I’m lost in my own house
Memories are painted everywhere
They remind me like painful scabs
That my house was once a home.
I’m lost in my house
Because it feels like you are
Around every corner
But I can’t find you anywhere.
Your absence is everywhere.
It has left wells
Invisible inside each room.
Cold, dry, and hollow, they echo you.
They make me swear
That I can hear you
(your pitter-patter,
or your snoring,
or your breathing)
They make me swear
That I can still see you
(laid down to nap
on the couch,
or on our bed)
They make me swear
That I can still feel you
(lumped beside my feet,
sprawled on top,
of the covers of our sheets)
The only thing real
The only thing left
Is your scent
That still clings to the blankets
Even with all these empty wells
In all of these empty rooms
I have only one hopeless wish.
Just one little wish.
To find you in our house
To make your way back home.
May 17, 2017
May 17, 2017 at 12:13 PM UTC
How many tears do you think filled the oceans?
Mine threaten to flood the whole of my world;
and when I sit there at the bottom of the ocean
quiet, and too tired to weep,
I won’t feel the grace upon my cheek,
and you won’t see the tear I shed.
We were born with this box.
It keeps contained in the small of us,
yet is infinite; a world all its own.
And how do you fill a box that knows no bounds?
With love.
Love, fills the aching seems,
to the point where we touch the very edge of our universe,
like hands gliding over the surface of water.
The world within us blooms
into a flourishing home;
our soul set free
of a box that felt like a solitary well of confinement;
we find even sometimes, our box overflows.
But take our love away
and pain is found inside us,
blanketing and filling the absence of everything
Love had once touched.
It’s then you ask God,
how many tears filled the ocean?
I had been at the bottom of the ocean
for so long, waiting for the answer,
that I hadn’t noticed I am now floating,
risen to the surface of this new ocean,
laying on the back of my grief,
among the sun and the stars.
Jun 5, 2016
Jun 5, 2016 at 3:50 PM UTC
The morning light pranced
around the back of my neck
adding to the weight of expectations
that already leaden the empty
spaces of my book bag.
I tried to focus instead on the cool wind
that twirled around on the concrete platform,
and swam between our ankles,
it's leafy hands
shooing the sunlight from off my shoulders.
This morning (like any other) I was
content in my aloneness.
I knew what to expect from the other strangers
and I felt safer in the distance between us
even as we shared cold metal benches
and hand rails.
I was not there to make a friend.
My stomach wrestled with Anxiety
the only thing to offer was a sip of water
and a weak reassuring thought
as the subway train screeched her greetings.
The doors open.
Strangers out,
strangers in,
myself included.
With an unsure pace I entered into the labyrinth
of lines and tracks and stations
each with a confusing name and color and marker.
Momentum forced my feet to find my place.
Relief found in one empty seat.
Not for long.
You should have known not to.
My body told you no and built a wall
with my book bag and arms guarding
and pleading
to go away
to sit anywhere but here
to talk to anyone but me.
You didn’t listen.
Instead you sat beside me.
Instead you introduced yourself.
Instead you helped this stranger on the train.
And while at times life feels like a road, many times life feels like a train.
You showed me your favorite views
as they raced outside the window
and shared moments as I discovered mine.
We asked about the husband, the boyfriend,
the kids, and the dogs.
We shared memories and stories
and jokes and songs,
and slowly our strangeness became familiar
and then familiar became reliable.
We shared our space
inside the passenger car and rode
together to our separate destinations.
Stops come fast and goodbyes are hard
even when predicted,
but we never really said goodbye.
We smiled and made promises –
ones I tried to keep.
We are now on separate trains.
On separate tracks and schedules.
I sit again alone.
Things in many ways are the same
like the seat I try to get in the back corner
or the views I see outside my window.
But you left without saying goodbye,
without preparing me for the vacant
seat beside me.
I didn't know that was goodbye.
I didn’t know your empty promises
were actually your goodbyes
your signal for the stop to come.
Maybe we had simply been strangers on a train
passing the time,
without need of careful goodbyes.
And I am the fool who didn’t know.
I didn’t know this was goodbye.
Farewell.
