You are a rainstorm in an Arizona summer.
I don't know whether I should hide
Or bathe in you.

Your lips taste of hope and home.

you,
unlike mom,
were always calm
and collected.
but you were so
oblivious,
you had no idea what she did
to me,
that monster you loved so much
was so unfair to me,
but you were too clueless to notice.
i can not blame you, dad,
she always put that mask around
you, so you couldn't figure it out,
even if you wanted to.

i cried for a month straight
when you passed away,
and mom was so calm
about it, i don't think
she ever loved you.

but i still love you, dad,
i love you in ways she never could,
i still love you, even though
your feet no longer walk
on this earth.

*and i am sorry, that i turned into
her,
so, so sorry,
i never wanted to
disappoint you,

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig
and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:
maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,
a cracked bell, or a torn heart.

Something from far off it seemed
deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,
a shout muffled by huge autumns,
by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.

Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig
sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance
climbed up through my conscious mind

as if suddenly the roots I had left behind
cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood---
and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent