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.

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.

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.

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.

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-***** and injured -- some lost…

And that brings us back to Jane
Doe… a girl who feared the tears
that would come with bottom.

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.

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.