Barefoot Ink

Sometimes I write just to write.

I trickle ink onto my fingernail

And flick it onto a page.

Truth per square inch? No,

Just a girl playing clumsily

With her favorite shapes. Ay Bee See.

Sounds are delightful. Delight, light, delicious, pernicious,

Hop-scotch and bandaids,

The crackle of the ice-cream truck’s speakers,

The wheeze of trampoline springs.

Buckets in the driveway,

Soap bubbles tickling,

Making our legs as bearded as our father’s chin

And not making the car clean.

Hoses

Geraniums

Mud Pies

Mud Castles

Mud Soup

We wrap our stories around common words.

Applesauce - my brother’s face,

Salt - barefoot Jersey summers.

Maybe the words of this poem

Are only mine.

My words taste like vanilla and black licorice to me,

they taste like carpets and vacuum dust to you,

but as I tell my story,

maybe I’ll accidentally stumble

upon yours.

Maybe that’s the point of writing,

to jumble up enough words that whole lives open up

with exclamation points.

(And with maybe an aftertaste

of licorice.)

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