I travelled a poem
Of parallels lines 
Tied together by sleepers and overgrown thicket
eyes panning the platform for abandoned
flattened pennies.
I recalled a sincere if sometimes mawkish girl from my childhood.
She had bore a hole through her copper circle
and wore it as her third place in the
coin crush Olympics.
Seeing it reminded me of lip plates and rings
worn by tribal women.
I traveled this poem
It began by crossing an un-blunted bridge
and cleaving my most tangled particulates.
I rationed them out to anything
that could carry them away from
my intended direction.
Solitary and nocturnal.
There are a pair of cats
Who meet here each night;
Each sitting opposite in direction
to the other
Never touching
One rung
then two
I think of how we poured ourselves
Into bed
Our intended direction, our bodies
clinging to the edge
with nothing to connect our drowsy space.
I traveled this poem
And these parallel lines
and could see
the thicket is now weary from being green
While the penny now weary from being copper.

I digressed

Knowing enough to wander

Knowing nothing

Watching my own fingers

Stretch to reach

Only the choicest

And simultaneously curl

to clench

so tightly I cut myself

little jagged lines

my palms were my book

my story un-pretty

poison berries.

I surrendered my name

Because I saw my power

Even my cycles were fierce

“Suck in the air

You are wild now”

Says my blood

I am goblin

Covered in hoar-frost

words by malai carrara 2013
photo credit to miika jarvinen