I was so nervous the first time we met.
It’s the imposter syndrome,
and children are like bloodhounds, they can smell it on you.
I felt very much like an imposter then, before I knew you.
I felt like you deserved better than me.

Gigantic blue eyes behind big ol coke bottles blink up at me and down at the guitar in my lap. I know it’s your favorite.

I sing to you and you are my child.
Like all children
You belong to me,
To us all.
Your eyes on me like the china blue saucers in my mother’s house, the ones I had
memorized from years of use,
Familiar the way those things are.
You stare unblinking and I know you.

You know me, too.
Isn’t there a part of your soul you give away when you sing to someone?
You have in your pocket so many moments.
You’ve kept them all,
I know it.

“Hello,” you say.
You’ve never said a word to me.
I cry a little because you know me, too.
And we go on as we always do,
But everything is not as it was.

You said hello.
It’s the first time
I’ve ever heard
Your voice.

We lie here awake
we feel -are?- forsaken
to wallow in, what, rice?
while the Others eat cake.

We make do,
our own food,
our own clothes,
mend our shoes,

But at the end of it,
We Make.
while the Others eat cake.

Oh, they take.
They take.
Goodwill, deepfake.
They count on us to break.
We give
They take.

I never learned how to bake.
The science, the stakes,
I would learn for your sake,
I would teach you the lessons of my mother,
the lessons,
I hope,
will be taught at my wake,
and not smothered
by the Others
who are desperate for cake.

Making those
bad decisions
again.

They have a certain feel -
weight, taste, texture -
in the moment,
overripe fruit
warm water
tinfoil on teeth.

Just before you got sober
you told me about losing your shoes
night swimming in a river in Texas,
you and the top male officials at the conference.
The vice president tried to kiss you and I said,
you’re making
those bad decisions
again.

I cried on your couch last night.
This morning, I know how it must have felt
searching for your shoes in the muddy dark,
freezing and wet,
your hair dripping on the sand.

I was so nervous the first time we met.
It’s the imposter syndrome,
and children are like bloodhounds, they can smell it on you.
I felt very much like an imposter then, before I knew you.
I felt like you deserved better than me.

Gigantic blue eyes behind big ol coke bottles blink up at me and down at the guitar in my lap. I know it’s your favorite.

I sing to you and you are my child.
Like all children
You belong to me,
To us all.
Your eyes on me like the china blue saucers in my mother’s house, the ones I had
memorized from years of use,
Familiar the way those things are.
You stare unblinking and I know you.

You know me, too.
Isn’t there a part of your soul you give away when you sing to someone?
You have in your pocket so many moments.
You’ve kept them all,
I know it.

“Hello,” you say.
You’ve never said a word to me.
I cry a little because you know me, too.
And we go on as we always do,
But everything is not as it was.

You said hello.
It’s the first time
I’ve ever heard
Your voice.

What is it like to be you?
To see through your eyes,
To slip on your shoes?

Do you wonder about me, too?
Do you picture my life,
Consider my point of view?

Ah, reality.
A tricky little ****
In a suit of mirrors
To reflect what suits the beholder.

If time is a soldier
Reality is the battlefield
and the prize to be won
Or lost, as it were.
And we are.

Losing.

The last green leaf on the tree
And the labor-and-delivery nurse at hour eleven,
The ancient peeling bathroom wallpaper
And the old dog,
The third shift gas station attendant
And the 20-year-old converse at the back of the closet,
The moon in the morning
And the sun at night,
And me.

Alone in the living room
Clean and bare legged,
I’m holding up my end of the bargain.

We always seem to meet this way,
In the quiet alien landscapes of familiar places after dark.
The day’s events have been embossed upon the air in double negative and committed to the house’s memory,
the subjects of future dreams for unknown sleepers.

What is it about the living room at night?
This place vibrates with implied movement, yesterday’s air has been spent and collected,
the new day’s fresh chaos has yet unsounded.
The quiet is so much deeper here in the in between.
It’s the quiet, then.
The quiet is what I’ve been seeking.

So I slow my breathing and wait.
We didn’t plan this, she and I. We never do.
If it is pitch dark early morning and I find myself waiting alone,
I know that I was called here,
That there is business to attend to.
She always shows eventually.

