how can your world mean so much to me when my world doesn’t mean anything to me?
i give &
give &
give
until there is nothing left of me
look here. at me begging
on my knees
for you not to leave me
i care so deeply for your feelings
yet so little for my own
i am willing to burry myself
for your comfort
make myself smaller
until i am dust
particles
you breathe me in
and i kiss your lungs
being thankful i have landed somewhere
safe
until you exhale me out
once more
the curtians left open
for the light is full
to bath my self as an ally
Of a Strawberry Moon
Smooth and full and ready to be pulled
in the dark of the light
open and never left hoping
Walk dog no my.
Not really.
Lazy today lazy day lazy.
Shining overhead,
I finally
am sun.
Dog cupboard
empty is
no bones.
Sunglasses broken.
and i watch from helpless floods
as my patriarchs fade into the hallways
of humid hospitals as their organs
leak into the yellowing smoke
crusted into the walls; Abuelito’s
brain is bleeding, and my father’s
heart is weak, and he says it is just
one thing after the other ever since
his mother’s cancer came to rock
the saltwater shores of our comfort,
all the ignored calls and days spent
rotting in front of screens. And all
of the sudden I am helpless again
like a child again yelling again
where did they go
where did he go
is a brain wave
in a woman’s remembered
understory
an electrical pulsing
of bark and bloom
whimsical sunset companion
vivid ripples waiting
wanting only
to be acknowledged
as a keepsake
the glory
how light baptizes leaves
For Stella
Is it the ADHD?
Or is there more wrong with me?
The longer the damn list gets,
The more on my ass I sit “
Fucking loser,” I mutter…
Insurmountable clutter
Mocks and snickers as it grows,
The Undone aims to overthrow
Frozen by the need of me
None of the things let me be,
The piles nor the people,
Worn hands can’t thread a needle!
Instead of doing “the things,”
To this page I plunge and cling
And now, as I near the end,
Checklist ready, but… NO PEN?!
Having moved to the south
with our own predilections,
my daughter was doomed.
By two, responded fettucini alfredo
when asked her favorite food.
As peers discussed beloved chips,
she was lost. Same, during the bible story
game introduced at a birthday party.
When they said grace at preschool
she insisted the first three syllables
were not God is Great, but Honest Gray,
which we felt was a sweet interpretation.
At home, it was with affection
she renamed nightly dishes –
warm mush, soggy lettuce salad,
and following a kitchen mishap,
upside-down-oven-lid-surprise.
Now in her forties, she is organized
and wise. Surely more sophisticated
than I, cooking from directions
on her laptop dictated by culinary artists
foreign to me. Sometimes, as the years
go by, I can’t help but wonder:
Will any of the stained and marked-up
recipes amassed from my lifetime
in the kitchen find a place in hers?
We tossed our watches out because our phones
told us the time and so much more, like when
to go to bed, how many steps our hearts
required us to take. We had an app
to order food, another app to flag
a ride. So when the grid went down, we had
no watches, and we left our sense of time
somewhere back in the ancient past, and now
a cyber bully with no social media
must find his prey in person. Tell me now:
who’s got the time to tell you to your face
that they don’t like your face? What did you call
me? How’d you call me with no phone? Face it:
the algorithm’s gone. The sun, the shadows, and
thr trees are calling. Now’s the time. Pick up.
Her once black muzzle is all white.
Her short legs can no longer propel
her long body up to her spot
on the sofa.
She can still bark.
Lift me up. Put me down.
Mostly she sleeps, on any lap,
or wrapped in a blanket.
Around her swirls the chaos
of a household of three adults,
two small kids, four other dogs.