May 9, 2016
May 9, 2016 at 7:24 PM UTC
I hold my breath.
It pains me to think I filled this basin...
Drop by drop...
So I can burry my head beneath the slap of water.
My hair tickles my cheeks as they swim.
Only when I'm allowed to, I raise my head
(just before I loose the fight with myself
to fill the void in my lungs from my screams).
I cough and listen:
The deafening heartbeat punctuated by whimpers and sloshing water
is broken as foreign air and sound renew the canals of my ears.
Your sweet voice is there
and I listen dumbly - blissfully - to it
as my damp cheeks are met with your warm palms
(like pebbles holding the heat of the sun).
We hold each other.
I remember of fond dreams.
And just as my hair sheds its watery seal,
parting and rising from my scalp in ribbons
I hold my breath again,
stabbing my face into the basin of water.
It's a ritual I'm to practice.
I survive by swallowing my desires and longings,
painful as they are to go down
when only to be brought back up in the end.
Oct 28, 2015
Oct 28, 2015 at 9:50 PM UTC
Doe, a dear, a female dear…
Ray has lost his golden son.
Me, the monster they ran from.
Far, a long, long way to fall.
Sow, the **** that’s also reaped.
La, the last note sung by “Jane”.
T-boned and injured -- some lost…
And that brings us back to Jane
Doe… a girl who feared the tears
that would come with bottom.
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 5:40 PM UTC
A white herd of buffalo--
angelic ancestors manifest--
galloping in silence
as they cross the Vast.
And here I lay small
in the cooling wake of their shadows
that caress and whisper to me
just as they do the gentle hill beneath
me, and her sisters,
covered in velvet pastures
of gold, of green, of grey, of blue.
And here I lay down
like the animal defiantly far
from his hurd. I'm abandoned
from the blistering heat
and coarse unholy asphalt.
There is a peace in feeling small--
in feeling alone--
and my mind drifts along
with the shadows all around me.
My hair takes up life and plays
like children with the grasses in the wind.
I stare beyond the eagle's cry
where the noble ones above have
become purple from carrying
with them for miles and miles
Hope, pouring clear and wet, and
Grace, flashing a pure stream of light.
And with the first call of thunder
I stand.
With my bones aching with anticipation,
my fingers reaching for the connection,
I stand.
Alive and made plain.
Aug 1, 2015
Aug 1, 2015 at 7:57 PM UTC
Do you ever forget that you’re alive?
Sometimes I forget.
Like today I remembered while filling up my empty glass
with cool water in the snowy moonlight of the kitchen window.
I forgot I was alive.
It’s something I do.
It’s like looking up from beneath the surface of water
numbed by the safe tepid suspension.
We all have our defenses that protect us from living.
Sometimes the defense is forgetting you’re alive in the first place.
You can make decisions,
talk to people,
but never really be there. . .
never touch. . .
never taste. . .
never smell. . .
never hear. . .
never feel. . .
never commit sensation to memory
out of a deeper fear
of being in that moment
because a moment can last an eternity.
So sometimes I forget because I remember pain.
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 8, 2015 at 10:10 PM UTC
Red reeds and a freckle of flowers bowing
before rubber wheels
tossing pebbles and sand and a whirlwind of dust.
Their plan had caught wind and taken flight against them,
like an ardent breath that leaps from battle chests
that knowingly march somewhere behind the tall thick of trees.
The rain won the sprint before the inky giants (stuck in the review mirror)
and began to speckle the seats from the gaping sunroof,
but the lovers hadn’t noticed.
Their hearts beat in unison, adrenaline seemingly driving the engine.
Four, bone-white knuckles chocking to hang on:
one pair on the steering wheel, one on the other’s shoulder, and one on the door handle.
The tires drop off and bash themselves against the stones
beneath a spray of clay and water and maggots,
as they swerve off the beaten path.
They wade through the churning waves of grasses
the wind now rushing past, splashing against their spine –
their naked necks and tangled locks swimming in the invisible rapids.
Their sanctuary lay before the whirlpools,
deeply rooted, scarred with letters, scarred with hearts,
and beautifully draped with thin weeping twigs, tied off with lace.
