loose threads

a smattering of things

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Jo McCrory is a writer and artist living in northern California.

  • day 26/30

    i our childhoods intertwine like the laces of our untied sneakers at the door. our first kiss comes on a sticky summer afternoon, insects buzzing in the tall grass waving around us. your lips are chapped and hot and taste like an orange popsicle. at fifteen, you call my freckles the sun’s confetti and count every single one on my body as the summer sun sinks heavy below the horizon. we become nuclear and normal, we tuck those children from our past into the archives of our hearts, bringing them out late at night, when the crickets and bullfrogs serenade us through the open windows.
    ii twin wildfires flaming out of control the whirlwind of danger pressed close to love your teeth sink into the soft of my thighs i carve crescent moons into your ribs until you bleed our love is a red flag warning we ignore, our embers cracking open to birth the stars that eventually crash down to earth to destroy this imperfect love
    iii linens flap in a gentle mountain breeze carrying your sound to the clothesline where i gather the freshly dyed and dried cloth; i bury my nose in the soft fabric let the tears come as i breathe in the smell of my joy you built this home with your two hands made sure we could chase the sun through every room made sure the warmth hugged your tenor with room for us to spread our individual wings we spend our sunset dancing barefoot on paint splattered floors, we count the silver in each other’s hair and fall asleep to our reverberations humming through every beam
    triptych
    after “if i had three lives” by sarah russell

    iii
    linens flap in a gentle mountain breeze
    carrying your sound to the clothesline
    where i gather the freshly dyed and dried cloth;
    i bury my nose in the soft fabric
    let the tears come as i breathe in
    the smell of my joy

    you built this home with your two hands
    made sure we could chase the sun
    through every room
    made sure the warmth hugged your tenor
    with room for us to spread our individual wings

    we spend our sunset dancing barefoot 
    on paint splattered floors,
    we count the silver in each other’s hair
    and fall asleep to our reverberations
    humming through every beam

    -rjm

  • day 25/30

    i haven’t tasted enough seen enough smelled enough experienced enough to call myself “poet”/ i only travel through photographs other people took, and if you chipped at my surface for long enough, you would break through to my dark, hollow insides befouled with decay that stings the nostrils and lodges in the brain for days and weeks / regrets pile up, walking through them is like sinking into the lines on my face, why didn’t i do this? why didn’t i do that? fear is why, fear is always why, and now that i shove fear back in fear’s face, i am relieved but my eyes ache from constantly rubbing sand in them to dry the tears / your white-capped oceans churn and toss my boat but i know your depths lie calm and teeming with life, the corals of your rib cage are the tropical paradise where a cartoon fish and all his little friends live and play, and i just keep swimming, swimming through your stormy eyes because your hurricanes are tamer than my wildfires / how much of my experience is lived and how much of it is the product of a mind that can never shut itself completely off? -rjm
    i haven’t tasted enough seen enough smelled enough experienced enough to call myself “poet”/ i only travel through photographs other people took, and if you chipped at my surface for long enough, you would break through to my dark, hollow insides befouled with decay that stings the nostrils and lodges in the brain for days and weeks / regrets pile up, walking through them is like sinking into the lines on my face, why didn’t i do this? why didn’t i do that? fear is why, fear is always why, and now that i shove fear back in fear’s face, i am relieved but my eyes ache from constantly rubbing sand in them to dry the tears / your white-capped oceans churn and toss my boat but i know your depths lie calm and teeming with life, the corals of your rib cage are the tropical paradise where a cartoon fish and all his little friends live and play, and i just keep swimming, swimming through your stormy eyes because your hurricanes are tamer than my wildfires / how much of my experience is lived and how much of it is the product of a mind that can never shut itself completely off?

    -rjm