I don’t know how to tell you
that I can tell how hard you
are trying
just by the sound of your voice,
it doesn’t rise and fall like
a never ending tide the way
it used to, it doesn’t make me
want to hang up the phone and
jump off of a bridge just so
I could feel like I was killing
one of our demons
before they could ****
one of us.
I don’t know how to show you
how proud of you I am
for going as long as you have
without slipping back into
slow suicide, without going
back to being absent from
my life like you were
before.
I don’t know how to tell you
that what you are doing
for yourself
is also a gift you’re giving to me,
for there is a strange contagiousness
when somebody starts to
take care of themselves.
I don’t know how to tell you
that just because things are getting
better doesn’t mean
that everything is now automatically
okay, because it’s not and
there are still knots that I’ve tied
in between my ribs and the backs
of my eyelids, things I have
promised myself to never give
or tell or show you
ever again.
My heart is thawing and that is
a choice I have made and I am glad
I am making it.
Life is too hard with a hardened
heart but that doesn’t mean
it can thaw overnight.
I can feel it slowly softening
with each passing day,
though I still scare myself
with what I can remember.
Darkness remains
but I am no longer using it
to fill a void.
And I am glad I can look you
in the eye and know
that you’re trying your hardest
to see, to really see
me again.

Sometimes I want to ask
if we'll ever get back
to normal. If the hospital bed
will disappear from the main
level, if the endless stream of
doctors and nurses and physical therapists and reflexologists and acupuncturists
will ever pass us by, if maybe
a night without the squeaking
of bedsprings and the helpless shaking
and gasping of another seizure being
broadcast throughout the house
will finally come, if just maybe
when I say goodnight, you
will have time to look up
and see me standing there.
But then I remember that
the word "normal"
has never been heard in our house
without the harsh sting of comparison, and
this is our life, now, as
we have changed so many
other times. Who knows
what "normal" is, anyways.
If I ever did, I have forgotten.

i have found what you are like
the rain,

            (Who feathers frightened fields
with the superior dust-of-sleep. wields

easily the pale club of the wind
and swirled justly souls of flower strike

the air in utterable coolness

deeds of green thrilling light
                                  with thinned

newfragile yellows

                      lurch and.press

—in the woods
                      which
                              stutter
                                        and

                                              sing
And the coolness of your smile is
stirringofbirds between my arms;but
i should rather than anything
have(almost when hugeness will shut
quietly)almost,
                  your kiss