A shadow lives in hope for sunshine
An expectation endless
Lives unbound until

Where does it go after you are gone?
What of its soul, worth, and fealty?

Repaid by a blinking vacancy sign
Or shadow nirvana where it is always
Sunny and easy to hide

Home taunted and teased
Like Liars and thieves
Laughing among its denizen

How to be firm and fearless ?
How not to falter! How not to fail?

Desperate lonely cold midnight roads

Leathery faces full of mystery

The smell of his hair when he was twenty

Campfires in the snow banks

A thought; you will always be here

My always promises so vacant

We were always young

The flowers are beautiful on your tomb

I have been in a sort of purgatory since I left Chicago after our memorial for my mom.  I spent a week in San Francisco getting tested and papers and permits and green codes…14 days alone in a very horrible hotel (but a very nice prison)…one week at home with my dog and my love, Steve…got a bacterial infection in my intestines, went to the hospital, fever spiked at 102, but six negative Covid tests…

I finally felt my equilibrium returning to a new normal this week when I went back to work for my first day, and realized I feel my mother’s presence in myself most when I am teaching my students.  All the joy it gave her, the philosophy, the art, the outlet, the passion, the peace, the confidence, the courage, the risk, the reward, the scream and the silence of being a teacher in a classroom, in my childhood bedroom, in a café, on a sidewalk, a long drive, a walk in the wilds, or even shopping at the supermarket…she gave me these gifts, and they will never leave me.

I find ’her’ everywhere lately, and I know she was always there, always with me…I can read the graffiti of grief as it sprays across me all day long every day…there isn’t any me without her, yet here I am; me, without her…

I have always missed her, for seven years living in China, I have missed her every day…

Love has many unexplored depths…

It’s been 9 weeks since she died…just over two months…I’m still feeling so empty and angry and broken…I don’t know how to talk about her…I feel like I make everyone uncomfortable when I do…it’s the worst kind of grief because i’m feeling totally alone…when I was home and with family it seemed healthy…i could release some of these feelings and I felt safe…here, I feel I’m trying to protect my friends and coworkers from my grief…I’m definitely not okay because I still feel like I just lost the most important person I ever had in my life…I hadn’t seen her for two years because I was stuck in China waiting for Covid measures to get easier…it was the first place I wanted to go when I could…Our last time together was in Scotland…she came to help us find a venue for our wedding and plan the details…She also had never met Steve’s mum and it was an important connection for all of us…although they butted heads about some cultural differences, such as allowing children at the wedding and reception, they both loved the Athol Palace Hotel, haggis and agreed that we should certainly have a piper…



Mom loved the walks in the Tay forest and we took her to see the Burnham oak tree, last survivor of the famed forest from Shakespeare’s Scottish play…We had three lovely days in Edinburgh together, still my favorite city in the world, possibly becoming hers…then we took her to the airport and she was gone…

Gone…I’ll never see her again, never hug her, never listen to her laugh…she was my only parent…I am orphaned now, and the weight of it is sometimes too much for me…as strong as I feel like I am, I’ve lost something so precious to me it feels like I’m falling apart…tearing myself to bits over how I didn’t get to see her or I didn’t call her often enough…shaking my fist at the sky that we were just waiting for this terrible pandemic tide to ebb…we thought there would be time…

Time…we cancelled our wedding twice, thinking that if we could just wait one more year, everyone could be there…my Nona died two weeks before my mom…Nona was Jewish and had to be buried quickly...i couldn’t possibly get there in time so I settled for zoom…my last talk with my mom was me calling her to see how she was after returning from the funeral…my Nanny’s cousin Danny Murphy died this week…it just seems the time for me to lose everyone…I barely started to grieve for my Nona when I got the worst call of my life…

Life…It was a Sunday afternoon in the states but a Monday morning for me…I woke up, took ollie for a walk, noticed my sister had asked me to call her when I got up, but thought it was just a call…I got ready for work, left the house with all my bags full for the classroom…called a taxi, and called my sister thinking I’d have a chat with her on my way to work…at the gate to my community the call connected and she was screaming so much I couldn’t understand her…she said someone died, and I had to ask her twice who it was…she kept saying our mom…and I didn’t believe her…I think I actually said you’re joking…I put my bags down on the pavement…

