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.

I like to begin this story with her shoes: Sequins, orange plastic straps,
cork sole, pointed wedge toes, and 2 inch high heels.
Impossible for mountain climbing.
And yet, I was the one who fell.

I thought I was saving lives that day.
I meant well, and as I see myself,
climbing down the mountain,
I know I believed I was a hero.
And, honestly, wouldn’t you?
If you climbed up a mountain to give medicine to
someone laying sick in a house made of dirt,
if children smiled as you gave them toothbrushes
to protect the teeth missing already from their parents’ mouths,
if an old woman held your hand and thanked God for you,
Me agradezca a Dios por su ayuda.

She walked with me, my guide.
Meant to walk before me and lead me safe,
but heroes are better than high heels
so I walked beside her, faster.
The path inclined downward, sharply, and curved.
At the edge of the curve, a drop, 30 feet or more,
My left boot slipped, rocks and dust giving way
I shot sideways toward the drop, flailing,
Humanity crashed back into me.

I like to end this story with her hands:
Simple human hands, four fingers, a palm, a thumb
Strong, worn, smooth like a rock worn by the sand.
These hands caught me falling to my death
on the side of a mountain and held me steady.
These hands taught me that it’s not heroes who save lives
because all she had to do to save me was hold my hand.

This day always comes.
Frantic searching for you in my life...nothing there.
Desperate wanting to hear your voice...no words.
Very few have the elegance of no regrets.
By the way, the answer is yes.
I miss our minds.

A day, like any other at the start,
but then you called, filling up my heart
with happiness too big for my body,
so I went on a walk to let it free,
my smile too wide for my set of teeth,
I shared it with strangers on the street,
as I skipped and danced, laughing at nothing
because you are everything
I never let myself wish for out loud,
you were too impossible to be allowed
yet against the odds, you’re alive,
and because you are, so am I.

Dear daughter dancing at the wrong time,
playing in the wrong place,
I hear you breaking
as they’re saying sit still, lie low,
keep clean, mind manners
judged by how silent
how still you keep your body
bound to beauty on the surface,
so you’ll keep yourself seen
to make yourself heard,
wear yourself like
a weapon, a wall, or worse, your worth
when there’s more to you that matters.

Light breaks the clouds.
It wafts in the window through the sterile air
into the room where he lies, burning.
Its rays hit your face
I stand behind you in the dark as you speak to him.
Elevated, authoritative, calm and cool,
you look pain in the eyes and smile,
explaining, the fever is spiking
because the infection is spreading
and there’s need for debriding,
also treating with something
starting with “Vanc” and ends with “In.”

I watch silently from the corner, and as you speak,
I realize who you are.
You are smart, strong, and shrewd,
You are tough and tenacious.
You are efficient, and you make your work look effortless.
I could be all of that.
I will be all of that.

But first of all, you are you.
I want to be me too.

There’s a difference between looking and seeing.  
I’ve looked bones in books a million times.
I’ve looked at skulls in horror movies out of the corner of my eyes.
But this year, I saw her.
Yellowed and petite, she stood in the corner of the lab.
A stand cradled her spine, wire bound her together,
her head ornamentally dangled from a string.
Tasked with learning the parts of the body, I touched her hands.
Then I realized:
These are her hands.

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.

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.

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.

It never gets easier.
Smiling, waving, carefree.
Suddenly, one pair of eyes, and
the hands of Time rewind the tape:
the laughing, dancing, dreaming, sighing,
wishing, hoping, losing hope, then weeping,
weeping because the world was ending
and it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know.
Just one pair of eyes and it happens again.
Again, again, and again.
It never gets easier.

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 wish it was like going to sleep,
letting go, sinking deep,
reason shutting down gradually
while love tiptoes through the door gently,
but no, love knocks me out like a long day’s work,
hard and fast--it hurts
like a sucker punch to the gut
before I get my guard up.

We are stories that we tell because we can’t help but live,
every day and every way, through our music, our words,
our pictures, our bodies.
All day and long into the night, the universe hears us living loud
as we share our stories spinning around the sun’s fire,
playing songs and writing words,
drawing pictures and dancing to the rhythm of our heartbeats
driving us forward into our future.

Impossible, putting it to words, distilling this to nouns, verbs,
but I write because I’m scared of the way I feel when you look at me,
when I’m the focus of your eyes, so deep--I want to leap and dive
but I’ve forgotten what it’s like to swim so I panic,
backing away from the water’s edge, head spinning because
I don’t know you, still my heart smiles wickedly as you walk my way.

Camera-happy me captures moments constantly,
yet with you, I fail and realize: a simple photo can’t suffice.
It cannot exhale, inhale, run its fingers through its hair,
look, laugh with your eyes, speak, seeming older and wise,
for in reality you’re more than a lens could ever see.
Your smile’s light resists a frame, and a flash cannot tame
the wildness of your mind or cage your heart--so kind
that you soar through my life like no one before,
but because your essence escapes photography,
I wonder if you can ever belong to me.

I looked today at pictures of us:
talking, in a group of friends laughing,
in a crowd standing, our heads bobbing
to the music of the moment.
So many moments, you and I,
yet not once, not one time
did you stand by my side,
did you put your arm around me,
did you look at the camera and smile wide
to capture a moment only meant for two.
Years later, this tells me everything I should have known.

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.

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.