In the haze of a lucid dream,
I sit in an auditorium filled with faces
not quite familiar. 
On stage my best friend is graduating 
wearing a dress of pinks and purples

looking down my eye examines what I’m wearing. 
It’s an ugly suit a size too big with fabric
that scratches my skin

I wore men’s clothes to this past thanksgiving 
but to Passover I wore a floral skirt 

In the deep recesses of the part of my brain 
that evolved when my ancestors were lizards
I fear that my identity will bring others shame

happy pride

Sticky notes scrawled with cryptic
misgivings, paranoid missives
hinting at a bygone brain 

missed it this year, the scent
unbelievable
sweetness unlike
simple flowers or roses or a dozen
dainties in fields
it’s an aroma borne
of deep earth, roots sunk
in life eternal sending out
tendrils to touch
souls

Today my heart hurt too much to function
but I did.  I managed to put one foot in front 
of the other and did my job,
and went walking with a friend

Life seems to be moving on 
without a huge part of my family
and I find myself without words
to express the gaping hole in my heart and life

How do I express the pain that I feel just
thinking about a future without my son?
How can I describe the desolate state of my
heart and mind right now, as pain pulses through my being?

How can I be who I am, without the part of me that
made up my beloved son?
I have no words for once.  There is no way to describe
a world without him.

is not the click of a clock,
nor the caw of a rooster,
nor the melody of your snoozed alarm, 
nor the chime of the school bell,
nor the droning of traffic,
nor the thud of embracing your bed, 
nor the clink of cutlery at dinner,
nor the tick of light switches flicked off. 

It is silence, 
the burn of nothingness 
that encapsulates minutes
like a fruit stretching
to surround its pit,
the inaudible hum of days 
slipping into oblivion 
like that same fruit falling,
opening, merging with grass,
with earth, with the foundation. 

I need you.
In the reassurance
of all the secrets I couldn’t tell
and in the ones I did.

I need you in the Saturday morning cartoons.
I need a shoulder brush
a hand to hold
a smile and a wave.

I need you to be okay
with the tears and the fears
and the gossip spilled over sandwhiches
or the compliments spread across a makeup counter.

I need you
in the passenger seat of my car
in the booth across from me
and in the notifications bar

waiting with a joke.

She sees the shape before the surface,
not the horse, but the absence
it leaves in the field.

Not the hand,
but the imprint it refused to make.
The warmth of unspoken citation.

She sees across the grain:
a boy writing himself into a stanza
not meant for him.

A mirror scoured by other faces.
A window with no outside.
Glosses on a kiss that never lands.

This is what’s left:
a pronoun borrowed too long.
A touch indexed.
An ache that footnotes the body
but won’t name its source.

She sees all the way through.
That’s the punishment.

In the therapy office this week 
Someone asked me 
“What do I do about all of this?” 
Gesticulating to the world as a whole
There isn’t a word accessible to us
That fully encompasses it

She cries and I realize I haven’t replaced the tissues

Reminder:
Invest in stock in tissues
Because this collective trauma
Is a train gaining speed

Reminder:
Google if investing in tissues as a therapist
Is somehow a conflict of interest
Does that make me invested in keeping my clients
Crying?

I finally respond in my favorite way
When I have no fucking clue 

“What do you think you should do?” 
She falters 
We falter together 
Therapy is sometimes an eloquent dance
But most of the time 
It feels like stumbling through ice skating 
For the first time 
We spend more time grounded
Than we do flying 

Binge, dip, dote
How primal every quest
Go far, love

*composed of words played in today’s game of scrabble

brood XIV
the unbearable hord
of harsh noisemakers
invading my auditory canal
cannot stop their racket
cannot break the cycle
of their seventeen year bacchanal
brood XIV
I dont want to know much about you
your molted exoskeleton
your red eyes orange wings
your annoying invasion
of my sweet sweet mulberry tree
brood XIV
yet somehow
I treasure your reliable return
for when the forecast that the world 
will continue to turn
depends on nymphs going underground
i can dig the fact
of the odds being
that when you return 
I’ll be the one under the ground