Wrinkles run up your warm hands,
Telling tales of love and long times past.
Beautiful hands, carved from ancient oak.
That I can’t help but watch
When they dance through the air,
To the soothing tones of your Boston lilt,
Or as they grip a paintbrush,
Laden with color,
Ready to explode over the crisp page.
I can see them splotched with ink,
Stained from the time you said
That I could paint you.
I can see your hands coming together,
A smile breaking across your face.
I can hear your laugh,
Bubbling from within,
Booming across the room,
Loud and deep,
Infectious and hearty.
Your stories always have a place in me,
Memories and love etching words in my heart;
They fuel my heart’s steady beat,
Sending a smile and joy and memories of you
Infused in my blood.
Mar 31, 2019
Mar 31, 2019 at 6:13 PM UTC
Your fingers soared over the keys.
You breathed love into the warm, bell-like tones.
You shook your head if you missed a note,
your eyes danced,
and around your grin
your mouth said
"I still have time,"
you said.
"I still have time before the concert."
A family trip, driving home,
back from the dunes of Michigan.
A father, mother, brother, you,
a sister left at home.
You sat in the back.
You were laughing, your family.
It was the last time they've laughed so hard.
A bend in the road,
a turn into town,
your car,
slowing down.
A different car, behind you,
did not slow down.
It slammed straight into you.
The metal crunched behind you,
the car spun, and your head bounced.
A helicopter came,
to take you away.
It was too quiet at the hospital.
But you couldn't tell.
You were in a coma.
"Brain trauma,"
the doctors said.
"And a broken leg and clavicle."
They didn't mention the broken
hearts.
They tried to pump life into your chest,
air into your lungs,
much like you
pumped life into the body of your clarinet.
But the machines failed where you did not.
The human in you had gone;
only a body was left.
You're playing for the angels now,
I know you are.
There's a smile on your lips,
in your eyes,
your brown, dancing eyes,
as your fingers effortlessly
fly over the keys,
you play
for the only audience
that could ever
hold you.
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 8:32 PM UTC
you sowed the seeds inside me,
watch them grow
they’ve taken root inside me,
in the sweet soil
fragrant with the drying daisy petals.
you sowed the seeds inside me
you tried to **** them out.
but your tools were rusty,
and false apologies never come clean.
you sowed the seeds inside me
gave them warmth and strength and light,
with those fiery red words you threw at me
the ones i couldn’t help
reflecting.
you sowed the seeds inside me
filling me with molten heat.
you taught me to be angry
and the anger feeds my temper
it’s too big for even me, a 5-10 girl.
you sowed the seeds inside me
you gave them everything they have,
let them start inside my heart,
and twine around my soul.
my anger and my temper
are one with me, and me with them.
i can see their crescent seeds pouring from my mouth,
when my tongue is swollen out,
my eyes and face stone cold.
if you choose a burial
a tree will grow.
evil bark and evil branches;
poisonous berries and poisonous words.
Aug 11, 2018
Aug 11, 2018 at 7:45 PM UTC
Springy yellow flowers grin towards the sky
Today is a good day.
Warm, too, and bright.
Too bad the weatherman says we’ll have a cold snap soon.
But now is a good time.
Now I have friends
Peace on my lips,
Yellow flowers around me.
But frost creeps in through the night.
My window iced over
I’m trapped inside, between my thick skull and the world.
All I know is the chill.
Of emptiness, betrayal.
The happy yellow flowers are dead.
Today, you think, is a bad day.
You are wrong.
Today is a day of truth.
The day I let my loved ones live their lives
The day I get what I deserve.
Justice isn’t always good.
You know that, I know that.
And the flowers are dead.
Blossoms scattered over the ashy ground.
They never got a chance to say goodbye to
A final breath of light.
They’re gone and never will be back and how
Can you just sit there
Calm
Knowing they’re dead that they’ll never see the sun again
How can you manage ?
How can you keep
Breathing?
And
why?
Jul 28, 2018
Jul 28, 2018 at 1:41 PM UTC
some prefer to see the ugly in life,
pick the rotten fruit,
the dimmest path.
they see the clouds on the horizon when the sun is shining bright,
neglect the good,
rain hate on those they
used to recognize for
who they are.
there are those.
but i, i love to see the bright blue sky,
the sparkling lakes,
the cheerful flower.
i love the joy in the faces around me,
the bright drops of good deposited in all.
i don’t see the need to see the world from their eyes.
i would be rendering myself blind.
Jul 28, 2018
Jul 28, 2018 at 1:28 PM UTC
if money grew on trees,
then people would be clamoring
to save the forests
instead of
cutting them down.
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 5:05 PM UTC
I am a sky dark blue,
So deep you could almost taste it,
If you bothered to try,
If you could see past the clouds
I painstakingly placed
To distract you.
You can’t. Or won’t.
Who knows which?
And why even, would you want to reach a girl dark blue?
Moody and sad and pessimistic and
a dreamer, not here, not even on the ground?
You don’t.
So leave me to chase my kite in peace,
The one you released so long ago because it was gray.
And who wants a gray kite?
Not cheery like some, even though it rides the wind
Like nothing else.
You don’t.
But pardon me for reaching.
I don’t care that it’s unconventional,
neither am I.
Because I am a dark blue sky of a girl,
Not ‘sky blue’ because even though I am the dictionary definition
I am not happy, bright, loved, anticipated.
But I am necessary.
How could you survive, dear soul,
Without rain?
Without the dark soil beneath your feet?
Or the maggots that relieve you of your dead?
You couldn’t.
And if I said “Just live”?
That, dear soul, would help, I’m sure.
Like when you told me to feel better.
Snap out of it get better just be happy.
Thanks. That helped.
But you never cured me of my color.
May 20, 2018
May 20, 2018 at 2:34 PM UTC
the sun is a golden disk in the sky,
hanging inches above the horizon
over glittering green-gold leaves,
the heady scent of the magnolia petals
on the chalky pavement,
the birds and their ringing chirps.
the sky alight with red and orange pastels
and with bliss.
the day is here.
May 7, 2018
May 7, 2018 at 7:21 AM UTC
my home
is not
the room
where i sleep
fitfully.
or the house,
broken memories
and walls
the color
of
****
my home
is the
off-key
singing
with my sister
in her car.
the buttered popcorn
from the movie theater
that we ate together,
her and my brother and i.
the spring air
as we ran with her dog.
the monotone
of teachers droning on,
the bright laughter
of my friends.
home is made
of the little
bits of joy
that
we’ve left
scattered
behind
us.
May 7, 2018
May 7, 2018 at 6:50 AM UTC
i thought it was normal.
hiding secrets and pain
behind locked doors
and tight smiles.
that everyone
heard voices in their heads,
saw people who weren’t there;
their ‘pretend’
was more pretend
than mine.
that the arguing
the shouting
the overflowing hurt
was a normal part
of my siblings’
teenagerhood.
that the belt was
commonplace,
the hairbrush, too,
and the barbed words that mom
threw to hurt us.
hiding in a
closet
barely big enough to fit,
to avoid a mother with a wild
look in her eyes
was normal.
i thought that the child
protective service visited
every house.
that every mother was as loving as mine
to warn me
(8 years, already regretting life)
of the gory details of my own ****
(a word i learned that day)
that would surely occur
if i ran away, left
like the deepest part of my heart
wanted to.
i grew up thinking it normal
to live expecting
to be beaten
down.
i thought that love
was a bruise so deep
that nothing
else could
compare.
May 5, 2018
May 5, 2018 at 5:47 PM UTC