The car’s backend swung as the tires drifted.
The two men flung themselves inside the umbrella of branches,
untied the lacy bows, and drew the curtains closed
The willow tree would have to stand in for their officiant,
for their family, their friends, their honored guests and witnesses,
for they had none.
They both stood in front of the tree as the wind swayed,
once from behind him, and then once from behind him,
all the while their tearful eyes exchanged silent “I dos”.
The one reached inside a burrow beneath the great trunk,
to retrieve their rings and crowns of flowers,
while the other anxiously stood watch behind him, awaiting the thunder.
Gentle hands ringed their fingers with silver bands,
and crowned their heads with white and blue petals,
then carefully chiseled into the bark their names and their heart with a pocket knife.
The two men pressed their palms to the tree to receive their blessing,
and then pressed their lips together, now salty and wet,
sealing their souls with a slow passionate kiss.
But instead of a burst of rice freely sprinkling the atmosphere
there was a burst of shotgun pellets
tearing through the whispers of love and leaves.
The men sprinted to the car,
dodging the fires of intimidation,
and drove off with their life, leaving behind the fear and shame.
They turned on the heater to try to warm up.
but it was long before they were dry,
the rain’s echo nearly drowning out the sounds of their shared breaths.
Oct 15, 2014
Oct 15, 2014 at 7:14 PM UTC
Holding a small, bare, baby in the palm of your hand –
small, fleshy, and lifeless –
blue spider webs beneath the cool, pale skin. . .
That’s what I had unearthed,
beneath the watery depths of my name.
We were both on the brink of hypothermia,
slowly dying in the snow by the black creek.
I found a small hollow of roots beneath a tree,
untouched by the white kiss of winter.
I rose to my booted feet, caked in mud.
I splashed, hobbled, and painfully collapsed to my knees,
my hands cupping the small babe,
as if offering what little we had left to the deaf tree,
before I undressed myself
one arm at a time,
holding the baby boy up to my bare chest
as I pulled my head beneath the collar of my shirt,
and flicked the muddy boots off my feet,
and unbuttoned with one hand my wet jeans,
till I was finally naked,
curled up around the small boy who still had a chance.
We huddled there in the ICU beneath the tree
in our small cocoon of earth, snow, and cloth;
and with every exhale, “sorry” escaped my blistered lips.
It was my fault I had found him there
alone and abandoned.
He is the part of me that I feared –
for and of –
and that I had ripped from inside myself,
leaving it stunted.
But: that cold, saddening, sobering, apologetic embrace
saved my life from being forever incomplete,
and healed the selves
that my actions to protect
had inevitably began killing.
Holding him, that small piece of me,
the mass of innocence equal to my heart,
holding him is when we became anew.
Today I cherish his fair feminine features
that once puzzled and concerned the mirrors,
and sometimes drape his strong body in dresses
crowning his mane with wild flowers
so he can twirl and play in the meadow the way he wants .
Today I hold his hand,
and carry him on my shoulders while he sleeps,
slumped, and nuzzled on my head,
as we walk through the world
like a father and son who just finished a day:
of chasing each other,
of wrestling with each other,
and of playing hide-and-go-seek for hours.
Today he shows me love and affection
like all men ought to know
like all men ought to show
and teaches me what I had forgotten about myself
all those years ago.
Oct 1, 2014
Oct 1, 2014 at 9:39 PM UTC
I was once a human,
who was once a mouse,
who was once a cat,
who was once a bird,
who was once a worm,
who was once a fish,
who was once a whale,
who was once a plankton,
who was once an anemone,
who was once a starfish,
who was once a crab,
who was once a seal,
who was once a bear,
who was once a deer,
who was once a bush,
who was once frog,
who was once an ant,
who was once a bat
who was once a flower,
who was once a mushroom,
who once was a pterodactyl,
who was once a raptor,
who was once a fern,
who was once a tree,
who was once algae,
who was once sediment,
who was once a crystal,
who was once a sun,
who was once everything,
who was begotten,
who is past,
who is present,
who is future.
Aug 17, 2014
Aug 17, 2014 at 4:41 PM UTC