It’s just a restaurant,
The chefs are being paid,
Big vats of rice
And bowls of soy sauce,
They can’t see me,
The excitement on my face,
They don’t know how much I love this,
How I’ll stuff my face with leftovers,
It’s just work,
But it still tastes
Like it was made with love.
It is summer so every event is typed bold. The heat itches us with temptation.
If we breach this line we tow, from the dead she will scold.
Our childhood church draped in black, a scan of the room reveals silent grins and enough
tears to heal heart attack.
Last week you skimmed a book on grief. The sun seeps into the stained glass first and my
skin second, but you loom over me so it is brief. It is more than warm, this building lacks ac. I could drip, but I am impatient. I need her to breathe.
I await a dropped glance so my hands can lace through your hair. You soothe like running cold water on a needle shaped burn, but you scar just as easily. I am always spared. You underscore sentences with falsities about the human condition, as if you understand, as if your mother has died. Although,
your lips. I struggle to refuse your spit. Today, I don’t feel like being delicious.
Perhaps desire is nothing more than self-obsession.
I caused it. The day it happened,
we let boredom fester. Skin to skin in fetal position, bodies depressing.
Collapse drowned by records she collected.
through the wall lays my mother, halted.
My head between your legs, feigning connection
Bliss rejected, on the precipe of stolen kisses
stolen breath.
My mother showed me early and often,
making for making’s sake
is a worthwhile way to spend a life,
Build the sandcastle, celebrate it
until high tide, no need to photograph it;
Waves doing what waves will do
is no reason to grieve
what is erased in their wakes.
Even when your canvas turns out like crap,
the act of painting is never wasted,
you can hate it, start something else tomorrow,
Fallen logs are made glorious vignettes
of tender plantings and moss,
all in a clearing no one will see but us,
where we can enjoy it
without accolade or compliment,
My father showed me today as we walked,
a new forested area she is making into art,
he said it used to be she would find open areas
to make lovely but she can’t help herself,
now she must infiltrate this thicket.
She will always grow to the size of her container,
never bend to its shape-
always the tree, never the water.
It’s happened before, it will happen again.
I remember, with my house overrun
with children, I’d cook at night
while the others slept, for the quiet
but also for the cool kitchen in daylight,
the trees surrounding that house
helping. Only one room with ac
and no basement. All of us sleeping
in that one room on the floor.
Praying the electricity stayed on
for the ice. Young with energy,
was I wild with love for those kids.
or did I just need to stay busy?
Shivering again in the dark,
I knew. I planned, even there–my body
sick as it was–tensile as ice forming
on some January swamp:
half muck/
half network
of delicate threads threatening
to break and messily reform again
under some pressure.
So I willed, this time,
to collect it all into a plastic bag.
Kept it between my legs the entire time.
Willed the energy up once more
to pack it all away.
Today he asked for hide and seek—
eyes squeezed shut, a slow count
to twenty. Equal squeals at finding
and being found eased my tired
eyes open—the smile-brightened
face my day’s candy.
From the raging waves of the mighty oceans and the seven seas,
to the white caps on the deep and ancient lakes,
and the ripples on hiden ponds.
I come upon a still and shallow puddle,
bow down and see my reflection.
And within the molecules of the water,
an essence whispers,
you are much more than the image you perceive ,
and who and what you believe yourself to be.
MUCH MUCH MORE.
