allowances

today i spent

$14 on poetry and 

$17 on stones which

may or may not help me

with anything.

when i was 8, i would

sometimes swim

with ankles twined

pretending to be a mermaid

in the cool blue obsidian 

bucket of our

apartment complex pool.

i hoped that if i stayed long enough

if no one was looking

if my mother forgot her watch

forgot herself to wine-coolers and adult conversation

if the sun was going down and

the pink shafts of sunset firelight

sliced through the water 

at just the right angle

and the wish in my small heart was honest and true

that the change would take place 

and i would be transformed 

and i would go home to the ocean

beautiful, immortal and mythical

safe, dispite the coral

safe inside the whale of the world.

a new

blue obsidian sits

to my left on my crowded nightstand.

i'm coming home 

with a new stone each week

and praying again

for the first time in years.

i read a poem called "Zero" 

by Maggie Nelson 

and hinge myself to old hopes

for my own

"gem future."

only that isn't what she wrote

it's what i remember

or maybe just what i need-

something to reach for that isn't

"fiction."