I live in a house which is painted light green
my mother and father live here as well
my father walks from room to room
and complains that our light green house is a mess
my mother stands with her hands on her hips
looks around and says one of these days
and of all the rooms in our light green home
mine is the worst
still a disaster even after I clean it
but I’m happiest there amid all the clutter
and when it comes time
I don’t want to die in some bright sterile place
where strangers will smile and won’t say to my face
what a mess I have made of myself and my life
I want to die with old beads in the carpet
dust an inch thick
and page after page of poems I have written
I want to go in my light green home
where I close my eyes
and say
one of these days.

I'm on my hands and knees, looking at the strange accretion of living growths that have begun to sprout from the ground in the shade around the base of a strange black boulder the size of my pickup truck. The boulder is the largest of several in a small clearing in what I think of as the jungle. The growths, almost like ferns but somehow plump and wet like fungus, are pinky-orange and sit entirely within the drip-line surrounding the tiny overhang of the boulder

Frankie Wells.

Compared to how she looked in her senior graduation photos you wouldn’t have glanced twice at her during junior high. Freshman year either for that matter.

She wasn’t particularly pretty back then and nothing about her would have caught your eye unless you were a junior high boy who had already taken English in Ms Somers' class and actually read the book with her picture on the cover; you might have thought she looked like Anne Frank with kinda big titties.

You