DRINK
All we have
is a small
glass
of water.
I told my second husband
that had he smoked
I would never have married him
when he smoked 3 packs of Kents,
at 42–almost died of a branch blockage,
then grew a scraggly steel beard,
recouped in their dining room,
tilting his hospital bed up and down
to amuse his four year old daughter.
Today, however,
in Kroger parking lot,
I saw a man
with caramel skin,
a red dishelved shirt, tucked out,
most buttons open, long legs
wrapped up in black denim jeans,
leaning against a rusty old truck,
waves of dark hair, a funky straw hat,
eyes just cruising up and down a blue blue sky.
Long white cigarette
in that mouth,
at an angle–
he was smoking–
so so so
sexy,
movie star sexy,
third husband sexy.
I have made
my mother the sum
of all of her mistakes,
the product of
all that she has overcome.
I want
to forgive
to forget
to forge
a path for us
to find commonality
in existing
in the same space.
I have made
my mother a failed martyr,
a combination of
circumstance and
nuclear fallout.
I want
to help
to hold
to heal
the child she
never was,
and the daughters she
could not shelter
from fate.
I have made
my mother everything
but
a mother,
but no one
taught me to be
a daughter.
It’s almost time to head to painting class
I am getting my creative juices ready
I love when I get to put the ideas floating
around in my head on paper
either with paint or words
It is a good day when I make something
beautiful out of something that began
as an abstract thought
It’s almost time
but I think I was already successful!
I know where there are horizontal Ferris wheels that rotate around the individual gondolas like carousels
while three wizards in parallel overcast amiable spells that chime in the playing of saxophone and bells
relax and inhale, there are floating stacks of blue cotton candy you can smell
you can dream while being awake here as well painted with an orange pastel, in the middle of the court yard, there’s a boat on a lake with a sail…dancing remote on the waves like a gazelle
I can’t sit still
my body wiggles and shakes
I can’t sit still
my hands dance to no music
my legs stiffen then go limp
I can’t sit still
my mind is in a race
all of it’s own
I can’t sit still
it hurts to remember
tired brain
I can’t sit still
although I’m bound
captured by the terror
I can’t sit still
I am running
I am dancing
I am mimicking
I am crawling
I am wailing
I can’t sit still
I need to get away from you.
