Fairydust

The dusty light filters in through the one high window in the door frame
The light lands on the stage floor just before the piano where you and I sit
The piano is what they call a grand piano. I call it a grandmother piano.
She is old and elegant, deeply resonant, with many scratches glimmering on her weathered black polish,
creasing her surface like inky elephant skin
Her ivory keys are slightly chipped but as you gently press her, she sings

I am curled up on the hard stage floor. I breathe in the smell of dust

It is bad for me but I love the sweet resin musk.
The vibrations of the piano travel through the floor and come up through the side of my ribcage and the hands upon which I rest my cheek

You keep plunking away, singing softly. Your voice pours like molasses. I am trying not to listen to you. You're singing out the air, to nobody, the love songs wash away, wasted. Instead, I focus on the words of the grandmother piano

Don't worry about the boy, she murmurs
Let me sing you to sleep, to dreams of love requited

But I can't believe her, I can't quite take her in.
As long as the dust fairies fly in circles, in the cyclone of light, I will coil myself around my wounded heart

I stand up quickly, my skirt falling in folds around my knees and I pad over to your bench. I try to sit gently as to not disturb your playing

Your eyes dart towards me then back at the air to which you sing

I watch your pale fingers skipping from note to note, almost as white as the old keys

Your hair smells like the dust that falls from the theater's vault above us
I breathe it in.

I know better. The dust will swirl in, the suspended particles will line my lungs, collect in my tissues. It will run in my blood. But I can't stop - I just breathe it all in.
The piano says, "Be sharp. Be careful"

But. I've already breathed you in.

The Teapot Shop

The Hip Hop Teapot


I went to the teapot shop
to get my teapot shopped
to shop out the teapot stop
the top of which had stopped
I clip clop hip hopped
to the teapot shop
where I stopped with my teapot a lot.
The teapot shop held great lots of teapots
but still the shop owner stopped
to say "Welcome to the shop!"
I held out my teapot, the one that had stopped
so that he could stop and plot
how to stop and fix the pot
and we arranged a teapot fix pot plot.
He took the pot, the only one I've got
and looked at the stopper which was stopping not.
He said, "I guess I can take a shot,
but first would you like a spot?"
and then he held out his teapot.
I said "I do like a spot of tea a lot
but this tea would have to come from your pot
for my pot is not and that is all I have got
and until I have got a pot all my hopes are naught."
Then he said, "But I've got a spot flavored with iris and hops.
For these hops, I hopped to the market spot.
It was there that I stopped and copped the hops."
I said, "Tell me not although I long for a spot,
for I have stopped here in your shop because of my pot.
You have a great many lots of teapots here and oh dear
I cannot leave this spot until I have a teapot stop."
The shop owner stopped, sad for the neglected hops
but said, "Fine, here in the shop you can shop for a stopper to stop."
So there in the teapot shop where I had gone to get my teapot shopped
to shop out the teapot stop, the top of which had stopped,
he gave me a stopper which stopped atop the pot.
Rejoicing that my teapot was once again tip top,
upon the spot, I hugged the shop owner of the shop.
It was then we stopped to get a spot of tea with hops from my teapot
and from then on life was the in the tippity tops.

Remember the Nights

Remember the nights
when the air rolling off the sea
slid in like cold porridge
cool but thick, dense with salt
but the heat rose from the pavement
and emanated the board walk
the two forces would collide above us,
stirring in the troposphere
as we strolled along the boards
licking ice cream cones
and arguing about which arcade game to play
which shiny window to succumb to
we didn't realize how the winds fought above us
twirling tornados like the ones inside of us
the heat of a teenage night, the excitement and pulse like the lights of the boardwalk
the warmth of another body
and the coldness that came with the end of the night
when the lights went out and we realized
that for all our arcade prizes and sandy kisses
we were still alone.