by on
Aladdin 1992

i.
i had a dream
there were polaroids of us.
developing sunken
and strewn across
my pink comforter.

(a soft cosmos.)

i saw how happy we were,
you tall and in your glasses,
arms around me and hunched
to envelope your frame
…around mine.

behold; my real smile.
not where my controlled lips
stiff; cover my gum line,
to feign the sort of “elationship”
i experienced only when
we would speak…


ii.
shut the curtains.
i don’t even want
the sun to filter in
through the fabric
& change the tone
of my pale skin.

i want to stay the same,
i want to be exactly as i was
the day you reached across,
felt me, and i touched you.
 

iii.
i hope to hold our whole world
and hand it to you in my palm.

(even if mine crumbles.)

Atlas bent & crippled
i am devoted to
holding you up.
i will not shrug.

(oh, i must move on)


iv.
(no.) cleanse my home
w. white sage & string
along my bedpost
bewitched apples cored.
finally biting into you
was like biting into
an apple that hid a star.


and *omitted,
how i adore stars.
i lose sleep
surrounded by them,
counting them, staring
into mirror telescopes
until my eyes burn
and my vision blurs.


i will hold you
in my mind’s eye
forever. i will dedicate
and devote every motion
onward towards the path
which leads back to you.
 

(even if it feels eerily, like eights.)


(infinity.) behold infinity
within the iris of your
half-m∞n eyes smiling
back in a beam.


v.
i’ll race time to the future,
at the far end of our solar system.
first steps cracking untouched
crust of Pluto’s nitrogen snow, 
at the  center of her heart-
shaped crater. look back into
space as the glim of Earth
is licked (–flickers)

(the moment of our first kiss.)

like these memories, no more
than a spectacle, a twinkle, in the
otherwise steady shine of Earth
bathed in our Sun’s overcast light.
filtered and shrunk by distance and
gravity as a star–finally, a star
i had never gleaned before. (oh!)
how fortune smiles upon all…


(who behold you, *omitted.) –six pm

*revised 2021

Paige Six | 2019

by on

*
if

you

must go

take the moon

and the stars with you

everything i love is distant

and out of reach–there is nothing out there for me now –six pm

(slightly different from my poem *9.28.19 —

this was totally unintentional,

serendipity is wild!)

Happy Pi. Day!

Happy Birthday Einstein!

And I hope you had a pie. (We had pizza)

*six pm | 2019

by on
Avatar the Last Airbender 2005-2008

  ⁕                                                                    .

                                                                                              *

∗

•                                   

                                                                         .

∗                                                                                   ⁕



Stars crossed the moment our eyes met, but at this hour when the sun set herself upon the meridian, casting us both aglow in gold each other’s gazes are all we two did behold. It was six o’ clock P.M. and Autumn had set the air to chill. Wind-span of air from the Earth’s lungs rustled the golden leaves mimicking the distinct sound of a deep and endless ocean. He was truly remarkable, 6’3 and tanned like wheat with honey brown eyes and thick curly black hair faded high and tight. He smiled at me brightly, and I did my best to breeze past him, but truth-be-told he’d simply rendered me speechless. I don’t believe before that moment I’d believed in first sight love, even then I don’t think I understood what had just begun. In that moment I only hoped that if no one ever chased me down for a second chance again, that this man would. And he did. -six pm

  ⁕                                                                    .

                                                                                              *

∗

•                                   

                                                                         .

∗                                                                                   ⁕

by on
The Simpsons 1989-2020

° .

today i purchased einstein theories in hard back. no. i did not need another copy but my first three are already full of poetry in the margins and in between spaces. my husband reminds me of a beau tiful black hole the way his darkness glistens. i love him. he’s done some shady things; he is my her o. i thank him for his service. he thanks me for loving all the parts of him that are broken; he thanks me for allowing him to lick my places that tas te like good woman. sometimes; i want to wash his eyes of all the slaughter he saw in war; no. i want to sink into his gravity and know more. no. i want to unwrinkle time tidy like his dress blues that a freak fire burned. i want to travel back in time and tie together pinky fingers w. ribbons he has earned. i am not a genius. no. but i know the difference between general and special relativity: he and me; we’re something especially special. our love affair is a continuum…     -six pm


six pm | 2019

by on
Photo: Paige Six | April 2020

Before the Autumn reaps, don’t you believe that tree’s leaves would enjoy knowing the feeling of reaching and holding another’s branches? All the while these trees cannot conceive of such things.

I like to envision the brain of a dandelion as it tenderly caresses the faces of other dandelions. Before the wind sweeps away with their heads spreading each one’s likeness across distant lands. I bet they’d hold on to one another, these seeds, to the seeds of their lovers hoping to exist together upon the reaches of greener grass.

It’s not unlike me to marvel at what a miracle consciousness is. How lucky we are to share it despite all of its pains. All the while these dandelions might never see their own likenesses the way I can divine myself reflected back in my child’s smiling eyes. It’s such a blessing to conceive of such things. -six pm | *when I think of Julia



Paige Six | 2021

by on

  ⁕                                                                    .

                                                                                              *

∗

•                                   

                                                                         .

