Musings and Misgivings
And just like that
I’m back on the switch,
feet dangling over the edge,
the trampoline below
a milky fog beckoning
in hushed tones
jump
the sky always opens in those moments,
its Jericho jaw swallows
the last kiss of regret
on my lips
as it steers me to Jordan
my thoughts of you span
the wings of condors
like black silk cutting through
the mist of that final morning
in Georgia, before
I don’t listen to the valley’s echo
any more than I listen to my own heart
01-30-19
I used to crouch in the dark
as if no one could see the light
trapped in my eyes
if I stayed down
no one would know
who put me there
when I finally saw you
when I really saw you
I realized I didn’t want to
back you into a corner
like she did to me
I wanted to bleed out
in vibrant, sunset red so you could see
how beautiful I could be
I am always scared
I keep pace with mice in cupboards
and blush when the sun steals glances
because I went without it
for so many years
yet here you are
in a room without blinds
and a house without corners
01-28-19
Another bird wearing
a prayer on each feather
Just like a dream,
but here I am in a seedy hotel bed,
another paper cup of bitter brown,
a tear in each pull
I used to lock fingers with the oak
in our front yard.
Today I locked eyes with that chesty hawk
and then with that wine-stained woman
wearing three decades of grief
She gave me six years with her stare
and I held her gaze like the oak
held my hand before I knew
how to hold my own
Now I hold my own
so I can hold hers, too
1-13-2019
My eyes swell in a watery fog
imagining mammoths drowning in black tar bogs
Frantic limbs reaching for
the familiarity of home,
the final vision of that place as you sink
Sometimes when I’m sinking
I tilt my chin and discover the color blue
as if I had never seen it before.
As if I had lived my whole life
through tinted lenses and
god herself had broken them before me just now.
A final breath sits in my lungs
waiting for me to release it
When I finally let it go
I am on solid ground again
and I know that vision of home
every mammoth sees just before
its goes limp and accepts that
it was just a feeling,
the one I feel right now
as I go still
That is why I don’t fight anymore
I just let storms chase me
and fill my lungs with tar and
paint the whole world black when I cough
Because when the sky clears,
you can wipe up your mess
with the back of your sleeve,
and you realize you’ve never seen color like this,
not really.
01-06-2019
“Go gather the kindling”
I stomp off into the brush,
knobby knees knocking me off kilter,
greasy hair matted to my neck.
This place has been scoured and smells
of sour milk and burnt plastic,
but I like that I can race my thoughts
around the pavement on training wheels
(I’m too old, but who has time
to teach a little one balance and courage
when you yourself are struggling to find it?)
You don’t speak except to remark every so often
on the splendor of the stars,
or that skunk that nearly
marooned our hard-fought fire.
What I wish I could tell you
is that I see the years to come.
I know we still won’t speak,
but we will always have these river grounds
in the recesses of our hearts
That quiet place where we COULD be quiet
Where screaming didn’t permeate
our every cell and kill the calm.
I always thought of you as a snared rabbit
and I was some patch of parsnip
waiting for you to notice me
so I could be your sustenance,
however small.
Daughter in the details.
It’s not so much that I was overlooked
so much as you were trapped.
We all were.
Someday you will find me
You will say I have grown
And I will say you are free.
01-04-19
I am overripe
soft at the nape
hard at my core
I am too much too little too juicy too dry too pruned too bruised too fleshy too bare
too
I was left on frozen ground
but still I am warm enough
to melt memories into pennies
and throw them in your well,
wishing you could see what I have always been
enough
01-02-19
I grabbed the water
It dripped and slipped
through fleshy, wrinkled routes
while each finger thought “10 and 2”
as if safe ever meant security
I chewed my cheeks
and wished some stiff bristles
would hug the insides of my teeth
and cleanse my speech long enough to be heard
maybe I’d rather be in the rain
instead of catching it
12-20-18
the thread fed through
the eye of the needle,
needed and depleted
shouting down the corridors
of her own throat
“pull it together, don’t choke now”
SUCCESS
a Venetian courtesan
bare back basking in the white heat
for the amusement of an elementary imagination
tired of being twisted,
patching broken brains
aching since pulp
meanwhile, the world folds and
seeks the safety of her back pocket,
“carry me, steady me”
but she’s
u n r a v e l i n g
10-23-18
You can fill my mouth with flowers
so that when I speak, my tulips part
and paint your ears with your favorite colors
You can hold me in the roughs of your palms,
my soft skin like the fleece we use to cape our naked bodies,
and keep me in the space between two worlds
Sometimes, when I see a Monarch, my memory flutters
and I can’t escape the tears I wiped from your face that morning
I wish I could fly away
but the truth is, I wasn’t to born to sit
My mother taught me how to bewitch my own heart
so that when it beats for you, it beats harder for the world
so that when I look into the pits of my sullen eyes
I know just how to wrap my soul in bandages
and smile at the child hiding in my strides
Forward. For her. For you.
10-10-18
