For every life, a life must be given.*
Nature knows this well; my mind reels in
fascination and revulsion at Nature’s ugliest things.
I am caught in wonder and disgust for the things they do.
Bacteria that thrive on flesh, parasites that steal life from life,
viruses that invade the deep and make us their home:
these are the beautiful and terrible of Nature,
slipping past our defenses to make us give our lives for theirs.

Yet, humans are clever and wise.

Clever because we get sick,
and when we’re sick, we’re fighting,
We fight on and on, we get sicker and sicker,
and when we’re most vulnerable,
when our bodies fall around us, and we shake from the fever of battle,
all the beautiful and terrible cry out in agony and
what was lost is reclaimed in health.

Wiser because some know they can give their own lives
to help each other take back what was stolen.
That is what I know.
That’s why you’ll see me there on the day of the battle.
I’ll feed spirits with faith and love,
bring medicine that weakens the enemy, and hold soldiers’ hands,
give all my hours, days, and weeks to help fight the greatest fight.
And when the battle’s won, I’ll send up a mighty cheer, toast the troops,
pack my bags, and head for home, content.
We'll live to fight another day.

We still have time*, I hear you say, but
I know we don’t, not really, because you showed me so.
I waited years for you, practiced in my patience,
comfortably sure of what supposedly was certain to come true.
And then the day came when your hugs became hesitant and
your eyes stopped meeting mine with mirth across a crowded room.
Time ran out for us, while I was taking my time.
So, dear friend, please say what you feel, do what you must,
reach for the life you know you cannot live without,
for the hours may appear many and long,
yet it only takes a second to stop the clock.

Tomorrow, dear, I’ll write to you
a poem when our day is done,
our day together in the sun
under a sky that’s blue.

The poem shall not be too long
two verses, maybe three or four,
that say quite plainly I adore
the way your hands are strong.

I’ll tell you that you make me feel
as if I’m spinning in a daze
when your eyes hold me in a gaze
that’s filled with love so real.

Your smile, dear, I’ll mention too
and remember how it shone all day
while we talked all the hours away
under a sky that’s blue.

You can’t simply say
I thought of you today
for time merely blurs the past,
and cannot ever erase the fact
that you and I were once 16
and you were all there was for me.

It was only play and simply fun.
At the moment’s bequest, the deed was done.
In front of an audience, acting the parts,
lovers with all the words written for us.
Never your Juliet, never my prince,
a quick, cold, and business-like kiss.
The hidden truth you’ll never know?
I savored this moment that wasn’t my own.
I let myself go when I kissed you and sighed,
for I knew what love felt like, for the very first time.

Our dreams are best pursued alone, we say.
Our aims are too high, our goals too important.
There’s no room to hold someone's hand
when we’re seizing the day with both of our own.  
That’s what we agree, smiling.
And suddenly, there it is, in our eyes,
the unspoken question:
In another time, where we don’t dream so big or aim so high,
would we hold hands as we walk together in the sun?

One. Two. Three.
And then you exhale.
Your head is cradled in the pillow.
Your eyes are closed.
You are fast asleep in a very waking world.
It’s a noisy world, my love.
Machines are beeping, wheels are squeaking,
busy heels are clicking, clacking on a white tile floor.
It’s a world of firsts for me, my love.
The first meal bought in a gift shop,
the first night sleeping on a army cot,
the first consent form I signed on your behalf,
the first time I squeezed your hand
and you didn't squeeze back.
A world of hope and faith,
friends’ prayers wing to heaven,
and surround me in peace.
A world of fear and doubt.
I count the seconds until you breathe.
I will you to inhale.
Then exhale again.
Please.

Dreams of you frighten me more than nightmares.
I can handle the sight of bodies on the floor
and monsters clawing and biting at my door.
Neither so scary as dancing while music plays slowly
my head resting on your chest gently.
An attack where I’m weakest,  
I wake and I’m speechless,
rubbing my eyes, holding my heart,
The most terrifying dreams are the ones
that I wish were real.

After some months, I look for you everywhere,
In crowds of people at
places you’d never go.
In cars passing me on the streets of
towns you’ve never seen.

So much a lost part of me I look for you in
the mirror before I go to sleep.

Then in the end, I see you and joy.
Feelings that feel so strong,
they’ll leap out of my eyes and out of the smile
splitting my face to grab you
in a hug that lasts forever.

So much a found part of me that
two hearts beat in my chest as I go to sleep

I’ve found that my indefinable truths are hard to hide.
I can’t hold on to what I don’t fully understand,
it escapes from me unhindered by the label I've yet to stick on it.
Then how easily the world captures what I can’t even find words for,
how quickly it encircles what I perceive boundless,
for my truth must belong in this box or that box and
when it’s all wrapped up and labeled accordingly,
the world delivers my truth back to me, and tells me
I can accept and acknowledge or reject and deny this gift of a definition.
So generous, to give me options, yet
somehow I suspect that I have no choice, for
because I cannot define what I hold unswervingly and confusingly true,
the world and its definition will always appear more credible than me.

Actions more than words, my mother said
wait for the arms to enfold you as mine do,
for a sonnet won’t hold you in the bitter cold.
I waited, and in the cold that came
words passed me over as I sat sheltered
warm with my mothers arms around me.
I peeked from her embrace to wonder
sadly how actions matter more than words when
the words come few and far between.

Leaves emerge in spring when the winter leaves
and me too, leaving the arms that held me.
I live on my own, and when your words came with
actions to match them, I wondered why only one
should be so important and not both
because two is nice and better than one, like us.

when my mother asked me if I loved you,
I gave an answer elaborately crafted,
neither yes nor no, and full of platitudes,
a tale of loyalty and bond and trust earned over time.
I finished, and as I caught my wasted breath
she crossed her arms and repeated with gravity:
Actions more than words.
I understood.