How have you been, she’ll ask.
I’ll take a moment to collect my thoughts.
It’s been far too long.

In the unknowable eye of space
or heaven
The Voice of God sings
or does not sing.

It is up to you to decide:
Is silence absence?
Or is it the intake of breath
between phrases?

We the gentle
Are meant for
Sentimental
For charcoal pencil thumb-smudged skies
Over lamplit rented rooms on the Seine
Moonlight gauzey glamoured eyes
Grimy hands that write paint spin, throw clay,
that grab our grandfather’s violin at all hours of the day and play.
Mad with passion,
starving, raving, gorged on lush love-struck life abundant,
on rain-slicked splendor.

We the gentle
Bend toward each other in salvation as sunflowers turn inward in the absence of sunlight.
Salvation.
It’s all wrong
We do not belong do not belong.
Bloodletting stardust into the vents
Hearts rent and free bleeding
Feeding the over fed
No page or paint, no violin
No romance, no gods here
But Death and Dread.

We the gentle
Get no roses but see red red red with arms outstretched,
Fighting the tide
Soft bodies open minds
Not weak but kind
Once fruit, now rind
We aren’t meant for these times.
Clear eyed and noncompliant,
We who know the essence of Love Defiant,
Truth in muck, truth in starlight,
We feel the press on all ******* sides
To run, to hide

And instead sing, paint, play
Write.

This song is written on my heart.
Each note hangs in the air before turning to smoke
and we inhale it here in your little bed,
breathe it in as we have most nights since you were born.

Not so long ago
I was someone else
Who was not your mother.
You don’t know her,
the Me who spent months of her young life poring over the sheet music.
I still have it, teenage pencil scratch covering the entire first movement.
“Sticky top notes” and “written when he was going deaf!” and rows of chord forms,
glyphs,
a cipher.

(Did you know:
Beethoven was dead when Ludwig Rellstab compared the famous first movement of his Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor to moonlight shining on a lake?
The sonata previously entitled “Quasi una fantasia.” Almost a fantasy.
The sonata written in blood from a broken body and a broken heart.
Poor dead Beethoven. Our art is truly not our own).

It strikes me odd
that a song such as this one
has become what it has become.
Radiance in despair, I suppose,
is universal in its bright raw frankness.
We stare. It stares back.

Tonight, blessedly,
that chasm of grief alive still and forever in the delicate weaving vines of plaintive melody stemming darkly from it
is far from your door.
Your breaths are slow and even now.
The song closes,
as it always does,
trying and failing to claw out of the darkness.

But you don’t know that.

Tonight it’s just a beautiful song.
And I am no one else
but your mother.

Full moon in Pisces,
aching broken fullness
desperate, hungry fullness.
Alarming.

We’ve been here before, you and I.

Ah, you give yourself away -
a lingering hand,
the curve of the small of my back
alive, electric,
hot beneath hot fingers,
fabric barrier thin and waning,
pressed.

We’ve been here before.

There is supple space,
a secret green bud
within the tangle of autumnal shed
for you for you,
thought dead now glowing
hot and red
tenderly doomed,
a September tomato.

Pluck while it’s still green;
we both agreed
there’s no other way to go
but to seed.

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.

Ah, nothingness.

No joy, no stress.

Well? Unwell? Depressed?

Survival, more or less.

Ah, nothingness.

Wake up, get dressed.

Work, go home, re-nest.

Sleep but never rest.

Ah, nothingness.

Alive and dreamless.

Me? Oh, fine, I guess.

Can’t stand in the way of progress.

Don’t disappear.
Not today.
The humidity is too low,
The vibration of baby insects hums along the ground
Surely you hear them.
Tomorrow it will still be springtime
And the day after that.

You can’t disappear, you’ll miss the fireflies and the August lilies
You’ll miss the homemade garden salsas and the baskets of eggplants and basil and sweet peppers
You’ll miss the crunchiest leaves under your shoes
The feeling of warmth after cold
The November moon.

Don’t disappear,
The wide world needs witnessing
And you’re the only one with your eyes to witness it.