She said probably a heart attack in her sleep…I stopped breathing for a long time…I asked if she was okay, where she was…she was driving back from the cabin in Michigan with the kids…and that she should go…I told her I love her and hung up telling her I’d call back soon…

Soon…I picked up my bags, texted work to say I couldn’t come in because my mom died feeling surreal as ever…walked back into my apartment and dropped my bags…sat on the edge of the bed shaking Steve and waking him up…I told him my mom died, and then a howl came out of me I never want to make or hear again…suffered a massive panic attack just there on the edge of the bed crying and shouting expletives…until it subsided into a chant of what do I do, I don’t know what to do, what do I do, I don’t know what to do…

Panic…Seven years in China…this was always my nightmare…having to get home as fast as I can no matter what…so I booked a flight for Chicago, not exactly home, but closer than China…I cried a lot on the way there…at customs in Seattle the officer asked the reason for my trip and I started crying telling him that my mom died and I live in china…it was hard and necessary…my sister picked me up at O’hare with the saddest hug, we both were so defeated, but my love for her renewed by her presence led me to make her laugh at least three times on that ride back to her house…I said I was used to missing her, that it was new to them but I’d been missing mom for years in china…she said maybe mom thought that I was finally going to be okay and maybe because of that she felt okay leaving us…

Left…The next day I went to her house, her bedroom, looked through her stuff like a thief…it felt awful…but again necessary…it was so hard to see her dog, Luna, her cats…her life, as if she was still there…to find her photos and what she kept sacred in little memory boxes…she was my favorite person, it was so hard to do this…I couldn’t stay long, and had to keep going back for an hour or as long as I could stand it every day I was there…

Tribute…I couldn’t speak at my mother’s funeral…my sister was incredible and gave a beautiful memorial…my brother couldn’t get through it at first and had to calm himself then on his second attempt made an amazing tribute to her…but I just couldn’t though I really wanted to…It’s an epic failure of strength on my part…I loved her fiercely and she loved my writing…I bet if she could have picked just one of us to speak at her funeral it would have been me…I just didn’t want to share yet, I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her…and it is so painful to think of final words…I spent the memorial sobbing to myself in between Noah and Sara Page…feeling her in my bones and shaking with the weight of her loss…

Dear Amy,
Some days the world is just perfect.  there is always that waking moment where unconsciously the simple life of worldly activity humanity binds itself to, our in-cognizant regulation of sleeping with waking life, where becoming awake isn't so bad; and we rise with no reluctance to leave behind the soft comforting jumble of sheets and pillows, nor that often insatiable desire to finish off the last dream the alarm delicately broke us from.  pulling on the jeans that feel like old friends with a gentle sigh of completion and peeking through the blinds to see the sun shine on freshly unearthed grass and swiftly surfacing flowers as I vigorously scrubbed my teeth - i knew it would be the kind of day i would want to write a cloying letter to a friend about and invoke all of Calliope's eloquence.  though it was at times uncomfortable it was hot like those very exciting first summer heat waves when you feel the sun baking off the asphalt after dark, reminding me of being called inside by my mom to watch Knight Rider and ****** She Wrote.  stepping outside i found everything to be going swimmingly as i went to my mom's (borrowed) car, even the parking space vultures that drive down albany's one way streets too fast dying for a place to park seemed less disgruntled at the shortage of spaces. i had an ineffable few minutes of joy when i was captivated by three young girls playing double dutch on the street; watching the beads in their hair bounce and the shrugging simplicity of missing a jump and the jump ropes going slack after a triumphant moment of chaos.  the exalting scent of charcoal barbecues filled the air and every stoop was an energetic symphony of grinning faces.  this afternoon as i wandered off the pathways of Washington park it seemed i caught a glimpse at least of everyone - a group of girls on a blanket with their Capri pants and tank tops rolled up as far as daring and fabric would allow soaking up the glorious sunshine and intensely talking about chris and jake's quirky concepts of romance as their radio belted out college rock songs...

