flames of memory
engulf free breakfast
my stand-in mom
storyteller pranster Rock of Gibraltar presence
in my life smart ascending feminist you
will never know how many times
your unfaltering acceptance grabbed
my hand and hauled me up from the cliff
even from a distance you are my north star
I hear your smile feel your eyes tell me
it’s okay I’m here I’ll always be here
in the throes of dementia
you still hug me close pat my back while
I inhabit your world of lost memory
and meet you in each moment
Already slow. No longer quick.
Already silent like stars.
Already dust. Eyes without fire.
Not just sleeping. In repose.
Under the dirt. Up in smoke.
In that great gettin’ up morning.
Beyond the clouds. Particles
on the wind. Already relic.
Roadside shrine with a name.
Already wings. Already aboard
that gospel train. Already down
in the river. Already on the ferry.
One day here. Next day home.
Matter, then energy again.
Hair like a Japanese Maple.
Tending to the garden while she’s able.
Planted lilies with love and care,
knowing she won’t always be there,
To protect the Japanese Maple.
Rose bushes grow their thorns
while she watches them whether the storm.
The hostas died,
not a tear she cried,
She had to water the Japanese Maple.
Pumpkins seeds from last October
waiting till the winter’s over.
Now ready to plant,
as she says her chant,
taking the role of consoler.
She loved that Japanese Maple.
In the rain and dark, we drove close to each other,
illuminated by dashboards and taillights, clutching
our wheels–eyes fixed ahead on the long path home.
It wasn’t til we’d passed the storm, south and east,
where the hills I love cut the thunderhead down.
A Meal for the Sick
A tray with a vased plastic flower and a get-well card by a paper napkin holds barely warm consommé and
melting green Jell-O.
He tries the dry toast dipped in weak tea and sighs, remembering bratwurst with sauerkraut,
apple strudel and cream, brandy poured into darkly brewed coffee.
The days of spice and spirit gone, dusty grime on the plastic flower
befits the meal.
The greeting card unsigned, unread–
the napkin a crumpled handkerchief
absorbing a consommé sea
The sick-hungry diner has finished.
in me hunger cuts
like a closed hand
through water. i try
and dissolve it,
gulping my bottle
dry. i’ve waited
thirteen hours now
for your small blue
circle, confirmation
of my worth. come morning
i will turn off my phone,
& not search for your name,
or his, or his. i will instead
brew coffee, watch
its slow black drip.
i will instead sit
with the animal
of my stomach,
learn its pattern
of breathing.
what shapes its want.
what makes it scream.
*Trigger Warning: Violence, Blood, Classrooms, Secondhand Trauma*
The red remains
staining linoleum, off-white brick.
Someone had left
solvents, a mop, Clorox
wipes, after cleaning
half an hour.
Staff were gone.
Students were gone.
I remained and kept
finding more. Spots,
spatter
on desks, in chairs, in cracks
where walls met floor,
in topographical anomalies
of brick—high, too high
up the wall. I remained
and kept
cleaning.
The kids were gone, all
the kids, including
the two who had erupted
into violence.
I was okay. I felt okay.
None of the shakes that follow
an emergency, the Doppler Effect
of time stretching, like un/breaking
taffy, the release and withdraw
of hormones, until it’s over and then,
only then, the trembling.
I was okay.
The next day, I was okay
and slept
five hours in the middle
of the day.
The next Monday, I slipped
back into the classroom.
Sat at my desk. Silence.
I was okay. Everything
was clean. Ordered.
I was okay.
I was okay
and shaking.
Without warning a song flashes
in the dark, after night, before light.
The day wants to begin
but my dreams won’t let it in.
A song from somewhere not seen,
unhurried like silence
which is not its opposite,
more like its completion,
music and silence
both antonyms of noise.
From some sky opening up,
the music of cooling rain lands, lingers,
like a memory out of reach,
that the sea, upon waking, calls back
as it pulls the light from stars into itself.
I hear it now as sunlight flies
through the window. Music alive
like lightning, like belief, just before
it vanishes and turns to pain.
The shoes she wore were white
real leather
character shoes
paid for by her daddy
with money that should have gone toward bills
so she could be a cast member
in the high school musical
three years ago.
She did not expect
her classmate,
a lead in the musical,
now a Sigma K home for the weekend,
to show up to Sunday School that morning
or she wouldn’t have worn them.
But, there she was,
in all her my-daddy-owns-cattle glory.
And, when they were asked
to bow their heads in prayer,
she watched her
glance down at the white shoes
and up to meet her eyes
with a smirk.
She bowed her head,
squinching hot tears behind her eyelids,
and tucked her feet as far as she could
under the folding chair,
in the act of prayer.
