i build myself a deep nest. collect kindling, fiberglass strings, scraps of priceless tinder gathered like matches, photographs and dead grass. newspaper clippings and countless volumes of evergreen stored on bookcases that might as well be cedar branches. i live in a dry summer. postcards line the wall. ships sailing, trips without my echo, reminders that now i may never leave this place, at least not for a long time, too long to make sense of where the time has gone, or how my ticket, that tiny twig, was lost and how you (at the last moment) caught your breath and the scene shifted: plumes of smoke change their course, chasing the ghost of something beautiful. it is easy to love what you do when what you do is pretend. we avoid using the word burn. i have copies of the letters iíve sent, and the ones i havenít. i have an empty cigarette pack wearing a hand drawn map i have napkins with haikus i have a penchant for glowing embers. i have a bad habit of saving dry leaves like sawdust in every corner of the room and studying how to start fires.
construction/paper
courtney marie is a writer and artist based in Denton, Texas. she enjoys working with text as an art medium and performance object. she is the co-founder and director of Spiderweb Salon, a Denton-based literary, performance, and artist collective now six years running. As a recent finalist for the Lorien Prize, courtney marie’s first chapbook, don’t get your hopes up, was recently released in a joint chapbook through Thoughtcrime Press with her dear moonsister Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi. she lives with two cats and writes a lot of letters.
photo credit: Dallas-based photographer Leah Jones