Good Morning. I Am Here.

The smell of the orange fills the room and I am suddenly covered in mud, in sand,

in bones and bits of trees growing from my limbs.

If I stand still long enough will I turn stiff and timber-like?

Will a bird land on me and think I am home to him?

The sunset sucks the juice from the orange and the blueberries

so that when I chew I taste nothing but the dirt.

That’s where I will end up anyway - brown and yellow adjacent to one another

in the earth, in the sand, in the stranger’s deadened eyes

as I pass by pretending not to notice

but noticing enough that it bothers me to my core.

This is why I love convertibles and classical music with the windows rolled down.

The leaves may fall and the wind may blow but my soul can rise up like a phoenix from the ashes and fly free into the blues and the yellows and the sunshine again only to scream at the top of my lungs:

“Good Morning. I am here.”