in holy
love thinking this
is who I become now
like summers I swam
between mangroves and hot
sea surging, that perfect
storm on the horizon – I love
so deeply in truth
underwater in the crash
of waves/ how the seam
defines if we will live or die/
the crash beneath
stormy skies
and showers:
and how wide
is the breadth of
a wilderness
that came before the place
we can not reside.
The way of a mind like a seed
on the wind floats up
instead of with the wind
somehow, or people born
wedged in sidewalk cracks
deep away from the sun
know where happiness
resides tumbling
upon its arrival:
in this I feel almost
a lucky misfit.
Even a self divided is
scattered like pages
lost within the house
with no binding.
I see windows in every room
that inform nothing except
where I have arrived from,
and, I, in every room
stitch a binding, day-
in and out, am
surrounded by a puzzle
of words on paper.
But aren’t us the
song? Aren’t us the
dream and
attuned to truth:
the paradox of remaining
genuine when a melody
unfolding.
I have lived surrendered in hope
tied loose like the truth
in my mouth is loose
or a startled face is composed
loosely as a cloud sifts
the light of the day/
it was Mary’s sorrow upon
the backs of ladybugs; that
is a story people told
to explain the mar
of black. to become
echoes
painting poppies on dark
space of nowhere and
nobody, just
the brightest poppy with black
stamen sunk as beautiful
things are sunk in feeling
composed of all colors. How
delight is only found in
in the middle of a
crashing wave-
to live between the surety
and the unknown unfolding
Become a mouth-breaking
exclamation, a sigh sorting
memories into the box
of photographs
the turn
of a projector or
maybe a suspicion
of beauty
in others, like a freckle
tucked away beneath
makeup:
how suffering so often
is a lone subject/ a
whale song caught
in caves of ice
or upon the lips of sleepy bears
filling with weary resolve
threatening avalanches:
do not disturb.
To draw lines and swallow
lyrics like whiskey is hot,
the finger bones
grasping in resolve
with burning.
I need photographs of you to remember
the way you smiled at me
moments that cannot be re-
drawn with crayons
or pounded into the present
with frustrated shrieks.
I have a string.
It is a thread of grey
long and trailing behind over
the horizon; I am walking
on a highway back
somewhere
where has that place gone?
If I follow the thread back,
will I find you there?
Or, are memories scaled in shades
of black and white
fluttering like a bird’s heart?
I don’t really need the photographs
to remember; it is that I
wish to flesh out memory until
you are standing before me
a reflection of who I am
and so spectacularly,
who you are
and tip-toe up to kiss you
gently, breathing life
into your eyes that
was gone
to see you smile.