Posts for June 17, 2023 (page 4)

Bonded not by birth
or blood
but by how we love.

You listen to me
hear my frusterated
battle cry.

Handle with Care
soft words
arms around my shoulders

You know what I like
gelato with chocolate chips
Starbucks on a Sunday morning

You bought me toys
because you never got them as a kid.
I appreciate that now.

You taught me how to be silly
how peaceful the road is at 2 am
how sucess isn’t the most important thing in the world.

I’ll try to repay you.
To listen to how your day was
to ask the thoughtful questions.

But I don’t know how to repay
loving like I want to be loved.
But with a prayer I’ll try.

She wakes, restless, moans.  I lean in to give
another pain pill–my shift now let me out

of this bed! Your Dad will come get me. He rode
in the ambulance with me, all the way!

I wait, weigh whether to play along
“He passed away, Mom, four years ago.”

I didn’t know that. How? In his sleep?
“Had fluid in his lungs. Don’t think he

wanted to go back home to be an invalid.”
I’m sorry to hear. I loved him you know

This, after years of hearing vitriolic rants
about him, spewed from her pinched lips.

“I know. He loved you so much. Truth is,
he never said a bad word about you to me.”

It looks like all my family is just about gone
“You have twelve grandkids and fifteen great-

grandkids. Draw strength from them.” I show her
the onesie I’d knit for my newest grandchild, June,

 “Thank you for teaching me to knit, sew, crochet.” 
You’re welcome. I like Tom. She always likes my men.

I like big men Her cough pulls phlegm deep from COPD
lungs, spit into tissues. We hand-feed her now

like the new baby girl in our family, sharing her nickname,
June Bug, both spoon fed, decades and miles apart, but

they intersect in cosmic spins, both poised for flight
into vast unknowns–home, a faint memory I don’t know

where I‘ll go after this because I don’t have a home
‘This is your home, Mother, so don’t fret.” Midday

she rests, eats well, says I’m just being a little piggy! Her grin,
a child’s “Eating makes you strong, so you can sit up

in the wheelchair, get out of bed ”But, I’m eating all your food
“We have lots of it, no worries. You can have as much

as you want.” I look closer, see her as the precious girl in the one
studio portrait Grandmother could afford, age five, a black silk

bow hugging her dark, smooth pigtails tight, and her wispy eyelashes,
hand-painted on the sepia photograph in 1938, a smile as full

as a Kentucky moon in August, the month of her birth, the month
her mother died, before the stepmother moved her to the back room

of her father’s house to sleep on a straw tick mattress on the floor,
as frigid, December winds crept through cracks of makeshift walls.

  The faucet drip, drips.
  The old kitchen clock tick, ticks,
  A night beetle clicks.

  Each muscle a brick,
  negative thoughts racing quick,
  my stomach gets sick.  

  The covers get kicked.
  The nearest light switch is flicked.
  I’m finally licked.

Were you in the Army
Noticing his high and tight, someone asked
No, he said
But my dad was

Was your dad in the Army
Noticing my veteran cap, someone asked
No, I said
But I was

If we sunk back to when the kings claimed divinity, 
lounging in gilded throne rooms, spraying perfume 
reddened by thorny roses and spilled wine, 
would you abandon your arrogance,
grasp the folly of your grandstanding?
            Would you fight them with me? 

            Because in solitude or the sea of an army, 
            I would charge against their scourge, 
            surge forward, a speck in a suit of armor,
            glinting like sunlit streams turned tsunamis, 
            would spread my offerings, my pretty sentences
            if my body fell and fainted in the face of crises. 

            Because it’s obvious how fragrances made heady 
            to hide the blood of forcibly pricked fingers
            and shattered sherry bottles should stand trial;
            still, my unbidden advice escaped my tongue
            at our last goodbye — barely a hug and
            briefly, a glance: “We are who we are,
                        but when will you become more?”

Master of my mind’s

They cluster into the retail stores like bees
at work–clustered in their family grounds
and calling to their cars like lost children:

“Where are you?” They scan the lot, squint
into the sun, arms laden with God-
knows-what: polo shirts sewn and steam-
pressed in some hidden-away factory
overseas, a diving watch–water safe, $20
on sale–its blue and glimmering 
artificial face like a vivid and synthetic shale. 

“I don’t know what to get for him,”
I hear one woman grouse by my car– “And so
I got him one of everything.” Imagine
a line of one hundred thousand bags
stretched out, a wealth of riches no one needs,
as if she had to justify her love
with all the wrapping left behind.

I want you to climb out of your brain

                            but
                                       bring echoes of every
                                                                              thing with
                                                                                              you

            because I love the colors the clouds make
                                                  when     they     dance     in
                                                                                       the
                                                                          shape
                                                                   of
                                                                       you.

I.

I hate having a body.

Headaches dull my days.

I want to rip out

all this facial hair.

I want real breasts.

I hate how rough

my legs look

because I can’t stop

scratching them.

I wish I was coordinated enough

to wear contacts.

I want to be thinner.

I want a body

that can be

whatever I want it to be

whenever.

I want to have  a pussy

without giving up my cock.

I want to be female

but maybe still

be male

on the odd occasion.

I thought

I was going to

look like

Julia Roberts

someday.

And someday isn’t coming.

II.

I love looking into the mirror

and seeing the girl

that I feel like.

I love the magic of makeup

even though I am

still learning it.

I love dancing in a dress.

I love my curly, feminine hair.

I love my girlish giggle.

I love my fashion sense.

I love wearing skirts.

I love listening to girly pop.

I love that feeling of rightness

when I’m in my own skin.

I love the stolen time

when I can be my true self.

I love who I am alone

and in safe spaces

without projections

or rejection

or judgment.

I love the girl

who has held on

for over a decade,

patiently waiting

for the life I am building her.

Two strangers locked in stares
Hearts entwined in golden thread
Love creeps through the window