As I listen to her last breaths, I lay curled on a hard recliner, sick to stomach and head, staring with her with the same blank blue eyes.
As I listen to her last breaths, I think what a cruel, painful and ugly world this kind, joyful, beautiful world can be. I think how broken and sad is her spirit, my spirit.
As I listen to her last breaths, I think of puppet shows and Mother Goose, of paintings and the blue bike she never rode. Of art classes and musicals, piano songs, of cheezits and coke. I think how sweet she is, even at the end and how lovely they all say she is. She is. Always.
As I listen to her last breaths, I think of high school yearbook pictures, of Hungarian Goulash, of sneaking to sleep at the end of her bed, of her notes to herself. I think of fear and worry, pain and disease. Of love and joy, of wit and family.
As I listen to her last breaths, I think I didn't appreciate enough, share enough, talk enough do enough, show how very much I loved enough.
I think I should tell her how incredibly strong - incredibly strong- she is.
As I listen for her last breath.

A road with no good end, and yet my heart takes the first step with you, intent upon the joys of the travel; and though I know where it leads,

Weak, I submit

At first, I am safe and good and muted, but through all the right moves - so wrong - you have awakened me, new and good. You have intensified me.

Releasing to your gaze, I forget how lightly my hold is on you. Your body, as I press into it, obscures the one day you will push me away.

The surge - electric and joyful - when I hear your voice, see your name, imagine your touch, masks the gravity that pulls me down, brutally hard and sad, when you break away.

I have no control over where the heart wanders or to whom. It demands, it desires, it determines.

Weak, I submit.

Opening my hand and letting go the one who touches me, reaches me, pleases me, who makes me vivid, takes more than I have. The road continues to call

Weak, I submit

I have a wound that was so deeply cut and painful, so sharp and real, a wound forged from the deepest desire and consuming fire...a wound that began to form when I first saw you as lover. It etched across my skin, pink, at first, as I realized that I would have you and lose you. One came with the other as inevitably the thunder follows the lightening.

And lose you I did, and the wound dug deeper and turned redder. The pain pulsed, overwhelmed and threatened to devour as you pushed me away. I thought I would bear the scar forever, a constant ache...but you pushed me away, and away, and away and then - at some point - I was away.

Is it worse to bear the scar of emotions so intense, or for the scar to heal so completely that you only remember in wisps the touch of lips to yours, the electricity of body against body, the union of minds and words and wit?

For my scar has faded so that I am left with only a sense of sadness, of loss, that I no longer understand the sharpness of the emotions that formed it to begin with. And if I sat next to you at that same bar, my hand on your leg, looking into you, would the hidden wound rip open and bleed my emotions, my desire, fresh and new, upon the dark floor?

Or - worse yet - would I feel nothing but the slightest tinge of what was, what was never to be, and what now, is not?

The phone wails at 4 a.m. and the wave hits,
with the force of a violent tempest
I take the blow...to stomach, to chest, to heart
Silently screaming loudly to drown the words

Outside, alone, I ask for signs of life in a murky sea
A lyrical, tinny sound surprises me
The song of the music boxes you gave
or only wind chimes on a windless night?

Led to the front of the church, eyes upon us
we sit on red velvet and listen to a life reduced to words
the ocean inside me that has raged for days
is miraculously still as if a godly hand has raised to calm it

At home, the coolness of the hard wood on my forehead
as I fold upon the floor
does nothing to relieve the crashing, the breaking
as the waves rush in and out...

pulling broken bits of me into the deep.