Ironic
The year is 2020
and my vision suffers.
Dry eyes, old contacts, rough fingers –
none of that is a metaphor.
Literally, my doctor can’t fix
the problems as soon
as I create them.
It’s 2020, and I just can’t see
what I’m doing wrong.
To get to the whole
(whole is the true
is the truth)
take the woods
through to the house
of sun and moon.
“Here is one hand,
here is another.
These are the yellowed
callous and knuckle,
those are the bevels
on the jeweled ring.”
How would it look
if sun circled earth,
if someone were tall
as their own palm,
if left hand
deeded to right?
Rust little, son.
Subdue tenderness
adoration, thunder.
Baths of stars
wash earth
we are. The whole
is the true
is the truth
cannot rest.
I first fell in love with trains as a teen
babysitting second cousins. While they slept,
I closed my eyes, let the train serve as soundtrack
for scenes fabricated with a boy at school.
Twenty years my first husband and I shared
a home close to tracks, woke to echoes of great
weights slammed, clatter of boxcars, cross signal
clang, haunting horn that hangs like a noose.
Years after he died, I moved in with you,
two blocks from a train trestle.
Weekends we talked late into night
as train after train rattled windows,
pulsed our spooned bodies. Now,
you’re gone too, and I’m further away
from a train, but at night in bed,
everything shuttered, or morning stretches
in silence, winter or early spring
before leaves permeate the air,
the dreamy, faraway whistle reaches me,
propels a starry time-lapse memory.
Shaped like a fish hook,
speared and threaded
through both lips,
pinning them together,
just a chance to shut
the fuck up and listen
to the flowing waters
whispering just beneath
our skins, take notes,
learn universal truths
without mangling
the lessons with
our filthy mouths
i’ve told countless people
“dont worry, i’ve been through
this before, it only gets worse
before it gets better, then
you’ll be okay”
and i fucking lied
straight through my teeth.
theres always one ghost
that haunts you through
all the trauma and heartbreak
you’ll face throughout
your journey,
and i think the reason
i can never find peace in it all,
is because my first death
was that one ghost.
my other half, my missing piece
my best friend, my namesake
the face that clouds up every
funeral home just when her
name is read;
preceded in death by you,
when you were the one
who was supposed to outlive us all.
i was born and raised a christian
but its so hard to believe
that our all-loving father
would shut off the brightest
light in my life before i even hit
double digits.
they said it was a lesson,
a pre-fix on what life is all about,
but there’s no reason he couldn’t
have started small.
i’ve lied awake at least
6 times this week
knowing your corpse
has rotted in the ground.
and you died
11 years ago.
nothing hurts and enlightens
me more than when i go to the
next funeral and shake hands
with a stranger
who says “oh, i dont know you, but
i can guess your sue’s granddaughter?”
i always wonder if i
resemble you, or if you
stained my face
with your passing.
either way i smile, then
proceed to cry harder.
your death was the biggest heartbreak
of my life and it wasn’t even romantic.
the love of my life spit on me
and left me to die
and it still didnt hurt me the
way it hurt me when
you were taken
from me.
my grandkids
will call me granny
just because i’m taking this grief
and using it to become you.
you were taken too young
and i was scarred too young
but maybe this is what God
wanted and maybe
it was what i needed too.
i’ll live on your name
and become whatever it
was you wanted to be
before you left.
and that is how i know
i don’t know how to deal with grief,
because grieving you
has turned into who i am.
Duty is such an inelegant word
I trick open the page, every day,
penciling bread and noodles
onto the list. Take out the garbage
when it’s full.
Bears, perhaps, are made to be
Some people believe in love
This is/is not
a kind of weakness.
No business casual to launder
or Monday to dread. Instead
a chance for firsts:
Unplanned puppies frolic
on the grass. Kiddie pools proliferate.
You chalk a kitty design on the driveway,
consider a mural on the wall.
Baby sparrows hover like hummingbirds.
Paper golden angels hang in the window.
You feed the twin hens.
Our son plants sunflower seeds,
requests Grandma’s sour cream cake.
I unearth a dusty recipe box.
We inflate our bike tires.
I knit a scarf, smell the peonies,
watch crows harass
a hawk in the treetops,
fly a kite, observe robins
in the birdbath, uncover
yeast in the cupboard,
bake bread, set the table
with red tulips, linger
over conversation, play scrabble
under the swamp oak
while drinking mint juleps.
i’m sick and unsick and not sick enough to die
i’m so sick of being skin
so i want—no, demand
no hands to plant
on no thighs to fatten
and no eyes to water
no, no heart to fertilize
nor stomach to feed
nor feet to wonder
all that flesh and shit can fill a petty pit and live forever six feet
understand
this isn’t a deathwish but a ghostwish
i want to be footless and footloose
and free from all this fucking flesh
i’m tired of standing up
and of the gravity that chalks my bones up, too
when the world could be the one who has to chock up my gravestone
against the ground’s grave and greedy weight
because the world in its grey grief waits for me to fill it
so can i be a ghost already
i want to be the empty spot that the world cannot fill
