(A repost from 2019)

My favorite aunt is dying.. cancer, quiet and consuming as a flame..

Seven short weeks ago she was easily doing an hour of step aerobics, unaware of this intruder, this murderer within. Now she's lifted from bed like a rag doll.

She is my mom, well, a near twin—only smaller, funnier, serpent sly, more heavenly childish, sapient with sweet attractive grace and modest pride.

I am in total awe of her. We're kindred spirits, two sillies among the dull and endlessly serious.

I feel her, see her, day by day, slipping away like the hastening angel of heaven foretold.

This is too big for me, too awful and too close.

I am struck helpless, nothing moves, I sit, hardly feeling, and watch her sleep. Death's cruel process suddenly made visible.

I silently rage at the loss of it—my loudest vehemence pointed to this ravenous, lurking enemy pursuing her inwardly like a swarm of deadly hornets accidentally composed.

40 and still stunningly beautiful, she lies surrounded by computers, iPads, phones, faxes, intercoms, notepads, friends and care-givers. Her life reduced to escaping pain and making arrangements for her soon to be orphaned children 4 and 6.

Fentanyl and other pain blockers are her nourishment and seem to work better in the daylight as lawyers garner powers of attorney, bankers conjure trusts and estate planners build foundations to protect small children from a mothers loss.

As if they could replace a single hug
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Songs for this (Gospel music):
Order My Steps by The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir
Angel by Sarah McLachlan
Jesus Loves Me by Whitney Houston

In the age of the nighthawks
In the sweat soaked  Southern Saturday nights
On the dance floors of Midnights Voice we melted like birds tangled together falling in flight

I think back and wonder
at how much I had to lose
I think back and wonder about how much I did lose

Nights moves at its darkest hours
Sultry bodies writhing  in anticipation
Liberation on the sawdust floors

She had luna eyes
that captured your stare
She twisted in rapture
A phantom floating in air
A delight to anyone . . .
then , now or anywhere

Oh , the wondering
Oh , while I was pondering

Now the night has lost all its moves
Time has scratched all of the grooves
The darkness still as death
No one since has gotten to you yet

You said the trick was to never play the game too
long

(So I didn't)

So now my night moves have all . . . moved on

Calico snakes crawl the
garden of our love.
You, in your gingham
dress and hair in braids,
bent over the radishes.

I, unshaven in my *****
Johnny Cash t-shirt.
Earth all over my
face.
I fell into your
firey ring, that's for
**** sure.

As soon as my guard comes
down, you and that drunken
pirate moon, and that mad
smiling snake burn
me every time.

I'm leaving the garden and
heading back to those
wild midnight alleys where I
know what's coming.
Nursery rhymes are just
metered horror stories.
And spring is the biggest
liar of them all.

I look into the mirror,
a reflection without shine.
I look deeper, seeing my own reflection through my eyes.
But something is missing, something isn’t there.
I feel it, missing in my heart, in my mind.
But what is this yearning?
Can it be love? Or something else?
I’m afraid that no love I can have,
no words come from my mouth to express it.
Even if my soul punched my throat,
no word will come out to speak of it.

I don’t stream a lot of TV
but once I’m in that mode, I’m down
and I can’t get up.

Best pickup line I heard this week:
“You could be my emergency contact.”

A girl recently called me “weird people.”
She was effusive and I was put in my place.
Apparently, good grammar isn’t legally enforceable.
Her friend apologized, saying—and wrote it down.
“She lives on her phone; it’s a claustrophobic place.”
“Ooo!” I’d said, "Can I use that?” She gave me a blank look.

Leong, lisa and I were walking to class when a lone goose flew over,
honking incessantly, like a New York taxi in heavy traffic.
“That must be a Canadian goose,” I said, because my uninformed comments seem forever welcome—and we are pretty far north.
“I know what it was saying,” Leong offered, in her most inscrutable Asian way. Lisa and I waited to hear some Chinese wisdom, but what she finally said was, “Where IS everyone? I knew I shouldn’t have stopped to ***.”

There’s a song that goes, “We got married in a fever.”
That line seems so point-on to me. That’s how it happens.
Not, “We got married with a prenup, hotter than a brussel sprout.”
My Grandmère told me Peter and I will need a prenup, if we ever…
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Songs for this:
Feather by Sabrina Carpenter [E]
Head In The Clouds by BabyJake
Jackson (feat. Josh Homme) by Florence + the Machine