I am 4.
14.
24.
38.

I am 38 and you’re making me scrambled eggs.

You got the call and you’re making me scrambled eggs.

It’s the night before the morning of your transplant.

Old women sing of their mothers.
And I know I will always miss you when you’re gone.

But not today.
Not today.

I’m sorry, I say.
And you say, no. I’m your mama.

I’ll always be here to make you scrambled eggs.

I am 38.
24.
14.
4.

And we’re at the kitchen table. You’re so tired and I’m so little and it’s so late.

I’m sorry, I say.

And you say, no. I’m your mama.

I’ll always be here to make you scrambled eggs.

That sun is deceiving.
Faux fluorescence, fickle morning light.
In my eyes
so bright,
on my skin
cold as night.

Conniving contrivance of combustion,
yellow liar in the sky
feeding my hopeful mind
full of summertime delight.

Don't step outside,
lest you find
that sun is deceiving.
False light,
bitterly white,
dancing in the
azure heights.

I need permission
To break through this invisible forcefield,
To give you a hug,
And make it not ******.
Yet...
We both know
It not to be true.

Lou left!

It was an unexpected cataclysm;
A rogue wave in my face;
A flapping jib in the lightning;
A broken string
As I began Yesterday.

Today, I read his life's history,
His likes and loves.
I will replace that string,
And finish the song.
Before I forget,
Before too long;
For I was his mate
In many a storm.

It's so funny, my approach to life has always been this convoluted dichotomy of ideas and practices where I never wanted to give a **** about anyone or anything while simultaneously wanting to have a good reason to do so. I couldn't just chalk myself up to being an *******, I wanted the freedom of some diagnosable dilapidated mental state. Like somehow if I could just write my apathy and general laziness up to some kind of disorder then it would all be justified and I could feel at ease about just letting life pass me by and letting people who love me down, over and over again. The whole process has been so ******* and backwards that I started to feel like maybe my goals have been achieved, and by just working towards this contradictory state of mind I actually managed to make myself some kind of insane. The act of wanting to not give a **** about anything, whilst simultaneously wanting a good reason to be that way perhaps set me aside as the thing I wanted to be most in life: crazy.

     My father is schizophrenic, and he left when I was maybe ten or eleven years old but I never hated him for it. In fact in my adolescence I actually idolized and envied him for the freedom of responsibility that was granted to him through his diagnosis, I saw it as a boon in life. A way to cast aside the obligations every one of us faces in a modern society and just live day to day like nothing ever mattered. I wanted that same freedom, but more than that I wanted the same reaction that his behavior garnered from other people in my life. No one was ever angry, or hated him for how he acted. They all just pitied him and would spout throw-away lines like "well, what can we expect?" or "I'm sorry your father is so sick, Justin." when he came up in conversation. My mouth watered at the thought of all that precious pity, I craved that dismissive demeanor that people gave him. Like sighing when a seagull takes your sandwich, what else did you expect would happen? It's pointless to hate the animal because it's just doing all that it knows how to do. There's no sense being angry, or even disappointed. You learn to hide your food better next time but ultimately you have to accept that it's just a part of life, and the only thing anyone could ever do is just sigh and hope that it never happens again. For years I wanted that same sympathy, I wanted to be crazy and lazy and not give a **** about the people who loved me. I wanted to be just like my Dad.

     It took me a good twenty six years and my Mom having an (ultimately fatal) aneurysm to finally realize that this way I've been living my life would never grant me any semblance of freedom at all, and in fact the things I actually wanted the most were those same loved ones and obligations that I've been absconding from all this time. Not only were those the things that I wanted most, but they were what I needed to bring me that much craved sense of freedom and justification that I've been looking for all along. Now I'm almost thirty one years old and I think I realize now that my father was never free, never liberated from any form of societal norms or responsibilities, rather, he was just but a prisoner. Locked in a mental jail cell, a drunk tank within his own mind. He couldn't escape his inability to be a fulfilling father, he was locked up within his psychosis and there was never a key to begin with. I think now that maybe him leaving was more about doing the wrong thing for all the right reasons, and I mourn for his presence in my life and for the sorrow he must've felt when he said goodbye. I can feel his sorrow echo in my conscience, for I know that even with his cursed, so-called freedom of responsibility, the things he always wanted most was just to be able to be there for me. I don't hate my father, but I do pity him and I no longer want any part of that pity for myself. I'm still a lot like him, but rather than embracing the worst parts of who he is I try to channel the positive aspects instead. I try my damnedest. Besides, at one point in his life he was a man that my Mom fell in love with. A charming, handsome guy that had a relentless love for cars and games and laughter that went unrivaled by anyone else I had ever known, back when I was young and still spending time with him. He could cast a spell on anyone and illicit laughter and smiles, genuine and hearty joy.

