I am terrified
of nightfall--
A time when
I succumb--
Consume myself in
sweet revulsion--
The sun dwindles
and I--

I'm just beginning
to rise.

Do you know what infinity feels like?

It feels
Like rain rushing through your veins.
Like fire in your fingertips.
Like the scent of opportunity.
Like an earthquake is wrestling every brick of apprehensivity out of your bones.
Like a scream is stretching its arms out to reach for life outside of your body.

So you have to respond.

You have to
Drive at 80 mph with your best friend or lover when it’s too late at night to feel responsible.
Roll down the windows.
Turn up your stereo as loud as it goes.
Close your eyes and shut them tight.
Stretch your arms out the windows.
Tilt your head back.
Sit still.
And let it trample you like a stampede.

As you sit still, you must take it all in.

Embrace living in that perfect moment.
Embrace being who you are.
Embrace knowing that person in the driver’s or passenger’s seat.
Embrace love.
Embrace music.
Embrace the night.
Embrace being alive.

And let go.

I find it
startling
How much I hold onto
The poem you wrote for me.

A few typed words,
now on a tattered sheet of paper
(isn’t that just how we are—
tattered?).
Maybe it’s because all you feed me now
is a few cold looks,
a half dozen half-smiles.
But in this flimsy, poetic dénouement,
I have tangible words &
evidence of your unexpressed perception.

I hold onto your poem
  (my poem)
And won’t
         (can’t)
    let you go.

I pray that the pencil smudges from
your first draft to me
still linger on your fingertips.
May they cause you to think of me
and write me again.
Whispered tremors on wavering pages.

I pray that I’m not the only one who
loves to long for what we could have been;
the scent of your skin on mine.
May those pinings sing you a lullaby
as your window lets in that cold, cold draft.
Eyelids heavy and body aching.

I pray

You write.

I have begun to paint our portrait
like a woman in love would do;
with your hands on my waist
and my arms around your neck,
nose nestled into your chest.
But as the final touches occur,
(I save your glasses for last, for
the light’s reflections on the lenses were what
caught my eye at first glance.)
I turn to you to get them right and

You
slip
through my grasping fingers,
slick & slippery you.
I beg and I try to hold onto
your glowing face
your shining hair
your haunting voice,
but when I open my paint-smothered hands,
you’re no longer there.
Like the lost back of an earring,
I retrace my steps,
wondering where I could have possibly misplaced you
                          (done wrong),
and stumble upon the truth:
as the paint dries upon my hands, I realize
I have forgotten my name.

And as I wash my hands
(of you?)
in the bitterest of waters, I ponder
how terrible it is to be forgettable.

I leave the brushes on the easel,
the paint pots out to dry and crack,
and the canvas is left
without your best feature.

I.
Something happens
When I finally allow myself to let you see me.
You look up a little, over your glasses,
And I ache
In my disbelief that,
Like a ghost,
I felt your presence, I saw you,
But you were not
What I thought you were.
And I wish I could have touched
Your translucent skin and wavering breath,
For then I may have held you close,
If only for a fleeting moment,
Before feeling you disappear.

II.
I could have loved you.
So close to feeling like I couldn’t let you go.
And maybe I did, love you,
Because who says love has to be like
That last stubborn bit of gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe?
Can it be like those last days of a cancer patient’s life:
Terrifying,
Yet at peace with the risks of each passing moment?
No; loving someone,
Really loving someone,
Is like standing on the edge of a cliff,
Where there’s always a risk of falling,
But the view sure is
Beautiful.

Something happened when
I finally allowed myself
to permit you
to see me.

Those eyes of yours, brimming pools,
reached so far deep into my being,
drawing out emotions and thoughts I was afraid to ever show you.
Your nose just breathing space away from mine,
a breath caught in your chest;
It happened—
I let you in.

And I think you recognized it,
for that gleam in your eye let me know
that you’re in it, too.

This is but a bittersweet, diminished thing that we both hold onto,
even after the time when tears filled our eyes.

We’ll never let go, you and I.

“I want to remember you like this,” you said, as you looked at me through fogging lenses.*

And I, you, like this.

It was in that moment we allowed ourselves to gaze upon
a last tattering photograph of when we were whole.
One last kiss,
one last woven catalyst of fingers,
and I held your face in my hands
and whispered, “You are incredible.”

But we just couldn’t be.

M.
You wear purple well.
So well, I slip from my chair.
Blushing red, bruised blue.

~
C.
My hand on your face.
Why you placed it there, who knows?
Our bones feel reborn.

~
P.
Coffee dates with you:
I’m in love with our laughter.
Why’d you bring him, too?

~
B.
I can touch your fear.
I approach with forgiveness,
But you maintain walls.

When I think of you
or of what you could be,
all I can know for sure is that
you are beautiful.

Sometimes I imagine you
with a curtain of ebony hair
(sometimes it’s red like the sunrise we see
as I drive you to school each day)
and a stack of books cradled in your arms
(sometimes you ask me to read to you—
Langston & Lewis & Luke’s Gospel).
You say phrases like:
“Momma,
(Oh, just hearing you call me so!)
I hate boys;
all I want to do is read,”
--A woman after my own heart.

But even if you inherit my
troublesome, rebellious brown & gold curls,
and you fumble with a tennis racket and those yellow-green bullets,
a gym bag slung over your shoulder,
I’ll still want
to spread peanut butter on your crust-cut-off bread,
to tuck your sheets in on your little twin mattress,
and search for that lost ladybug sock in the dryer
(but only because it’s your favourite).