I never finished this letter to Amy...I miss her every day

I fell for you
As apples fall to the ground
Soft landing
Days dotted with
Syncopated laughter
Our love is the wave
From spring blossoms
To autumn cider
Flesh to blessing
Ripe to keep

My bumpy taught me the word boobelachi when I was too little to remember my own age...he made it up of course, but it was and still is the word for seafaring snails for everyone in my family...My bumpy taught me how to turn a warm loaf of bread over and cut it from the bottom so you don't smush the top...it was a thing only he could know....We talk about The Cottage and The Bakery, that he and Nanny once had as if they were the only ones that ever existed...and I never cared to notice because they were the only ones I ever knew...Just like I know if I were here today, Bumpy would be yelling at me for taking time away from my work teaching here in China...He was my greatest supporter, my dearest friend, and my Bumpy...I will carry him in my heart for all of my life...and every boobelachi I see will always remind me of how much he loved us all.

circus peanuts; barely a candy
soft and full of sweet
orange and fake
like a boy who i once knew

chinese peanuts; so much flavor
soy and longan berry
brown and natural
like a life i used to own

peanut - former endearment
now a rat like dog
boy and life i don't want anymore

a phone call from a parked
toyota in hyde park
rings my desk in guadalajara
i have just settled an argument
about mopeds and fat girls
you're drunk, crying, hyperventilating and
i am booking a flight to chicago as soon as
i hear  your tenor

you begged me to come
charged me with childlike charm
that i was guilty of loving our sister
more than you, an outsider

never one to be alone, you
brought me home,
showed me Chicago

that hole in you filled now
you wish i was far away
so you could call in
every unsunny now and then

there are no words, we've said them all...so the silence comes to force us to feel the blows of sound...this empty what could have been...we would have been okay before you became a first...but you and i were never meant to go anywhere...it was just to see, just so you could say you knew

as if you ever needed to...you and i have always known that this wave would find a shore...the undertow of our wordshed, the roughage of all your rejections tumbled me across the floor of that ocean of false pretenses...

and only because i still haven't figured out just how full of **** you are, you deserve whatever happiness it is you've found...and i am becoming that prowling shark you still aren't scared enough of to stop taunting...forcing me into this canal, too narrow to turn and too little salt for the tears i warrant...until i toss you back into the foam to ****** the deep...

you are a terrible glutton...burning through all your friends and leaving a wake of discontent and writhing desperation like you're some kind of ******* rock star...

but i know what a frightened lost narcissist you are...and i always will...

you wrote all those songs
each lyric a shorthand
heartful message
that never left our lips
neither heard nor said

i wrote half those songs
it was so convoluted
each poem a missive
never imagined
i would be asked to explain

your heart breaks every time
it weakens my resolve
i am the last person you
thought they would ask to help you

was i in love or just alone? i'd been waiting all my life just to worry about now - could it just wait, can it all go away?  i'd been stopping to pick up every bird that broke it's wings and quickly find i couldn't mend them and they would be so angry with me that i couldn't just leave them there to die and when i would finally discover the road again i would cover my tracks with snow as i went so that it might be as if i had never existed at all, that i had lived like a shadow passing through and no one would ever remember my name.  

one day a black bird paused on my window sill, begging me to redefine love, i built my castle and put daisies on the breakfast table and that black bird sang to me and i knew the delight of sleep in a bed i was in so often that it was almost mine.  as soon as we claimed it for our own, he broke his own wings beating them against me and the walls.

I came in looking for an angel who could heal my broken wings so that i could get so far away it wouldn't be possible for me to ever be the same
i knew it was a sin to cage that black bird.

there are few angels that sing

the last time i saw you
you rested my head on your shoulder
stomach churning like sea foam
our kissing touch in this
homesickness for wrestling in your eyes
missing a heaven i'm not sure we had
trying to get somewhere in the density
in the dark of that embrace
but you are never going there
you wouldn't touch me
and i knew to leave as quickly as i could
i'll become a gone face
fallen, like embers,
voyaging away
like the waning pitch
of a siren
in the nighttime

somewhat soft like silky clouds
that crowd the moon august evenings
musical like the tinsel laughter
of summertime trees
some scared and simply lost
in these days where touch
is so furtive like fingertips
tapping at the soft of my waist
and i am wondering,
who's eyes will hold me up tonight