There’s a family of bullfrogs nearby
Their cries rise and volley
Shimmering in mezzo-soprano melancholy
A torch song to the new moon,
Pleading her silver bloom
return to the black spring sky.

It was you
Who embodied brokenness
So long ago
When my skin was soft and pale,
Lineless as the summer sky.
Clear eyed, then,
In everything but you.

Tonight it is the same
I know your name
Your number by heart -
Now so scarred it
hardly bears the beatings
Of that forgotten mottled sweetness.

And you’re still broken
And I am healed,
healing.

We catch up, old friends.
Flowers blossoming in the wreckage
Of a felled tree.

Oh, to again be nineteen.

We venture into the storm
Against my better judgment
(I’m ready to go home)

The wind kicks up
And a thousand
No
A million flower petals
Swirl around us frenetically.
Great beasts of raw, hungry light snap their jaws
Not so far away

You aren’t scared,
Your curls wild in the dark.
The storm, you say.
The storm, Mama!

The sirens, now,
And the rain,
And so many flower petals.

We turn and head back inside
To wait a little longer.

The darkness is
alight with static
filling the air,
washing the barren ground anew.

She sleeps just there,
I see her from the ceiling,
measured breathing,
stealing dreams from the ether blue.

On this snowy night
may we each be warmed  
against this frozen blight
with the promise of summer’s dew.

It’s an off/limits
Soft recovery
Self discovery

open gift
Private invitation
Self gratification

I heard you say
Shoulder and nape
Honey and hay
Sweet as a grape

In the photo, the grass looks silver,
not dead and brown at all,
but vibrantly,
defiantly alive.

Not dead, no, not at all.
Just different than what I expected.

Here I am,
sick again,
a small pile of cough drop wrappers
growing on my nightstand

It’s spreads,
they say,
from brain to body.
I can’t speak, can’t scream,
no one would hear me.

Stress wins today,
it got my best.
Tomorrow I’ll fight,
today I’ll rest.

I used to be a *******.
Now I’m just dumbfounded.

The afternoon sun makes the living room feel like a day at the beach.
River seeks the ripest beam and plants herself, closing her eyes.
The weekend suits her.

Your hair falls into your eyes and you push it away with your whole palm,
fixedly engineering the tallest tower in human existence.

I walk to the wall and pause the clock.
Everything freezes.

The threads of childhood are just beginning to weave around you,
funny how I hadn’t noticed.
Your hand is suspended in pursuit of a block,
your face intent,
your blue eyes shining with bright determination.

I tuck a stray curl behind your tiny ear.
What kind of person do you see when you look at me?
What kind of person do I want you to see?

The clock clicks back into rhythm with the universe, ticking and tocking once again in its forward march.

“Look Mama! A tower!”

Your hair falls into your eyes and you push it away with your whole palm.
River snores.

Such times as these,
we bottle our moments like wine,
hoping for feast,
preparing for famine.

What I’d like to impart to future generations
is that it’s completely okay
if your teeth
are a little
wonky.

Bleed your heart for paint.
Dip your pen into your veins,
Wring the refrain into the fine mesh colander,
boil your water
And feed it to your daughter.

Winter noisily clears his throat.

“Good Christ,” he says, “I just can’t shake this thing.”
He theatrically spits,
paTOOey, like Clint Eastwood,
into the Great Lakes region.

(Another record-breaker in Buffalo).

The Wind hisses, snaking through the dead leaves that carpet the frozen forest floor.
“Repulsive,” she mutters, and the waving grasses nod in agreement.

Winter is not in the mood. He freezes the grasses where they stand.

The Wind shimmies up the nearest tree and settles herself on a boney limb. It sways gently, as if underwater, and a few lean grackles startle and take to the air.
“What’s eating you?”

The sky will be the same color all day,
so it’s difficult to tell the exact time.
Could be nine or noon or 4:30.
People hate days like this,
but Winter relishes them, revels in them. Nothing comforts him more than an oppressively slate gray sky.

“I scheduled my favorite sky today but I can’t enjoy it. I think I’m getting sick.” He summons up another storm and accidentally drops it, this time on New Orleans.

“You’re getting sloppy, old man,” she says flatly. Winter is blustering and aggressive and gets on The Wind’s nerves when they have to spend this much time together.

She arches her back and sighs in irritation, disturbing the surrounding fauna. From the canopy above erupts a cacophonous flurry, jarred from their roosting place and screaming into the air: cedar waxwings and white-crowned sparrows, dark-eyed juncos, mourning doves and a lone red shouldered hawk, which arcs above the rest eying them hungrily. It selects a small sparrow and abruptly knifes down toward it, effortlessly slicing the sky in two.

Winter and The Wind watch quietly, interestedly. It’s one thing neither of them has control over. Fate.

Evolution and animal behavior can be influenced to a degree; landscapes and eco systems crafted; civilizations built and destroyed as quickly and easily as drying up a river. What’s written in the stars, the plot and grand finale of every living being, that’s a different department entirely.

Winter leans in,
“My money’s on the big one.”
The Wind rolls her eyes,
“How on-brand. I would have bet on the little one anyway.”

The two birds, predator and prey, swoop and dive gracefully through the dark daytime sky, a carefully choreographed dance imprinted on each of their DNA since the dawn of their creation. The little sparrow is fast but the hawk is just too big. It will clearly catch her.

“I think it’s because I’m overworked,” Winter looks at The Wind, continuing. “The snow quotas were raised just about everywhere except my usual route, you know? The Poles are really starting to freak out and it’s like, I’m telling them, sometimes you’ve gotta give a little to get a lot. I don’t want to promise them a new Ice Age just yet but all signs point to yes. It’s time for another big boy freeze, Wind, I can feel it in my bones.”

The Wind is still watching the birds. “We can only do so much planning right now while everything is so unpredictable. My schedule has me fanning California wildfires this season and it’s a real drag. I didn’t agree to this project, but you can’t just say that, right? So I’m there, I’m doing it professionally, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s a little outside my scope. Like, wildfires in the Palisades? I spoke to Fire and do you know it wasn’t even on her calendar? The extinction process is always so laborious and disorganized.”

The hawk is climbing altitude now, it won’t be long before it goes in for the ****. Exhausted, the sparrow flutters weakly, unable to give up.

Time briefly suspends, then a flash of feathers and talons and beak and it’s over. The little sparrow dies silently and maybe even gladly. She was so tired. Away, away, balanced upon the line of the horizon they both go, away to a nest or a cliffside to both fulfill their roles in the divine comedy.

“******* Nature.” The Wind has sat with Winter this way for aeons, since the birth of this place. She always bets on the small ones.

Winter smiles at her. “It’s been a long time since I had an Ice Age.” He clears his throat again and makes to rid himself of it, but The Wind cuts him off.

“You’re disgusting, I can’t sit here with you while you snow, it skeeves me out. I have a meeting with a weather system over the Baltic Sea that I can’t be late for anyway. Look, if you’re sick, you should rest. The next Ice Age can wait.”

She blows him a kiss and is gone, and the forest stills.

Winter is alone again. He begins the satisfying work of preparing for the evening’s offerings: black velvet darkness beneath a swath of gray expanse. An ice storm in the wee hours will see a glorious sunrise in a crystalline wood, the light dancing and refracting joyfully from blade to base to branch. He enjoys Wind’s company but doesn’t miss her. No one will lay eyes on tonight’s workings but the forest creatures and the celestials. This one is for them, and for the white-crowned sparrow. She deserves a holy funeral.

The hawk, back in its nest, gazes steadily at the slate gray sky. Night is coming. The hawk breathes in and out. In and out.

In.

And out.

We eat dinner together,
discussing the houseplants.
Is tonight a good night to give the dog a bath?
No, we decide. It’s a little too late.
Almost bedtime.

I change you into your pajamas,
and you resist.
You’ve been rebellious tonight,
trying out your independence,
walking around in it.

Daddy does bedtime:
it’s an easy one, you go right down,
and the whole world gleefully burns.

401 miles away
The oft handled Ceremonial Old Testament has already been presented, the rituals completed, and the ancient book returned to its resting place where it will wait to again be summoned.