I know. Days like this do come.
Days when I wake up and do everything right
but something small to supersize goes wrong so
I crawl to my cave of sadness and stress because it’s my life and
at the moment it’s about me and my panicked heart.
Yet then, a desperate call comes from someone loved and when I answer
instantly, it’s better—my life is no longer about me, but that someone.
Is it really a life unless it’s a life for someone else?
Do I truly live if what I have to give is given only to me?
Whether your wallet fell down the drain or the sky fell down to earth
you are still you.
And sir, you’re wanted on line one to give what you can give.
Live today for another panicked heart, and remember:
On the days when your own heart flutters madly,
I’ll always answer the phone.

I fall in the trap of lovesick lines,
ballads for my broken heart,
and dragging my world down into angsty darkness.
But I promise you I have more words for my life.
There’s that thrill of seeing a sunset sky in winter,
turning from the oppressive gray to that vibrant orange and pink,
warmth I didn’t expect to see in the cold.
There’s the nostalgia in eating a Chicago style hot dog on a summer’s day
at a picnic in the green grass that’s just right and
doesn’t stain my shorts or leave them damp.
There’s the peace felt the first day of wearing sweaters in the fall,
where my arms, exposed to the heat for too long
revel in wool covering every inch as I walk to my car with cocoa in hand.
There’s the hope fulfilled in hearing baby birds in springtime,
chirping in hunger in the birdhouse hanging by my window,
the first signs that life still exists in a world once frozen over.
There’s hope. Always. And so I promise with conviction,
there are more words for my life, because there is more to my life than you.

It hurts me to remember how
she and her laughter made you smile.
I wince even now, watching you in my head,
replaying the moment you used your eyes to speak
with her in a way I thought reserved for me.

Friendship has boundaries:
boundaries once overstepped are hard to renew.
I crossed the river
and tried to cross back for both our sakes.
I maintain success. I must. For us.

But thinking how she came so close,
how if she’d chosen you instead,
how if she’d danced you to the end,
laughing all the way,
My constantly crossing rivers heart cringes.

It’s very true.
While walking in the street,
jealousy is often mistaken for romance.
When the green monster strikes,
friends seem guilty of unfriendly desire.
Fallaciously.

Jealousy judges not.
At least not that way.
A jealous someone is not (might not be) in love,
but is (most always)
wanting to be someone’s only Something.
And that Something could be anything:
French Tutor, Designated Driver,
Babysitter, Secret Keeper.

So when we’re walking in the street,
and you ask me why I’m jealous,
you answer your own question saying I’m in love.
When the green monster strikes,
you accuse me of the passionate crime.

My friend, all I want is not you.
I just want to be your only Something.

I don’t remember what I had for dinner yesterday
I walked out my door forgetting why as I locked it,
my shoelaces didn’t tie themselves today like they usually do.
Also, I called my friend “Mommy.”

But after certain ungodly hours spent between pages:
I can spell the names of all those ancient Greek poets
and recite the tragic tale of Dido, the Carthagian queen.
If asked, I might outline the life cycle of a fern and
tell those (few) who want to listen exactly how
cells communicate-cascading signals down in a waterfall.
I know the ratio in which certain atoms combine,
in a dance of mutual benefit and energy.

Yet my keys, sitting right there, in front of me,
on the desk where they landed five minutes ago,
play a hiding game as elusive as that thought
which forgotten, tugs at my mind, trying to tell me
its name, trying to tell me the terrible truth that
I didn’t brush my teeth this morning.

Memorizing makes an absent mind.

When I look at a picture of me,  
I don’t really remember the person in the picture.
Who she was and how she saw the world.
I can educate my guesses.
But they are guesses only,
based on what I don’t really remember to be true.
Because I am not who I was (any number) of (anything) ago.
One, two, three, four:
years, months, weeks, days, hours, seconds,
ice cream cones eaten, smiles given, frisbees thrown, breaths taken.
I am the sum of all my moments,
all the years and months and ice cream cones and breaths.  
Every moment culminates in me.
And so when I look at a picture of me,
I see a piece of the person standing with a picture in her hand.
I see a moment of the baby, girl, woman who’s
loving and living and breathing
and adding her moments up.
I may not really remember her, but
I know she is still real.

Here's how I think of us, and maybe this will help.
We wake up.
Same house, separate bedrooms.
We stagger down to breakfast.
I get there first, because I want to make sure there's
enough milk for both of us. If there wasn't,
I'd give it to you and eat an apple.
Fortunately, there is, and we eat our
Cheerios while blinking dreams out of our eyes.
We look at each other and sigh, saying
without words that this is life and we're still sleepy.
After breakfast, we go upstairs.
Same house, separate bathrooms.
We get ready for the day ahead,
You're done first, because you’re in a hurry,
like always , and you think about not waiting for me.
Yet, you wait and soon I'm done and
we stand in front of our door.
We look at each other and sigh, saying
without words that this is life, and it's time to face it.
We say that today is today.
Tomorrow will be tomorrow.
And the next day the next day.
And each morning, we'll wake up and
lose our minds again.
But it's fine in the end.
That's how I think of us.

I used to be
someone who
never told anyone
anything she wanted
I kept it all inside, and so
I felt, I breathed, I lived my life.
That was enough and that was all.
Now that I'm older, wiser and stupider,
I name them. I claim them, ashamedly and
unashamedly. And I don't think I ask too much.
So listen, please. with your heart and consider:
to be important as others are important,
to be greeted with a hug and smiles,
to be missed when I'm not here,
to be listened to and heard,
to be part of a whole,
to be respected,
to be loved,
to be real,
To be.