The door pushes back with a soft groan,
and the air is sugared brine,
half bakery, half tidepool.

Glass lamps shaped like jellyfish hang above,

their glow steady, not quite natural.

The menu glints in chalk dust,

part joke, part warning,

a dare scrawled in sugar.

House Specialties — Today Only:

Seaweed & Salted Caramel Ripple -

kelp flakes tangled into sticky sweetness.

Beetroot & Black Garlic Glazed -

a purple-red bite with a shadow of earth.

Turmeric Pineapple Fire Ring -

golden heat meeting citrus sting.

Lavender Pickle Surprise -

floral calm ambushed by brine.

Sardine & Lemon Zest Cruller -

ocean breeze with a citrus slap.

Charcoal & Hibiscus Swirl -

ash-black dough bleeding crimson bloom.

Avocado & Wasabi Glazed Twist -

creamy green mellow, then the nose-burn.

Rosemary Grapefruit Crunch -

bitter pith under sharp pine needles.

Miso Maple Bar -

savory umami wrapped in tree sugar.

Dandelion Honey Puff -

a meadow fried into golden fluff.

Pumpkin Kimchi Knot -

spicy funk bound in autumn orange.

Cactus Pear & Chili Powder Jelly-Fill -

sweet desert sting at the heart.

And at the end of the counter,

a glass case with a handwritten sign:

Plain donuts — sold out.

Juneau, Alaska

Ghost glove of the cosmos
stuck on the window of eternity
like a lost kite tangled in its knotted tail,
lonely semaphore of the star-drunk night.

What are you doing here?

Signaling a mail truck from Mars?

Chasing rubber checks through Northern Lights?

Playing patty-cake with the void?

Maybe you’re a glove
lost in the subway of eternity,
or the handprint of a thief
caught passing counterfeit stars.

I want to wear you—

shake the galaxies awake,

slap Saturn across its rings,

tickle the black holes

until they spit out light.

But you just hang there,

blue and stubborn,

grinning like eternity’s fool,

saying nothing 
but still mouthing off:

Here I am. Where are you?

Peaks Island, Maine

I like to think of them

finishing up their shift,

punching out of whatever clock

the sun keeps in the sky,

maybe gossiping a little

about the new patch of clover

down by the fence post.

Then, without ceremony,

they curl themselves into the purple

like a guest slipping under

a heavy quilt in an unfamiliar house,

the air full of quiet

and whatever dream bees dream.

Meanwhile, I’m here at the window,

pretending to work,

watching the day close shop—

and the bees are safe sleeping in the thistle.

Peaks Island, Maine

It was a peaceful neighborhood

until the signs started speaking—

first they warned us,

then they laughed.

Now a child runs forever—

a small joke from the underworld.

But even the joke feels holy

when the light hits right—

when the mind forgets itself

and floats like clouds

through the blue dome

of a sticker someone placed

with quiet mischief.

The sign says SLOW.

The sign says CHILDREN.

But it’s the skull that knows.

Knows the world slows down

only after.

Knows how warning

is a privilege

disguised as concern.

Is it still running—

that figure on the sign,

some version of us,

once wind-stung,

barefoot, unafraid?

We wave,

as if it matters.

I saw him once—

third-grade me, maybe,

invisible cape, skinned knees,

halfway to Mars

and all the way lost in joy.

He’s still out there,

dodging traffic

and dreaming about outer space,

or cotton candy,

or something better.

The sign still holds

the shape of a child

leaning into the forever

no one meant to promise.

We keep walking.

We obey.

We forget.

But the child,

skull full of clouds,

keeps running
into the deep,

unspoken now.

Peaks Island, Maine

Show me your original face before you were born.

                     			—Zen Koan

I walked in

because I thought I could leave

myself behind.

The trees didn’t care.

The leaves kept falling—

with or without me.

I stood by the water

and saw a face.

Not mine.

Just shape and light—

no owner.

We want to believe

in something that stays.

But even stillness

moves

if you sit long enough.

Belief, doubt—

they’re just names.

What’s real doesn’t speak.

It doesn’t need to.

I turned back

and left nothing behind.

Nothing was ever mine

to begin with.

Peaks Island, Maine

In a shed
behind a boat

a giraffe hugs

a mannequin

in lingerie.

She’s taped up

like hope

with no follow-through.

Left breast: duct tape.

Right breast: same.

They appear

to be having

a moment.

One arm raised,

one finger pointing—

at what?

Nobody knows.

Maybe God.

Maybe the fuse box.

You cannot

roller skate

in a buffalo herd.

But you can

make eye contact

with a fiberglass giraffe

and feel

understood.

Do giraffes

recognize mirth?

If so,

they hide their tell.

Too much thinking

chokes the magic.

Too much seriousness

snaps the string.

Let it be—

and the surreal settles

like a memory

of an almost familiar song.

Just look.

Don’t ask.

Sit still.

Don’t name it.

Don’t fix it.

Just—

watch.

People want meaning.

They want cause

and effect,

a punchline

with timing.

But not everything

needs to resolve.

A mannequin.

A giraffe.

Some duct tape.

And the question:

Do giraffes recognize mirth?

Or are they simply better

at not needing to?

Sense arrives late

and ruins the view.

You cannot

roller skate

in a buffalo herd.

But here,

you can listen

to plastic silence,

witness

unorthodox congeniality,

and know,

without knowing,

that stillness lives

in the unsolved.

Porter Lake, Maine

The bed sagged like a cracked raft,

smelling of rust, salt, and lost time.

The other side was hollowed out,

a dent where someone used to dream.

The air bent yellow at the edges.

A radio somewhere cracked and whined —

low country and western misery,

a voice leaking out about someone who never came home.

The floor leaned west, 
always west,

because that's where things go 
when they’re too tired to fight.

The clock on the wall had stopped 
sometime last night,

but no one noticed, 
not even the dark.

The sea dragged the dead nets, 
and the chain inside the walls, 
hummed low 
against the bones of the room.

It ran through my empty wallet,

through my cracked teeth,

through the long thin cigarettes 
burning themselves out.

It rattled whenever I breathed too hard.

The motel bible sat open on the nightstand,

a page torn loose,

a note scrawled in blue ink:

"don’t wait for me."

I tasted rust,

saw the green of rotting rope,

felt the floorboards creak 
with a tired red sadness.

White gulls circled low,
no purpose left;
their shadows vanish
into the sea’s forgetting.

I thought about standing up,
walking toward the window,
singing along 
with the sad broken radio.

I didn’t move. 
The tide had already 
taken everything.

Ocean Cay, Atlantic Ocean

Clouds move

like thoughts—

shapeless, then clear,

then gone.

The wood beneath me

leans and softens.

A crab—small, rust-red—

clicks past

without meaning.

They say

the notion of emptiness

was understood here once.

No sermon.

No symbol.

Just the tide

covering what it could.

Not loss.

Not absence.

But space

for the self

to rise—

shadow and light

together.

The sea

keeps no stories.

It lifts,

it leaves.
I sit,

and let it.

Peaks Island, Maine

She came through the lobby

in heels that sounded like secrets,

dragging a suitcase
that probably held regrets

neatly folded

next to a book of spells.

The clerk said she had

that look—
like she’d once been painted

on the side of a bomber plane,

or whispered about

in backseats and divorce papers.

They gave her Room 237,

because of course they did.

Where else would a woman like that stay

but down the hallway

that never quite ends?

She ordered champagne at midnight,

left no tip,

and signed the bill

“Love, Karma.”

Some say she rewrote dreams.

Others, that she stole them.

Mostly, she just waited—

watching time melt down the window

like candle wax.

Men dropped around her
like poker chips at a rigged table,
grinning through the gamble,
and left with their names

misspelled in the mirror.

When the flowers stopped

and the world got bored

of her perfume and promise,

she slipped into the velvet-lined box

beneath the lobby gift shop,

a mannequin saint

with sale tags on her sins

and a crucifix worn

like costume jewelry.

Now tourists lean in,

take photos,

whisper,

"Wasn’t she someone?"

And somewhere—

behind the front desk,

or in the static of the lobby jazz—

the universe clears its throat,

adjusts its tie,

and laughs,

quietly,

into its infinite hand.

Scarborough, Maine