Sometimes, when you think of the future, you see all the branches— all the if-thens— trunk to branch to stem. Sometimes, when you think of the future, all the branches look barren— no fruit or flower or leaf. Somewhere, in the temporal pathways, you breech the outer bark, prune branches. Somewhere, in the temporal pathways— if you squint— on the edge of the smallest lateral, a bud blooms.
Category: Poetry
Zugg’s Song
the road is long horizon o’er horizon the past is here constantly dying the flowers grow in soil dry and rancid the future’s gone murky, cannot grasp it these walls, these caves contain the moments that have made us flow in, flow out like air these moments can suffocate us if we let them if we let them
This poem is part of a collection called Shards of Kardpaz, which are texts I’ve written for the world of the Dungeons & Dragons campaigns I run with students at my school.
Taking a Memory
I hold up my phone to capture light reflecting off someone I want to remember, turn them into a series of tiny squares, then into ones and zeros that will travel from my phone to the server farm next to the Word Market in Tukwila, aware I’ll probably never look at it again— aware most pictures are never looked at again. Maybe this one won’t be. Maybe it will.
You burn your face
You fall asleep on a beach. You know as soon as you wake up; around your eyes, dead skin screams like children at a playground. You spend several days watching wallpaper peel, cedar shingles flake. Cracks in the facade spread like wildfire, expose raw wood that’s never seen the harmful light of day. You pick at it after telling yourself not to. Oils in your fingers cause a pimple by the corner of your mouth like a bullet’s indentation in a street sign. You see it in the bathroom mirror as you wash your hands. Twenty seconds with a stranger. Another in the surface of the medicine cabinet.
the spring we lost
i remember
the morning the order came that said
we had to stay at home.
snow dusted the streets, coated the soccer field of my school
a week before the equinox.
my coworkers gathered around a computer to hear the governor say
our schools would close,
we would learn at a distance.
i remember
the morning i set up a workspace in our apartment.
each of my computers started updating—
spiraling dots, loading bars, flickering numbers.
stuck sitting and waiting as
the sun rose through the blinds,
spruce leaves swayed in the wind.
i remember
an afternoon— maybe multiple— where i laid on the couch,
papers to grade scattered on the coffee table.
i turned away from them and watched
warm light come in though the sliding glass door,
flowers bloom in the planters across the alley.
i remember
the afternoon where i forgot what day it was
after marking the day off the calendar in our kitchen,
after checking my phone multiple times to make sure, even
after saying it out loud.
maybe time is one of those human constructs that only exists insofar as it is useful.
matte grey sky gives way to patches of blue.
crows peck at the garbage bag sticking out of our neighbor’s overstuffed bin.
squirrels jump between the thin pine trunks outside the window by our mantle.
A bee lands on a wrinkle in your jeans
A bee lands on a wrinkle in your jeans. You eye the bee curiously as it steps its forelegs up and back like a line dancer. It hops from your leg to the handle of your backpack, slumped against your knee. Its open pockets expose plastic bags of trail mix, dried fruit. The bee rubs its head against a thread or two, flies around your head, then away.
Permanence from a Hunting Blind
A hunting blind on a boardwalk perched over an estuary’s low tide where hunters would sit on well-worn benches, stick their barrels out of rectangular holes in its walls. Your stomach lurches just standing in its threshold, but the rain’s heavy, your icy knuckles ache. You sit inside, blow warm air into your palms, rub them together, then stick them between your thighs. Walls are covered in permanent marker and knife carvings from people desperate to leave a mark. Declarations of relationships with years next to them. Some names crossed out in fresher ink. You think about permanence as you watch a sandpiper walk along the weak sliver of river at the end of the estuary.
A Reflection on Modal Realism
There's a possible world in which the same number of cars are in each lane. Some merge left, others right— no traffic. There's a possible world for every millisecond of your life in which you die. No angels have time to show you their aftermaths. There's a necessary world in which matter in connected through gravitational strings. No windows, no breaths to fog them.
To the Two Juncos Who Visited Our Bird Feeder One Morning During a Pandemic
I hope this message finds you well. How did you find out we got more bird seed in the mail? One of your friends tweet about it? Bad joke. Is that offensive? One of those things that you can say it and I shouldn’t? I’m so sorry. Won’t happen again. I hope you didn’t mind that I watched you eat your breakfast through the blinds of our living room. The sun had just come up, and I couldn’t look away. Seeing you perched on the feeder’s tray, casual chirps between bites of seed, reminded me of walking by a coffeeshop in the city and seeing family for brunch— things I sorely miss. See, you may have noticed, we humans are supposed to stay inside. I haven’t really been able to leave this apartment in over a month. You know, you should be grateful for the fact that you can fly anywhere you like— especially now, since you don’t have to deal with as many people bothering you at the park. You don’t need to be tethered to any specific place if you don’t want to. If you don’t mind me asking, why are your eyes so dark? Are you struggling to sleep too? Have you been feeling more panicky? I’m sorry if you are; I feel threatened by everything lately— I keep yearning to dart away, my head constantly scanning for exit strategies. I’m also sorry that your breakfast date got cut short by the arrival of Stellar’s Jay, who was so heavy that the feeder swayed in the morning sun for a solid minute after you left, spilling seeds everywhere. While they were able to stroll across the porch floor eating the scattered seeds, you had to fly out of sight. I hope you found a nice place to rest. You are welcome to return any time you like. We’ll make sure the feeder stays full for you. Or, if not, that some seeds remain strewn over the porch.
It rained on Wednesday.
It rained on Wednesday. I walked out to the backyard barefoot— late August— felt the developing mud between my toes, sat down. I felt the cold, fresh rain on my face, thought about the likely grass stains on my jeans soaking through the fibers. The sky was a matte grey that reached out, enveloped me. Where the sun would have been was the torso of a cedar along the southern fence, which happily clapped in the rain. I imagined, in the loosening earth, its roots dancing.
M. Espinosa 