the ruins

young lovers sucking tapioca up the straws. the bees taking apart coastal buckwheat strand by strand. want to be influencers snapping photos at a high place by the old Cliff House. a tall athletic girl running in circles in her lululemons. a thousand broken steps surround what was. a black and white memory of the Sutro Baths. we walk out on the rocks and drape our clumsy bodies over them, staring at the big one. angling pelicans. ptarmigans. laughing gulls. skimmers in perfect lines a touch above. all is calm and nonviolent like, when the sea reaches suddenly in, grabs and pulls us under.

#katyamills

the living daylights

out of bars

out of cars

they got kicked

(they got scars)

out of class

been harassed

off of trains

in the head out of bed in the dark

the living daylights extinguished

off and on like an electrical short

some say

they made hard living look

lissome

#katyamills

excerpt

"I watched over my little sister of the emerald eyes, she had fallen fast asleep on the leather beside me in the back of the sweet car Freddy had brought back to life now pushed into fourth gear, the tachometer up then backed up off the redline, all the windows open for the salty sea reconditioning of hair, lungs and spirits, Bless in the shotgun looking back at us, Kell using me for a pillow, and above us the towering red of the golden gate aspiring to the heavens, as we cruised on and on, into Marin county and the break of dawn."   -- from Ame & the Tangy Energetic