the rain used to sing to me through these old skylights...lead and glass that teach us to look up for the light...sifted through the flakes of chipped paint - stark white against the dust, leaves, old papers...like sifting ashes to save the bones...keepsake, a reminder...and the asphalt out there has turned to water...walking upon it you were like a prophet rising up into the streetlight like steam pouring from a manhole...pavement angel...that black bird singing to me again in your meditative silence...and you made it closer...heaven was only half as far that night...like some secret stone i must have stumbled on in a dream when i had seen your tears...i left daisies on the dashboard and thorns in the palm of your hand like nothing would ever be beautiful enough to show you...candles flicker in my bedroom to the heave of your last sigh hours after you've gone...you'd kiss off the shadows with a lover's eager lips and a child's curiosity for answers...you used to drive into me with this force of growth like a new born leaf, wet with dew, yawns and stretches into the day...i put my face in the sun, shut my eyes, bite into my bottom lip and think of when i pressed my lips against that place just below your earlobe with my chin on your shoulder...and the greed and taunt, the seduction, the clenched teeth, the taught thighs, the thrill of watching you wither into a pile of sweat and breath on my chest like you had seen it all now and if death could please just come now and take you away from all this now because you don't know if you will ever be this happy again now...and i lay beneath a wasted you, looking up for light, because heaven was only half as far that night...

returning is bittersweet, full of that madness of longing and relief...some homecomings are indulgent and pacifying...you really can't ever go home again...mumbling among the ruins of a childhood you are reluctant to belong to...pouring over the pieces of life that you once owned...culling the crowd in search of that one face that you need to see...and it is enough because it is all that's left you...

a portrait dodged on my mind
spotted and retouched
silhouetted in the grainy penumbra

a soft-focus smile with a motion blur
at the edges of the mouth
where the fixer could not hold

candid grey card hand pushing the negative
framed by the infrared cautions
my perspective agitated in my stomach

a stop bath of underdeveloped words
like a graveyard for my depth of field

those muted views from your apartment door
solarized in the albumen light of our distance

a carte-de-visite from your camera obscura
rapping on my ribcage like my heart is
enlarging and must be cropped

someone's misplaced a pear.
a sandy green one
there - between the turnips and onions.
the man in the striped red shirt
he's slapping price marks on braeburns...

your lips were hallowed ground
in aisle seven at the supermarket.
underground sundays in your arms
watching t.v. all day.

like a fog that drowns
first intentions wandering burrs
clipping from sleeve to sleeve,
my fool flesh tried to get somewhere
our kissing touch migrated as
if we'd never even heard of the ground -

watching warped window streaks
of scattered april rainfall,
a streetlight shadow symphony
on your bedroom wall;
my rumpled exhortations constantly
shocking the angel in you.

i didn't want to stay if you left
i'd be nothing to you,
a gone face, fallen like embers
voyaged away like the waning pitch
of a siren in the nighttime,
like i never existed at all

can you tell me that i don't
have a hole in my heart...
the world is home to billions of streetlights;
it has more to do with windows
than with the pleasures of flesh.
just to look, (is often enough).

if you walk away, I walk away
if you don't walk away, you will resent me
if you don't leave me, you can't let yourself trust me
if i don't walk away, i will never be sure of you
if i don't leave you, i can't forgive you
if i walk away, you will chase me
if you come back, you will be wounded
if i come back, i will be broken
this is emotion beyond my judgement.
this is love,
and i am not fit to be near it.
if you walk away, you will look back.
if i walk away, i walk away.

i walk away.

let's just say i'm doing fine
jonas says he's going back to california
the roughage of a thousand ocean floors
roll me into their waves and
strangle my heart instantly
pulling him away,
always,
all ways...

jonas and i are in the kitchen at standing on end
"i'm getting out of here, you know"
he pulls out the Gilly mug he always uses here
i read the wisdom beneath the scribbles of his hands

jonas left two weeks ago, i won't hear from him
he's living like a shadow, passing over, never sinking in
everyone everywhere he's ever been will never remember his name
none of them will know who he is

will our ties weaken or will we make
deeper grooves every time we retrace a step?
like highways after years of traffic

vanished...the body's limitless wealth of holes, how some are never emptied...intimidating to consider a lifetime of losses stripping awareness from my heart like demons pit-falling complacently from the apex of a carnivorous plant...

ruined...the body's limitless wealth of worries, how some are never conquered...my heart and my brain aren't speaking to each other anymore...

broken...the heart cannot really be scarred, it just heals back the same way it was before...this is why heart transplants are so successful...

