My grandmother passed too early
Cancer
And my mom went to get checked
I think about her death too often

How can I live motherless like her
With no mother to coax me through

I imagine my head in a lap
My hair being stroked, only,
It’s not her, It’s Amelia Earhart
And she’s singing to me about journeys and daughters
I imagine the grieving, days of just sitting
And then one day getting up to paint the
whole house blue

It starts with a room
With the extra paint in the attic
Amelia’s not freaked
She sits on the couch eating an apple
And I scrub the walls
With coat after coat of briny breeze

The funeral is hell
My father would want a closed casket
And I’d just imagine her in there
Hands still warm

I’d want someone, and Amelia would stand next to me
Still in her suede flying jacket and goggles
She’d squeeze my hand and whisper
She’s lucky.
Or something like that

You shudder when you hear my name
You thought you heard the words, but no
You sigh, relieved, but even so
You let me go, you let me go

You thought you heard my echoed voice
So long ago that voice would read
Your name with love, then I was torn
From you, oh how you watched me bleed

So long ago, remember, friend?
You planted flowers in the yard,
You didn’t know the mounds you dug
Would mark our graveyards in the end

You mourn the graveyard now and then
You don’t remember those bared teeth
And when the wind breathes, you pretend
My voice is somewhere underneath

We shall try when the time comes
To find the woman who cries
For space that knows her
In electric currents,

Counting each bird that
Sings to greet us, She cannot
acknowledge the slightest skyline
Though the city shivers within

We sat in the grass
When I looked at the sky, I noticed the moon wasn’t there
But there were still shadows all around us

I’m afraid I knew, before you even said a word
I was crying, wiping my tears on my hands, my hands on the grass
When you said all you had to say, I couldn’t look at you
Instead I watched the streetlight
The moths bumping around like boys in love
I thought they looked like snow

After a while you said you couldn’t sit there any longer
You said you were getting too cold
and too sad
so you went inside

It wasn’t so long ago that we drove
And drove until I recognized a narrow street
We pulled into the long drive of an old stone building
The tall walls just as solid as I remembered

The grass was pushing through the pavement of the courtyard
The playground in the back slowly falling into the weeds
You smiled at me because it was still daylight
You picked me up and carried me across the decaying mulch like a bride
And sat me down on a wooden swing

I couldn’t shake the feeling that suddenly
The whistle would blow
The doors would open
The children would come tripping into the sun

But I could tell by the way the slide shuddered
There hadn’t been a child here in a long time
Perhaps I was one of the last
The ladder cracked under your weight
And you kicked the plank away without a thought

I told you about my first kiss
I told you about recess in the winter
How those 30 minutes were so long
How we all huddled together like penguins under the frozen sun
And waited, too cold to speak,
Until they called us inside

I am struggling to find the words, but they say that silence is beautiful.
Enjoy the quiet
Don't speak
Don't make a noise
Silence is beautiful
What can I say that's worth breaking the spell?
It isn't worth it, I think
And my words remain unspoken

I always found beauty in the way my mother spoke
Poetic Russian phrases that hold no meaning in English
Nearly impossible to translate
Delicate strands of words lost in the swirl of languages and flattened by grammatical rules
Her voice writes script in my mind, runs unhindered, taunts the emptiness of silence
Her speech, untameable
A breath of freedom all at once
An unhindered expression of self in a single spoken moment
Beauty
To me it is heard
To me it is given and shared
She told me to sing more
But they say silence is beautiful

Her mouth effortlessly forms phrases I cannot forget
"Wisdom brings life
Wisdom shared multiplies it
And lights the darkness
And the world needs more light, God knows"

If silence is beautiful
Then my mind is hopelessly rotten
A roaring, tumbling, mess of a, mix of a, turn the world upside down, cacophony of sound
And through it all
I struggle to find the words
To make them as golden as my mother's
All I can manage is a weak copy

Tick tock
The world is not lighter
A small, sad swell against the infinite shore
Don't make a noise
Don't utter nonsense
Sit pretty
After all, silence is beautiful

Your parents came home
I stayed for dinner
We couldn’t stop laughing
Because it was so strange
That no one else knew

Your mom asked
Smile on her face
What’s so funny?

It’s an inside joke,
We told her

Her polite smile
As she passed the potatoes
Eyes crinkling like she was in on it
Only made us laugh harder

there is so much you don’t know
do you measure our distance
the way I do?

you once told me you’d do anything for me
it was christmas
warm that year
I wore a light sweater to church
the candles like stars amid pews

that winter you couldn’t stop apologizing
your new year’s resolution-
to be a better person
sometimes you said- to earn me

in the museum
there was the painting you loved
the cherry blossom tree
full bloom, pink and warm
beside it, the same tree, branches bare
you said you loved this one
because it looked like a photograph

in the spring your fortune came
your voice was different
you were always smiling

we spoke once
you thanked me for being special
when you needed it

you couldn’t have known
how happy I was on Christmas

Your fractal thoughts and skin like
morning and page after page of new opinions
You send me cocoons
wings folded up
flitter out suddenly as I sit
waiting for tea in a busy place

I like me in my newness
I like to be okay
I like my inner world

I like to sit and wait for tea
and think my inner world thoughts
I like when you interrupt me
Perfectly scattering my focus, over
and underneath, in a busy place

You effortlessly shatter these mirrors
And I am happy
to create new things with you

I want to be the admirer
I want to be a tiny speck of white against a vast cliff face
I want to be the last human on earth.
I want to look up at the sky and lose myself hopelessly
I want the stars to blaze with passion and hunger
suspended in their quiet, empty storm

I want to rest
soundless
at the bottom of the ocean
and feel the colossal depths within me, so still
So dark and immeasurable is this world

I want to stretch my arms as wide as the magnetic breath
of this earth and encompass
Oh, how I could adore
Oh, how you captivate me

Marry me and we can forget
About the smoldering dream of youth
We can escape the don’ts and the whos
And we can have all the haves
And take all the wants
And kiss all of our promises goodnight:
Goodmorning, fight the setting sun
And never cry again

Why worry
Why spend silk satin sheets
On empty heads
And spill the vastness of the starry night sky
On no one but ourselves
We can forget the sorrows forever
Of yours without mine
And paint the bedroom a nice shade of green

A muffled moment when the light hit me
the people in the room, the animals
in the waiting room
The white pairs of hands disappearing
wild as silence

then I was back in it
The stillness of the morning
the bridge hanging,
swaying behind me
The smell of coffee
The smell of fresh coffee

I blink slowly
One eye opens first
My hands are cold
But I'm so
so warm