The plans are laid and known by those present,
But let’s not talk about work, shall we?
The imagination fails to conjure limitlessness
As anything other than a yawning mouth
A ravenous, bottomless black hole.
The breadth of all Earthly treasure under the kingdom of heaven is laid before the expanding emptiness and
consumed
Consumed
Consumed.

The guests will remember this night for the rest of their short, comfortable lives.
The bounty of life, so plump and sweet, available to them each in perpetuity;
Yet how dreary, wouldn’t one say, to possess only one’s own life, own liberty, and so forth.
Thrilling to **** but so messy!
But then ah, to control the very right to existence while the people still live;
to hold their beating heart in one’s sweaty palm?
Exquisite.

I receive a text from Devin.
I ask them if they need anything from me.
We touch on the usual things and I miss them terribly,
Brokenhearted and blind with rage.

You are powerful, I say to them.
You exist.

And the band plays on as the demons feast on souls in Hell and the mausoleums lay cold and gray and still.

I saw him see me.

“Hello, ma’am? Miss? Hi, can I give you a free sample?”

**** ****

“Uh.”
Cue winning smile.

I had reflexively glanced at the store name, Bee & Co.
Bee is my daughter.
All Bees are my Bee.

“A sample. Sure, thanks.”

“Can I show you another sample? Just in here. I know you’ll love it, I promise you.”

No.

“Sure!”

****! Betrayal. I follow him in.

The space is unnecessarily large and aesthetically devoid of personality. White walls, glass shelves, side lighting. Small clusters of bottles and jars arranged on a table here, a shelf there. It’s giving Everything Must Go; it’s giving White Woman Influencer; It’s giving American ******.

“I’m so excited for you, you’re going to just die.”

I am trapped, and we’re off to the races.

“Have a seat.”

He’s good looking, sort of wolfish, this salesman. Early-to-mid 30s. Well-groomed, brown skin, black hair, gay. Pale and underslept in that giddy way that comes with overcorrection. Coffee? Adderall? *******? It’s that look, that hungry look. His accent is warming spices and hard liquor, and boy is he talking.

Words like

collagen
-medical-
<penetrating>

as he enthusiastically smears a glob of something under my eye,
“This one because it has the darker circle.”

His dark circles pool under his eyes and he intently explains the same thing over and over again.

Anti-aging,
lifting and tightening,
fine line reducing.

It’s a needy pitch,
Too thirsty.

Well what if I like my fine lines, I don’t say.
Crafted,
as riverbeds are,
as canyons;
Emblazoned, each. Earned.
Emblematic of my many lives.

(A door opens at the back; another man steps out. We make eye contact.)

The serum dries like Elmer’s glue on my delicate under eye skin.
It settles in strange places,
Pulls and distorts.
Discolors and cracks.

“I look older,” tapping it with my fingers.

“STOP TOUCHING IT!”

I stop touching it.

The mall is so close. Nothing is stopping me from leaving.

                                           (I don’t even want it).

We can’t afford it.
There. I said it.
                                                        (I don’t leave)
-aghast-
“You can’t afford it?!”
Pearls clutched.
“You, what? Are you serious?”
                                              (Why can’t I leave?)
Uh. Well. I have a family.

Brick.
I wanna smack him as hard as I can
Step.
I wanna be young and beautiful again
Brick.
I wanna burn this ****** to the ground.
Step.
I wanna apologize for being broke, for having bills, for ******* around.
Brick.
I don’t like this. I can get up and leave.
Step.
I absolutely have to make him like me.

But he’s irritated,
“We might as well even you out,”
As he slaps the goop under my other eye,
Still talking,
Talking a lot, a whole lot actually.
Too much.

Okay this is reaching a fever pitch and I was not prepared for the hard sell today.
His voice edges with desperation,
Shame on you for getting in your own way.

(I’m holding onto the tow line
The boat is unmanned
Reality has become unmoored
We are, none of us, truly in control)

“It will last forever, it will give you what you’re missing, it will patch up all your empty holes with collagen and kisses.
You can’t put a price on confidence
But I can tell you honest
I’ll price it half of where it’s at
To help you with the cost.”

I gotta get out of here.

“Uh.” Winning smile.

