Posts for June 11, 2023

I’m hungry for a house full
of hi Mom hugs and fleet kisses,
catching up over slow glasses of red
wine tart with dry humor

Many hands making fast work
in the cramped kitchen, voices
raised above the clamoring of pans
with remember when’s, inside jokes,

a sprinkle of bickering for spice,
our bellies simmering with laughter
that bubbles up and overflows,
making a meal together that fills me 

with richness to savor long after
the front door shuts behind them
and the last car pulls away.

Sometimes Spring
lasts exactly one bloom —
Peony

Distraction,
distraction is all this is, I feel,
as the slimey soap slides all over my fingers
daring to drop off the the plastic bubble wand set
as wasted liquid onto the concrete. The little bags
of goo in my head struggle to switch focus between
the blaring setting sun just behind him, the neon magic-maker
that I’m holding, and the jovial chaos in the in-between.
I want to hear the unknowingness in his laugh as I wave my arm
back and forth to capture nothing from something, to create
the most fragile of things, joy, but, they both elude me. Instead,
I think of all the things I think that I think that I should say,
my mind spun up by some cliche social media dictum: “the person
you are now is the person you would have felt safe with as a kid.”
A difference in time, but the same age, he and I, when we lose a grandmother,
and the kid in me then feels for the adult he may become. Will he be
riddled with guilt as the trimming hand of time snips memory thin,
consuming what once was so visceral? In my mind, in the absence
of any detail about her, I sit, alone in my childhood bedroom, and
realize that when I had so few questions but so many feelings,
I did anything to keep from letting them out, from letting them
through. Will my silence now be the snake that eats itself, or
will my prying further close the clamshell? Is there even the pearl of grief
at all, or was he spared this cursed gift? Before I have the  time
to answer, his cacophany redirects me to the glistening trap I’ve managed
to produce, a globular existence that floats upward on the wind. Watching him
watch its haphazard choreography, longing for the moment of its bursting,
yet anxious that it may hold together just a little longer, I realize
the distract feeling is mine, alone.

Is that deep ache

Afternoon glow percolates gauzy leaves, limning my stroll with gold. 
As I walk in simmering heat, I wonder at the sun’s largesse.  Sunlight could frolic
all day above green canopies, never having to touch soiled
earth or trip over uneven sidewalks, yet she bounces between boughs to scatter ultraviolet
starlight across my cheeks, resolute in her generosity.  She will
dive into writhing oceans, wobble across muddy
puddles, seep through drawn curtains, peek through storm
clouds if only for an passing smile or an upturned eye.  Gifting
her light to each of us, she offers a brilliant joy we can’t help but share.

I forget if it was Tennessee Williams

or F. Scott Fitzgerald

who was crying in the cab

(or was it a limo?)

after their first big success,

feeling they’d never surpass it.

I think about

my fear of success

and my fear

of being seen

and how they have stopped me

from taking myself seriously

as a writer,

from ever trying to publish

or even finish anything

significant.

Because then someone might actually

read it.

Not someone.

Everyone.

And God knows

how important

the opinions

of everyone

I’ve ever known

are,

especially

old classmates

or people I knew from church

who haven’t been in my life

for years.

I put so much pressure

on my writing

to save me,

placing all of my self esteem

in some future success,

some novel

or play

or screenplay

that will

make me famous

and rich

enough

to quit the family business

and therefore

free.

It’s cruel

what I put myself through.

The older I get,

the less time I have,

the more behind I feel,

the bigger a hit

my first published work has to be,

literally life-changing.

Which is worse:

a success too early in life

or too late?

Lightning bugs sparkle 
In my childhood memories 
Natural tree lights.

KW 6/11/23

As we laid in the grass,
amongst cricket chirps
and lightning bugs,
the moon was so bright
that you were outlined
(ethereal and glowing)
and even your
shadowed eyes spoke
of magic.

10: Tears of the Kingdom (Nintendo)

i don’t own a Switch and

          (some of us grew up on off-brand coupons

          and never grew out of them even as our

          wallets have grown            wider

          so content ourselves with what falls cheaply

          into our ginger mitts

          the way my cat prefers

          bottle caps and castoff cough drop

          to the fancy string toys on offer)

          (the day my brother and i got an N64 is an etching

          worn softer than any Christmas in my mind)

          (the first time i held an Xbox controller was in the

          back of your dad’s house behind the oscar fish

          my fingers straining just to keep the thing in my grip)

you

for one are so far away that the hallways and the walls between us

have grown          so much          wider

it’s bridges and routes and cities i must surmount

just to sit and watch you

(i remember how you hid the disc when i inched too close to catching you up, and i knew you so completely, so everything yet could comprehend you about as well as i could when we were seven and you hurt my feelings for the day) (and another time when you watched me playing though i don’t even remember if you backseat drove the whole ordeal or were hone-focus quiet as i was until the boss was dead, just that you huddled over the screen and my hands the way my own eyes did) (or when we very small, glitter-eyed at songs and swords and shiny rocks)

on a couch where your husband nervously suggests i must

be bored

come all this way to do nothing

come on now how can you say that this is nothing?