∗                                                                                   ⁕

⁞

for you i am a tequila sunrise;

for you i am heartbeat panging

through the pages

of schoolgirl crush notebook.

kissing crux of neck bone crest collar,

soft and warm as morning bread.

                                                       .                                 •

*                             .

                                                  ⁕

you are at least 6′ tall.

i blink.

i am sure.                                    ⊹

i say: starlight you are sunshine                         .

and i love you like buttercups.

i write you sonnets and give you heartbeat

gift wrapped in its parchment.                                                   *

             .                                      .                         

*                                   ⋆

                                                               *

you grow 10′ taller.

you are menace and

i am mouse.

i tell you i am falling from your eyelash.

you grow larger. 20′ tall now.

13 miles you crest everest.                                 .

i go to hold your hand but i’m a lonely golden pebble.

you ask the clouds a favor;                             .                        

to blow their wind and push you away.

                                    .                                                  º             *

 *                                                              *

                             ⊹

you are leaving.

i will stay.

i tell you i need you.

i feel nothing.

i am in the stratosphere; floating                        .

i am a helium balloon and you are shrinking.

                               º

*                                                             *

you are dusking sunset through bleary eye slits              .

and it is getting cold here.

star sparkle my vision sun sinking             .

backlit dropping…*

                             *            

                                                   *

you are

… my lover?                                                                                    ⊹

you are                   º

…my height now.                                               •

no.                                           .                                                   .

you are smaller.

you are sprawling pacific ocean.                   *

whole life ahead of you.

*                            .

                                                     º

i am drifting alone.

i still love you.

you are orange melodrama,                    .    ·

you are marmalade paintings on still-life ocean surface.

you are the west and i am gone.              *

                                    · •                .

*

                                 .                                             *

every constellation becomes a new map evolving

and i am only marrow.

you can see right through me.                        ⊹

i am an open book and you are diary entry.

startling the starlings with my stories.

i regale earth’s sucking mud,                        .                 ∗

her jewel weeds, dandelion wish clouds,

and the way you kept together everything.

∗                             .                                    ⊹

                           ⁕

            .                                            •

furloughed like an arrow.

you sentenced me to no-thing.                                      º

bone marrow bow flung me                                                                              .

with the bow crafted of my own heart strings.

sorry. i couldn’t make it to the moon by morning.                                   ⁕

i hope the darkness wasn’t so bad.

i hope you missed me.  –six pm | *furloughed

   ⁕                                                                                 .

                     *

                                                            ∗

                                                                               •

                             .

∗                                                                          

                                                               ⁕

by on

*

∗

⋆

Avatar the Last Airbender | 2005-2008

⋱

When cast upon the barren terrain of loneliness I’ve crafted many castles and shrines to give shape to this flat land. Worshiping Him who merely crossed but did not root.


Every smirk; a sunrise scattering blue light and casting a golden warmth upon my empty sand. I was a sponge; I absorbed every ray of His light and when His star set, I began to pray facing West. I was left alone in the dark with shadows and shapes of the towers looming unoccupied.


To preoccupy myself from the daunting empty and the always alone I painted murals and gilded each shrine with gold. I went hungry to leave rice cakes and fruits at His altar— hoping to lure Him into the home I’d created and love me again for the art I’d devoted to His likenesses and name.


Each note upon which I’d wrote became a poem, became a notebook, became a grimoire full of morbid canticles. Much like space my loneliness spreads infinitely, as vibration and blue songs, as if willing its way towards forever seeking the edge and an end.


Every red candle burned brightly not to satiate the darkness; but as prayers to cast beacons across the liquid night and beckon back His ghostly glow.


If He’d rose again and become my sun, daring only I stare into His deadly radiation I’d have gladly looked boldly until falling blind; so blindly did I seek to feel the embrace of love when I was empty and there was none. –six pm

∗six pm | *holy ghost

by on
Aladdin 1992

Dear 6,

     I write you to allow myself closure. The truth I’ve never revealed to you is how after years of atheism and searching for answers it was only upon meeting you that I almost believed in God.

     I’d spent my young years with my nose to the grindstone and had very little time for fun and frolic. I have always been restless, a wild-child in my soul diving into fiction to suppress these desires. I’d sacrificed education for hourly wages necessary to keep the roof over my head. I exposed these truths to you in shame to be comforted by the thick tusk of your shoulder.

      The musk of your natural body still intoxicates my senses. The deep sienna of your skin against the champagne color of my wrists trembling as you placed upon its thin wafer layer a first kiss. Where did it all go wrong? Was it how our bodies didn’t quite fit the way our minds melted like wax and our conversation flowed like wine? The awkward communion of the first sacrament of our union…

     This I won’t forget: your deception and how its reveal decapitated the holy body of our bond at the slender curve of its neck.

     There are two instances in my life that are traumatic blessings: the birth of my child at the age of 18 and the loss of you at 28. To the other side of this continent you reside with a whole fraction of my soul. I write you this letter in hopes you might know. But I send nothing to you, our communication will remain cold.

Save you discover this letters, until which no bars will I hold.

Yours,

3.14

*For him whose name meaning is heart, and the associated lucky number is 6.

*six pm | 2021 {notes on poems