A prose poem in list

1.
ONE day that doesn't require anything from anyone. 
2.
Just one day to sit in a pool, stare up at the sky, read a book, stick my hands in soil. 
3.
Stick my toes in sand. 
4. 
Daydream. count clouds. paint, draw, doodle. 
5. 
Make cookies that no one but me will eat. Eat half the dough and throw the rest in the freezer for a rainy day.
6.
Jump on a trampoline, skip through the park, jump rope.
7.
 Sit quietly for an hour in my backyard doing absolutely nothing but drinking iced tea and looking at my toes next to the grass. 
8.
Watch grass grow. 
9.
Pick flowers and then pick the petals off one by one.
10.
Drink hot tea and imagine the possibilities in the tea leaves. 
11.
Bake bread, get my fingers in the dough, squish them around. 
12.
Let someone else clean up the dishes. 
13. 
Watch movies and eat candy until I feel sick to my stomach. 
14.
Sit in a paddling pool in the backyard and watch bees. 
15.
Quiet the loud in my mind. 
16.
Quiet the fear. 
17.
Quell the anxiety that encroaches when I have no freedom of thought.

What does it mean to be the sky?

You are the sky.

Everything else – it’s just the weather.

Today I am experiencing a storm
inside the skies are blustery and dark and tumultuous
even though the sun is shining outside, as it must always do in 
Phoenix in June.
Surprisingly, 
I have been living under this bright sun, and so
thankful to be there, for so many months, 
I had almost forgotten what it was like

to have my sky darken, 
the clouds pass over
for no apparent reason
other than a shift in the air pressure
or a butterfly flapping its wings in Cuba.

Much like weather, 
my mood can darken with a small twist, a thoughtless word spoken by
my girlfriend or a thought that passes through my head uninvited.

Living at the whims of my own emotions
is never
a day at the ball park

especially when the night is long and 
I only sleep for 3 hours and
when i do sleep the dreams are full of 
random wild children and plastic wagons being pushed into a 
blue clear sea, only to find that when i land with a splash in the water i am holding my favorite book
above my head, trying to save it. What would 
Freud say about that dream? What would you say?

This week I cut off a piece of my finger.
This is not a metaphor, I actually did cut it off
by mistake, in the kitchen on Sunday while
making dinner for my kids and my girl.

I feel like a part of me was left behind on that cutting board
but in fact, it was wrapped in a plastic bag, packed in ice
toted to the E.R. and then placed in the 
medical waste receptacle, because it could not be reattached.