2frank (directions)

Written for the frank writing project…launching soon, contemplated often.

there is a needle on an emotional compass. pointing away from a woman’s words. searching for her beauty.

north. clocks are ticking. days are standing still. nights are disappearing. a mother’s life slowly floats backwards. homes are thought to be there, right where we left them.

mistakes are being made. promises are unintentionally and repeatedly broken.

east. a woman on a rooftop in the city is in a red dress. sisters are refusing to be folded into boxes. friends are underestimated. men are busy understanding things in the ways that men do, simply, while we admire their hidden manerisms and impossible tears.

there are women who are silent pillars, floating westward so as not to lose the sun.

south. there are over one billion people living in conditions that destroy our scale of wonder. there is an impossible space between nations. there are individual events that the evening news attempts to string together as if they belong to the same, shrinking world.

there are frank conversations that will break our chest in two.

west. there are words that are spoken; words that are shouted; words that are kept in a shoebox on the top shelf, behind files that enlighten our commitments. there are frank moments that will lift or will move—these are the frankest rhythms that repeat as we trace our own steps. in this frank percussion we find the direction we are after.

sizzle sister.