I know you’re beautiful;
not because of your genes,
or because you’re my daughter,
but because you’re completely you,
and I
       (already)
love you this way.

Faces & meaning,
the artist offers answers
in his canvases:
a woman’s thick, black robes
cannot completely express
the turmoil her creator bears.
He points the words
Come See Mother
Come See Mother
Come See Mother
like urgency is bleeding
from his brush;
a final plea
for his creator.

But even though the painting
wanders in the minds of many
days after they have looked upon its majesty,
the artist leaves his disconnect
his frustrations
his screams
on the canvas.
Putting the brush to bed,
he steps away, fulfilled,
like the tails at the end of a scream…

only to unknowingly alleviate the young girl
who walks into the gallery,
like a child raiding the fridge for milk
in the middle of midnight,
only to find it and a plate of chocolate chip cookies
left out
*just for her.

In this room,
a quiet room,
my dear friend
plays the piano
(he sighs into the ivory keys;
his fingers urgently pushing them
to their limits.)
                                  &
tunes his voice.
             (“I’m gonna make a lot
              of weird noises,” he says,
      aahhh,
        aahhahaaahh
                       ­ &trills.;
              Up to the ceiling, his voice goes.)

He pushes&pushes;&pushes;
his voice,
echoes&echoes;,
his eyes,
              closed.

A smile
peeks out through the syllables caught in his cheeks
while his feet aimlessly step upon those three little pedals,
as if he’d just been doing
the daily commute to and from work.

I sit on the floor,
a floor dusted with the footsteps of ***** shoes and
the result of lonely instruments.

I listen.

After he reaches that high C,
I look up at him and smile
and he looks down and smiles
and for a moment,
all of the pains I had
before I knocked on his door
dissipate into the air,
as beauty radiates in the room
in the form of eighth & quarter notes,
Italian & French,
aaahs & the silence of
            peace.

Over Christmas
I was fine:
my grief’s appetite suppressed,
a comatose beast of tumultuous emotions,
for once, not ready to strike at the smallest
hush
whisper
smile
look.
No fits of rage,
no bouts of nausea.

But my beast slumbers only when
you’re not there
to beckon it,

and when your laugh doesn’t echo
through empty hallways,
and your little bubbles of conversation
with my best friends,
waking it with a bucket of hot coals,

or when I don’t have to dwell on
how your smile plays
hide-and-go-seek:
a fickle creature that desires not to face me
on a daily schedule,
mine is ready to strike at any moment.

For when I was “home”
in my mere shell of reality,
with nothing but numbness
& ignorance of your existence
to patch up the holes
in the tattered quilt of “us,”
if only for three weeks,
you weren’t there.

But now that I’m back and you’re back,
that hunger awakens deep in my gut.
It bleeds,
it scrapes.
My beast longs to devour
a portion of my peace,
hour by hour.
And with each passing
look of your eyes in my eyes,
fear in yours & a transparent loathing shield in mine,
I am nearly crumbled
in defeat.

People are fallible creatures,
infallible being, of course, perfect,
and therefore fallible meaning
imperfect?

The fall of man
The fall of an apple onto Newton’s head
The apple falling, half-eaten, onto the ground
where God questioned Adam.
Like a man, he blames another, and
Like a woman, Eve hushes her mouth
and takes it.

I, a woman, fall and scrape my knees
Outside in front of a crowd of young men
(boys),
and they do nothing to aid
in the pavement’s punishment for my clumsiness.

And I, a woman, stand
    (up for myself?)
knees creaking, tendons snapping,
brush the dirt off the hole in my
thick, black, bloodied tights,
and grit my teeth in waiting
for what will come next.

For, just because we are
fallible,
doesn’t mean we cannot stand up.

Movement One—The Death of the Day

I brought you to my quiet place,
where love and weeds bloom
on the hillside, a steep, steep place;
much better for rolling down
than looking up.

We closed our eyes,
those sweet, subtle sounds
whispering in our ears
while my fingertips scream,
aching to connect with yours.

And I wait
for you to be brave
and reach out to me
in this moment of openness
and fear of regret.
But you stay
still.

I yearn for you to feel the way I feel;
to say what I want you to say,
but you say     .
(nothing)
You leave my hands cold,
my hopes futile.

Movement Two—The Arson

But what you do,
you do with no apprehension:
you leap onto me,
a lion onto a waiting gazelle,
your hands ravenous for my flesh.

My lips have no chance to speak
as the spark they once held is extinguished
by your own cruel, white flames.

I can hear the smothering of my bones,
the last gasps of my heartbeat
as you pin me to the grass and burrs,
my hair entangled in my mistake.
My skin is the only thing that can speak,
as bruises begin to whisper
the evidence of my demise.

And I cannot lock the gates
as you stampede over my body,
tearing buttons, stretching fabrics,
and I hurt so much
but am stuck in the quicksand of silence.

Movement Three—The Rebellion

Why were you so kind?
Why did you convince me you were different?
That I was interesting,
that you don’t treat girls
THIS WAY.

I throw your impudence in your face
with my words,
without silence.
With my dignity,
without hate.

Movement Four—Like Air

Number 12, you were so fair.
Number 12, you did not break me.
Number 12, I am no ashes.
Number 12, I swallow you whole.