     Those aspects are what I now choose to remember, what I now choose to channel and project. Because what are parents really? Just people who are trying to take all the best parts of themselves and pour them into their children. They're just people, nothing magic, nothing sacred, working at crafting us into better versions of themselves. To that point I say that he may have succeeded (though I'm still awfully terrified at the prospect of fatherhood,) and although what I thought I learned from his absence in my life was misconstrued in my mind for so so many years, the true lesson that he taught me is so brutally simple. To just be there.

Between autumn's offerings
And spring's wings,
Our winter lights are everything.
Crisp sky nights string tinsel streams,
And crystal air heils winter's dreams.

Poplar trees that snowed in summer
Are treasures held in winter's slumber;
Their branches hold in silhouette
Crowning stars that brightly sit.

Here dreams of flight and fancy thrill
Shimmering eyes on a gift-wrapped hill.
Shorelines once rubbed with reeds,
Are splashed by our moonlight beads.
Knolls wrapped in wreaths of herring bone,
Like sirens call us out from home.

Stars held in place with poplar fingers
Ring our ponds like carolling singers.
There nestled by framed winter scenes,
Our winter lights glint red and green.

These lights, that through our windows stream,
Bring to mind warm Christmas dreams.

I remember the first time I got high.

My boyfriend’s mom
Had bough croissants
The day before.

It’s Thanksgiving Eve
And these croissants
Are delicious.

There’s something so comforting
In trading in everything
The taking and giving
Of motherhood

What does it mean to be whole?
Shifting your insides around an additional soul?
The pain and the toll
Of motherhood

How to express
The vastness of universes
Alongside the mundane  
Of getting dressed in the morning?

There’s something so absolute
Something so boundlessly true
In the brown of the root and the red of the fruit
In the green of the shoots
Of motherhood

Exhaustion is a thousand starving mouths;
Insomnia, a single gnawing doubt.

There’s a monster lurking
Jerking
Working at the chains fixed to the wall

It’s gnawing,
ever sawing
Ever sawing through the gristled gall

And here I am
A traitor
Telling tales
Upon the bristled ball

Oh treason, tongue of daggers, poison apple take the fall!

I stare into the maw.

- - -

I wander through the mists of mourning
Pearls adorning every limb
As tears.

They drop and drip,
they pour in
waves, cascades
they coat my lips as fears

And warnings, death and din
And here I am, a berth of sin
A deer,

the headlights imminent,
the rain downpouring,
glistening and raw;

I stare into the maw.

It is rare that I see me in you.

Oh my word, they all say,
She looks just like her daddy!

They’re right, of course.
The snub of your nose, the sleepy turn of your eyes,
The golden autumnal hue of your shining hair.

No, I rarely catch my reflection in your mirror.

This morning, though,
you didn’t know I was looking.
You were staring out the window, music playing in the background,
At some blissful something in the cloudy October sky
And I flashed to the moon chasing the car when I was six years old.
Nine.
Thirteen.
Listening to Paul Simon and Linda Ronstadt with dreamy ears in the dark backseat of my parents’ old GM conversion van:

“Joseph’s face was Black as night, and the pale yellow moon shone in his eyes.”

And suddenly I’m blinking back tears on the way to the babysitter on a pearlescent early-fall day,
Fearing as sharply as hoping,

Please god let her have inherited the moon.

I should be asleep
Or playing the guitar.

I should be planning my next moves
Like the spider who lives in the screen door
Always weaving, weaving,
Catching her flies.


I should be asleep
Or playing the guitar
Or planning, weaving,
Catching flies.

Whoever heard of a person who just sits?

Yet here I sit.

Just.

Sitting.