He gives me his card
                                                     (I don’t want it)
- His name “BEN” and an email address printed on receipt paper -

And with him is a torn box.
Something and something about something.

(What is reality anyway but a deeply subjective personal construct, tenuous at best, unknown and unknowable but for the rare fleeting glimpse between the gaps in the seams of the fabric of the universe?)

75% off. Because of the box.

The mirror is still on the table.

“Look look, it works, you look great”

                                                     (I don’t want it)

****.

****.

The mirror lies to me in a thousand languages as the glue shifts beneath my skin.

If you listen closely, I say, you can hear me shatter into a million pieces.

clink. clink. clink.

Ben and I skip hand in hand through the middle of the empty room to the checkout counter,
pirouette, arabesque, plie,
celebrating the space.
celebrating my face.

I am exhausted.

Ben’s hands are shaking at the counter. The WiFi isn’t working on the credit card machine. His hands. Are shaking.

“Uh.” Winning smile. “I’m really excited to start using this. Thanks for your help.”

He visibly relaxes. Has he breathed even once since I’ve been here? More employees arrive, they smile toward us. All men. All men.

I can tell Ben likes me now. He’s pleased, thank god. My whole being recoils at the thought of disappointing him, and I uncoil intentionally.

(Don’t think too hard about it.
You can’t put a price on confidence.)

I hope we never see each other again.

“How old are you?” He actually asks me.
A lady never tells.
“I’m 40.”
I’m 39 but getting the feel for it.
Forty. 40. I’m forty. I’m four hundred and forty.

I am ageless as time and vast as consciousness.

He feigns surprise.
I tell him he looks young.
He calls me cute and gives me a hug.
I turn to dust and blow away.

“Can I show you something? I think you’ll appreciate it.”

You don’t know me.

Winning smile.

“What’s that?”

He takes off his sweatshirt - “don’t worry” - and rolls up his sleeve.

A tattoo. Just above the crook of his elbow. He beams triumphantly.

                   TRUST THE PROCESS

I found out about the cancer at Bee’s first birthday party.

It was an accident, and who can blame him?
My father was visibly beside himself
So I asked.
He answered.

That’s how I found out,
But you know how it is.
I already kind of knew.

This year,
This year,
Was a year of gains and losses, alright.
More than any other year, I think.
Gains and losses.

How do you measure, measure a year?
My mother is alive.

Happy New Year.

Well, I like me,
I say aloud to my reflection,
Wiping a tear from my cheek.

I’ve been in here awhile.
Time to get back to work.

****.

I ruined my coffee.

Distracted and

Dumping

Creamer after creamer

To achieve desired lightness.

Turns out,

Trying to mask the bitterness

Made everything worse.

Do I drink it ruined?

Or not at all?

****.

Burnt and bitter is better than

Clotting creaminess coating my throat.

My final coffee of the year,

Of course it’s a teachable moment.

Something something authenticity.

I wish I had more coffee.

Who has time for this anymore?
My heart is pounding at your door
You seem to think you have forever more
As my heart pounds, frantic, at your door.

It’s not a promise, a tallied score,
It’s not an exposed rotten core
I wonder, is this what we’re dying for?
As my heart pounds, frantic, at your door.

You mop my body from your floor
My pleas unheard, my cries a chore
I wash up on your pristine shore
As my heart pounds, frantic, at your door:

You broke my heart today.
I worked your words around my mouth
And spit them out,
Each one a traitor to my tongue.

It’s funny how a dark red wine mood
Can shatter one’s bones.
Maybe this would hurt
If the neuropathy hadn’t set in
So heavy.
You know the numbness so well
It’s as if you feel it yourself.

I’m glad you’re free of grief
But the pain
The pain
You breathe it like fire
All of us alight in the heat of its flame.

I caught you in a dead faint
And set you on your feet again.
You’re not who you used to be
But still, you’re my sister.
That has to count for something.

Now we choose
The fights to fight
The end is nigh,
A coming night.

Now we break
Our jagged vow
Unspoken word,
An unwiped brow.

Now we cast
Our eyes aground
We break our hearts
To prove the sound.

Now we scream
Or hold our breath
We live our lives
Or die our death.