broken fingers, happens sometimes between lovers...there is no treatment, you can stabilize the finger, to shore up the pain, but it isn't the finger that hurts....

there's a scar on my bottom lip
bruises on my memory i don't talk about...
there's too many freckles to count
constellations of moles -
nightmares gnawing on my sleep
sheep that turn to wolves
who walk behind me
whispering "look up, talk fast"...
my hips are soft
cheated by Gli Amanti's arrows
I believe in love
but I can't swing the burden

all the scenery was grey
cheeks and pink noses
carrying the color of the day
windshield wiper rhythms
passing dark bare branches
"you are my chicago"
not sure what that means
a friend that one day leaves
or the boy of my dreams...

bashed my own heart
into so many pieces
i know i'll never find them all
there will always be holes
our histories will haunt me
like a scar i want to keep
wrap myself in ice
brace for elevation drops
i can't drive far enough away
i don't want to stay if you go
invite the telephone to never
ring with your voice again

dedicated banishment
self inflicted, echoing
physical displacement
from permanent coronary scarification
devouring accidentally my lacerated pulmonary edema
cauterizing weakness into cement
thermodynamically frozen muscles

umbrellas on parade in your city
netherworld for my regret
disreputable raincoats rubbery ebbing
against a tide of discontent
ringing out like let-downs

fist famine in the ice box
where the ear flap hats and
rusted tin whistle tombs
ever after frost-framed faces
the color of very chilled blood
echo singular clapping
through institutional hallways

try to look to you
if we see i can go on
in this dark unquiet place
then i smile and
look at those eyes
we make good partners in crime
you and i
but you be strong
don't stand up to be counted

the beer in front of her is just about empty and she watches the foam slowly sludge down the inside of the glass with thinly veiled disgust...she manages a fake smile as someone nearby is telling a group of giddy faces another embarrassing story about her...she crushes out her cigarette so clumsily a spark of tobacco coal leaps out and lands on the floor...voices are traveling around the room and ******* up the lighting, sweeping the ceiling and splashing through the windows out into the city night...fairly drunk she steps outside and tries to remember what had she been thinking a moment before clacking down the stairwell in her most comfortable high heels...the early summer evening air is cool in the back of her throat and the breeze pulls the newly dark lime tree leaves spreading that indescribable scent of mature summer green down the empty street...somewhere down the block a car alarm finishes it's cadence leaving the lone barks of a dog...the feeling she had about not deciding what to leave behind she'd lost somewhere at the beginning of this party...she'd find herself crying about this new regret long before she knew why...another addition to the myriad topics for insomnia that she'd write on the bedroom wall with her eyes...recalling the painful parts of the past with so much more depth perception than the good...like her happiness was an instant suffocated in years of desperation and insanity...she had to convince herself that she was happy with him...that she could be again...that she would stop wishing for him to disappear and leave her blameless for not loving him back...as it would turn out the wreckage was so minimal and she was the one forced to disappear...it took her two hours to pack and she was gone...

his breath washed against me
like the sea into a pier
in the brown gloom of his basement apartment-
the greenness of our unemployed summer days
halted by Arsenault's phone call

those deep azure ripples in the mohawk river
tinged with creamy moonlight
brought this life to the shore
here we go lie down, lie down-
a conjectural pernicious crimson tide

we wore black as midnight
like still, ominous birds
shrouded, our eyes a profligate deluge,
the cemetery inundated with pink brio
and the ****** yellows of inexpedient sunshine

calling the *** kettle-black,
a blackberry stain on the sheets of eternity.
the gun smoke clouded streets of Vienna
miles and miles of muscle.
birch bark littered pockets of november
like whirring needles
that sing in your heart.
the body's limitless wealth of holes,
voiceless, writhe out of our eyes
like lights in the sea.

for the friends i have loved and lost...i am not afraid to say the last thing i have to say to a long time companion...for i know that they have and will hear me...that it is the right and perfect thing to say, because it is me and all of my heart...singing as i go along so that i do not break...

she raised me, as much as my mom and sister did, and i thought i was different...that i wouldn't crack and divide...but i suppose sometimes i am that girl...who falls apart into a ball of tears...because my nanny is like the nervous system for my family, she's just too interconnected, just too big to fail...to fall...

