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While I hung
Her favorite Christmas towels
On the towel rack,
She hovered
Behind me
Over my left shoulder
Straightening her wind-blown hair.
In the bathroom mirrow
I looked up into the mirrow.
I remembered–she died last year.
She flew recklessly with no real destination. No guarantee or expectation of ever being seen again. No emotion or thought behind her actions. Once she was set off, there was nothing left behind but a shell. A cold, empty shell of rejection and disownment. A shell that was once used to contain all that she ever was. Her emotions, thoughts, connections, happiness, sadness, relationships, wants, needs, failures, passions, pleasures, beliefs, all of her firsts, all of her favorites… everything. All it took was for someone to cause the explosion. All it took was one single pull of a trigger from the mind of another to end everything. One moment in time. One single second where someone wanted to use her, inducing destruction for their own agenda. She was a bullet in the night. Under the disguise of gunpowder and darkness, only to be seen in the seconds when the fire of the gun lit up the night. She dissolved into nothingness. All that she was just simply vanished at the expense of someone else.
My words.
They come out cracked and tinny,
artifacts of the exchange between the distant relays of my alternate reality&
yours
My phone bill is going to be outrageous.
I am placing this call from a place that doesn’t exist for you
My husband is dead here.
(It’s the only difference I can find.)
I’ve acclimated, some. Assimilated, but
I don’t speak our language anymore.
We never had a word for this.
The closest ones I can find here, too heavy,
too precious
are improbable to collect.
I have written you
I have imagined you
I have missed you
I have felt you
I have wondered about you
I have lost you
I have returned to you
I very much
look forward
to birthing you
make space for me.
this is a bad poem.
I hate sweat and breath,
unless it’s someone I like.
I don’t hate sweat and breath. I just hate him
and I feel bad for that!
he’s nice, but he’s not for me.
A raccoon in the hole of a tree trunk,
in an owl’s nest, where he doesn’t belong.
birds that live in holes in trees are called cavity nesters.
I’m pretty sure owl’s don’t even do that for real.
Imposter syndrome is made up.
why does it matter if they think you don’t belong?
Unless they have the power to exclude you.
Then it does matter.
Make space for me. I don’t want to make my own space.
I’m tired.
It’s hard to attract people. Where are they?
I cannot see myself in tomorrow
Others tried to warn me
You were a serpent in friend’s clothing
I couldn’t see that you were blinding me
Binding me
I mistook your embrace for friendship
Not noticing as you coiled around me
Squeezing tighter and tighter
Until I relied on you for every breath
In the distance, sirens wailed
But I didn’t recognize the danger
Until you sank in your fangs
Unhinged your jaw
And swallowed me whole—
Then complained of indigestion
Narcissist
Narcississssssssst
Sssssssssssssssssssssssss
On eclipse day we turn toward darkness
On eclipse day darkness transforms
From deadend to portal
On eclipse day darkness frees us
To speak to strangers
To cheer loudly
We look up at the sky
Eyes protected
Yearning for the rekindling of light
In the totality darkness
We feel electrical charges
Hear a universal song
And then It’s light again
But the faint vibration
Lingers,
And barely-heard notes
Float on the wind.
would nonsense be so awful?
I eat pistachios
drink my grapefruit juice mixed with grapefruit sparkling water
late afternoon
the precipice of summer
darkness though, as a storm blows through
I’ve received little subtleties, of late
signs I take as encouragement
now, the rain
if it were possible, I would ask
would an allowance leave you any worse for the wear?
