Everything is going to

                                         change,

                                                           isn’t it?

No one loves
a wilted balloon.

Chin up,
they say
You may float again soon.

Who will offer their air
to the wilted balloon

As she stays earth-bound
And dreams of the moon?

We eat a piece cheesecake out of a bowl together,
two forks.

A moment ago you were a puppy
and gave me kisses on my cheek.

I was broken today,
I wonder if you knew.

- And I would never burden you with my healing,
that is my own sacred task, my own journey -

But between toothy forkfuls of cheesecake
and puppy kisses,
I forget, for a moment,
the moaning of the howling winds.

Your beaming smile
Reaches the dark cracks inside me
And fills them all with shining gold.

I would never ask you to heal me,
but without trying,
you do.
With your radiant light,
you do.

It’s a beautiful day,
A Saturday.
One of those effervescent Spring afternoons  that buzzes with sunny activity,
a neighborhoodly kind of
picture perfect blue sky kind of
everything’s gonna be okay kind of day.

I stare at it from the corner of the couch,
through the window at the lawns across the street from the corner of the couch
and look down at myself.
*****, covered in soil from head to toe.
So bright, too bright out there
through eyes that have been languishing overlong in the deep brown black of the underground,
behind masks and walls,
closed for fear of opening.

They dazzle now and squint,
watering at the light,
not watering,
crying, crying,
etching riverbeds upon my ***** face.
How long was I down there?
Dreaming awake and automatic,
watching her water the houseplants and
comfort the friends
and rock the child
while I shoveled earth over my living form
to protect this vulnerable animal,
to bury bury bury it.

The noise doesn’t reach me
there in my cocoon.
It threatens now to crack my fragile sanity; though madness I would greet as an old companion.
I reject the invitation beckoning me from somewhere deep inside,
push push push it down,
and wave to my neighbor through the window
as he mows his grass.

It’s a beautiful day,
A Saturday,
and my senses pulse with indignation against it.
Back to the dreaming
where I will wrap my mind in cotton
and try again tomorrow.

Love is a ******* traitor.

I would do anything for you
If you came to me bleeding
or crying,
broken,
wronged,
I would right it for you
I would fight to decimate
the low down ***** *******
who dared to lay a finger on
the soul of
my sister.

One day we’ll be together again
and you’ll say what you say
and I’ll react or recind

but love is a ******* traitor
*******
I don’t have it in me to refuse
I’ll be there for you until I die
But I won’t suffer your abuse.

Today,
there was pain
and work
and realization.

Tomorrow will be the same.

I’ll allocate any deviation
to be microwaved into tea or stew
and consumed by a select few.

The contents of my self
are delicate and subject to change,
are easily manipulated and fragile and strange.

So I lay it all out
And walk away.
Tomorrow is another day.

It’s Marge’s.

Her hands planted the
peonies and the lilacs.
She chose the burning bushes that flank the walkway on either side, and the
boxwoods guarding the front porch.
The two massive pines?
Christmas trees from long ago,
legend tells.
Growing ever greater, choking the
light from the eastern beds.

Every day this week we’ve had rain.
Storms sweeping from the south, filling the
Ohio River past her banks toward
civilization.
She never agreed to the townhouses, the
bars and cars, the
soccer fields and parks and highways and boulevards.

I can always orient myself to the river,
despite my sense of no direction.
My gutters spill over, too, and water the multiplying weeds in Marge’s garden.
And the boxwoods, and the
burning bushes, and the
honeysuckle taking root in the old stone wall.
The rain waters it all, unconcerned which is garden and which is wild
Earth.

My mother is concerned. She is
exasperated to hell with me for allowing
Marge’s garden
to become ripe and full and wild.
She’s right, you know,
as a person of civilization,
the bars and cars and townhouses and boulevards,
the gardens of the generations who occupied these homes so long before us,
they demand order.

This garden isn’t mine.
It’s Marge’s.
And so the house.
And so the world.

But I can always orient myself to the river, the
storms, the weeds.
I am the wild things.

A river can
drown.

A garden
can be drowned.