There was a rainbow in the sky today
a pleasant surprise
(as some might say)
that broke up all the grey
It didn’t last long
a minute- no more
but it caught my eye
and held it
The simple thought of you
caused me to look away
wishing for your presence
And when I looked to the sky
to see it once more
like you
the rainbow
was gone
Open the door. Group chat with the girls.
Fix the leak coming from the busted wall.
Sound of music: flex spending money
from insurance and two week cash advance.
Lunch break. The rainclouds doming
over the weekend. Check email.
Phone’s broke. The password, forgotten.
Wait for the evening, net-muggy. Plan.
Watching Windows
Magnolia, the dark
Consistent perfumes that bled
When I first saw you
the color of a fox in winter, the darkened woods outside your door alive with owls and ravens, you make the townsfolk nervous when you come to market, talking to the cat perched on your shoulder as you shop for herbs and roots they think will turn their sons to frogs or their husbands to rodents, leaving me to be your one enchanted love. Their caution is my gain.
You have sucker punched me in the gut
and choked me with my own tears.
You have straddled my chest in the middle of the night
to squeeze the breath from my lungs.
You have dragged me to dark places,
to the dirt-rimmed lip of the grave,
forced my head down
and filled my eyes with
nothingness.
And still, you aren’t done.
Like Grendel’s mother,
you are raging toward me now.
No one can stand watch with me.
Time is no ally.
I am defenseless
waiting for your wrath to return.
First there was Tiger Tom,
brought home by dad,
suckered in by eating fish scraps
off the boat.
Sophie his mate
(the neighbor Pat’s cat)
gifted us numerous liters
inside the barn.
Tiny and Tigger,
Cutie Pie & Uggie (Ugly)
spawn of spawn,
endless lineage.
College cats
one with no name,
jumped from a car window
on a journey back home.
He was okay,
taken in by Christians
coming out of church.
Then my dear Pixie,
who chose my lap
at the shelter,
destined for home.
Phobe was my man’s.
She lasted 20 years
to be flattened 1 day.
The grey one was Monkey,
Mr. Man, or Monk, who
ran sideways, tail curled.
Nya de Kitty, rescued from hell
pees in odd places,
yowls if disturbed.
Finally Mordecai,
so civilized
he drinks from a glass,
yet mischievous, demoted,
out on his furry ass.
Compulsively I make trays of ice,
keep piling the clouded cubes
into a freezer bin until there are hundreds.
To me they are welcoming & approachable,
suggest a blizzard of plenty like when late
cherry blossoms scatter & carpet
the city park. Every time I open
the freezer I’m ice-rich. It’s a certain
kind of greed. My husband asks why
I’m hoarding ice & I can’t answer. Clearly
I am indulgent & it’s only getting worse.
I’m up again tonight to covet the chilly
squares. I stir them with my cold, blue hands.
Pass you in the break room
pass you in the hall,
there’s not a time we cross paths
that I don’t know your there.
Lovely and so sweet
you get my heart to yearning,
though I try to keep my eyes ahead
a glance cannot be helped.
But my problem is the setting
and the life that’s left me here.
A mentality of success
is too powerful a drive.
My mind is a one track
that cannot help assuming
others are just like me
so I best not be a distraction.
It’s not that I don’t want to talk,
I just can’t talk to you
for the focus I know will not break
even when I’m trying not to care.
I detest ideas of missing you
because the job has crushed us
but when the job becomes your sole success,
you become the job.
Anywhere else we might have been friends
talking without responibility’s nag,
or you’d be a face I long for once
from the confines of obscurity.
As of now, you’re an every day sight
in the break room, in the hall
where we pass each other in silence,
broken by the world that brought us together.