and we always want the fall of our heroines to be graceful and gorgeous...but sometimes it's just bleak and plain...sometimes you watch your mentor, grandmother, caretaker, great friend, nanny die slowly...though it kills you and you fight for her with all this nervous frightened energy, this what will i do without her...

so i let my heart sing...because it hears her, it knows her, it is as much in tune with her as anyone else it loves...i let it be happy to honor what she wants...it's the closest i can come to praying...letting my heart sing and joy and bounce...letting it loose to the terror of my own embarrassment...

i will miss this, i will miss you...you kept the light on in the last homely house...i know that this will break my heart into so many pieces i will never find them all...there will always be holes the size and shape of you...

you insisted that i write my number down on the blank part of a mix tape...you used to slam down a beer like some kind of super hero...saw myself in your eyes and made sounds only you could hear...you'd press your lips into my forehead so fiercely it hurt; leading us deep into your distortions...

witnessed you spilling your soul into empty barrooms where last call came well before midnight...there wasn't any room in there for me...I made forfeit everything to stand in your arms; and how it lost me all I wanted...

I spread my palms wide across your ribs...curled my fingers tightly toward your spine and believed that you loved me...you turned on me and my wit...so you left me...I wanted to clumsily strew myself on your pillows and press my hand on your thigh, kiss your neck and giggle at your sarcasm...you convinced me that the flood of my insecurities drove you away, that i was the author of our demise...

we collide rarely...your eyes are always tired...you've built the Berlin wall around your heart...you have become a testament to the passage of time because I know I will not remember being the same...

you inappropriately love me but will never trust me...

you stand me in your arms, and it is like coming home after so many years abroad; we never will hold each other this way again...
our Rome became graffiti on my bedroom wall...
this undertow of wordshed always reminding me that I am not lost but I am not home...

she holds her breath as vacancy glitters around her.
violent silence forms this canyon of conversation...
rumpled and uncertain
their morning fog was heavier than expected
and she faked a smile.

the logic and the lover,
the patience and the urgency,
the misunderstanding a doorway...
the cold and uncertain streets of dawn,
the smell of the highway when she was seventeen.

she hears the dust talking of last night's storm.
voices float into the bedroom...
lunar and fragmented
as if the sky had let them go
long before her birth.

No. I cannot say that it's okay...i wanted to be the one to say that, but i let you in...let those scary unrehearsed parts of me dissolve into the dark of your three a.m. bedroom...allowing you to be close to me...believed in an us...trusted and had faith you wanted this, me...

No. i cannot say that i am okay...i came in looking for you to reject me... gave you every chance to take it back...constantly checking your temperature to see how much ground i stood upon, unsure if tomorrow was too uncertain for plans...your lips stamped reassurance on my forehead and hands tugged at my waist reeling me into your bed...

No. I cannot say that i understand...with you i felt joy and peace...you sliced through the silence with your early morning exhortations grieving for the pain you already knew you would deliver...raw passionate vulnerability...you ****** me so tenderly and moaned my name...smiled and met my gaze telling me your stories...i fell in love with who i am when i am with you and you cannot tell me why i won't feel that again...

No. you cannot tell me why you made a fool of me...connecting so completely disarming my heart with false pretenses...betrayed my self preservation and doubts to feel you closer to me...you watched me glow and giggle, sigh and shiver, kissed me long as if i belonged...as if to say "here's what you can't have,
lovely isn't it?"

No. I cannot be angry with you...i am aching with the salty sting of your tears as i held you to my breast...i do not want to hurt you or be painful for you...this is not who i am...i want to be the girl who lashes out with six hands and no hope to contain herself exploding into sobs when you say in cliche that you just want to be my friend...you told me when i just couldn't fall apart...

No. i cannot say that i will be the strong one...you will maybe talk to me a while out of guilt or self-esteem garnering reproach...and then disappear into the ether of somebodies i used to know...from whence you came...

No. you cannot tell me that i do not have a hole in my heart...dejected, replaceable, unlovable me...i doubt i'll ever know why, how you could do this to me...thought that i was coming home via chicago...traveled eight hundred and twenty three miles...you broke my everything down...

You are all those words left behind...the haunting almosts that were caught by my heart on their way to my mouth...
I am everytime you hold your breath... exercising patience and terror simultaneously...