“To Elizabeth, my precious Granddaughter.

‘I’ve traveled paths you’ve yet to walk,
Learned lessons old and new,
And now this wisdom of my life
I’m blessed to share with you.

Let kindness spread like sunshine,
Embrace those who are sad,
Respect their dignity
And give them joy,
And leave them feeling glad.

Forgive those who hurt you
And though you have your pride,
Listen closely to their viewpoint,
Try to see the other side.

Walk softly when you’re angry,
Try not to take offense,
Invoke your sense of humor,
Laughter’s power is immense.

Express what you are feeling,
Your beliefs you should uphold,
Don’t shy away from what is right,
Be courageous and be bold.

Keep hope right in your pocket,
It will guide you day by day,
Take it out when it is needed,
When it’s near you’ll find a way.

Remember friends and family,
Of which you are a precious part,
Love deeply and love truly,
Give freely of your heart.

The world is far from perfect,
There’s conflict and there’s strife,
But you can still make a difference,
By how you live your life.

And so I’m blessed to know
The wonders you will do
Because you are my grandchild
And I believe in you.’

-Love Always, Grandmom F”

Seeing red,
I follow the glow
Like a beacon in the distance,
True north to follow course
Through insipid suffering.

Smoke in my nose
Blackening my lungs
With armor forged from ash and ember,
The scent wakes me
Like epinephrine through asystole.

Rage rings my head like a bell,
Drawing me out of my corner.
I crave carnage,
Foaming at the mouth
In an empty ring,
A spectacle of desperation.

My senses all ablaze,
I feel I’ve earned the privilege
To bask in the exaltation
Of resonating wrath.

Finally indulging in justified indignation,
Giving myself a break
From despondent self-flagellation,
I am not ready to give up the pleasure
Of pulsating apoplexy.

I let fury singe away my pitiful defeatism,
My pathetic victimhood,
But I am warned
That while attempting to thaw
From hypothermic quadriplegia,
One may find the seduction of self-immolation
Too persuasive to deny.

But I know my limits,
I tell myself.
I’ll stop when I want to.
I’ll know when I’ve had enough.

I swear I will stay vigilant,
Taking my temperature,
Checking my pulse.
I will not let this righteous ire
Burn out of control.

Slow Sadness, hello again.
Sometimes I miss you
When I overtake lucidity
On my ascension to indulgence.

Sometimes when my thoughts
Vacate my body
And spin around me like a mobile in the wind,
I crave your stillness,
Be it in aching obscurity.

So your meanderings have caught up with mine
And I will lie down in surrender to your encumbrance.
Contentedly, I find amusement in the sound
Of my bones snapping like toothpicks,
Breaking like dry twigs under your pressure,
Allowing paralysis to saturate me.

Motionless, I feel the pain
While rejoicing in the reprieve from
My manic pursuit of pleasure.
Now, the exigency of ecstasy
Cannot possess me like a puppet
And send me in search of titillating trouble.

And each time you find me
Reeling about in madness,
I see the lasso being thrown
And I wait in repose
To be snared by your rope.

I will follow you back
To wherever it is you call home
And acquiesce to your suppression
With satisfaction in my eyes.

For each time we meet,
I pray it is our last congress.
Every time you come to me
I throw down my defenses
And angle my head under your shadow
Hoping that the impact will be swift.

I lean into the assault,
Spun out like a top
Ready for the spinning to stop.
I beg you, be heavy
And fall with precision
So that this oscillation may end.

I do not have the stomach
To stand another turn
Around the wheel of my own whim.
My eyes get more crossed
And my hair more tangled
Each time around
This cycle of survival.

So, Sadness, welcome.
Stop playing with your dinner
And **** me like you mean it.
I will aid in the slaying
As much as I am able.
I will prime myself for sacrifice
Like a fawn in a frenzy
And point you to the soft spots
So you can do the digging.

I have changed and I am changing.
Like this town,
Old facades fall
And the promise of a better way
Rises from the rubble of memories
Warm and familiar.

The old and the new find space here.
The stone past and the fluid present,
The river and the bridge,
The arches of then bend over
The current of now,
Cut out and carved,
Twisting and flowing.

Lines cast still,
Hooks reel in empty
And they do it all again,
As I love and lose
And do it all again,
Rebuilding my abutments
For a third time since arriving here.

This time the work is slow.
One hand shovels,
Filling in the holes love left behind
When it departed.
Ripping my supports from their foundation
Deep in the earth,
Beneath the running water.

The other scrubs away the future
From the slate of my expectations.
As what was etched there
Has turned to mere delusion,
I must start again at engraving
A more plausible picture.
But the lines were chiseled deep
By my determined hands
So the work of erasing draws on and on.

To create and destroy at the same time,
Like the water erodes the bank
While carrying the assurance of life
Through the verdant landscape
To the abundant sea.

I wish I could call this growth.
While I hope this laboring is not in vain
There is no knowing if any of it will leave me
With the foundation of self I seek.
This backbreaking toil
Is merely to break even,
To give me a dry place to stand.

The sun now departs.
Orange dipping behind green
The light turns blue,
And I need a jacket.
Shivering, I stand
To find warmth.

The past holds me by the ankles,
Dragging me across the floor
Through the wreckage
Of my desperate decisions.

There is no destination,
Nowhere to drop me,
Or leave me to bleed
After the debris of memory
Has pierced me
Like a nail through a tire.

The fixed,
Glass eyes of the past
Stay locked into the dark distance behind us,
Retreating into reminiscence.

In the moments when I am strong enough,
I twist to face forward,
In search of the present
And something sturdy to hold onto,
Lest time immemorial flay me
On the rubble of my insatiability.

Just yesterday,
The tearing of skin
And willful deterioration into anamnesis
Came to me as effortlessly,
As sweetly as wine on my tongue
Washing down an ambrosial pill.

But today,
Though it would be easier to concede
To times' torment,
I aspire to want a grounding in actuality.
Praying I find that now
Fills me with a more substantive contentment
Than then.

But everything I grip
Rips from its roots
And disintegrates like a forgotten semblance
In my frenzied hands.

For how am I to know
What lies beneath the dirt?
How can I anticipate the integrity
Of his assurance
And avoid shallowly entrenched
Semi-permanence?

There is nothing but eternity
To continue falling into.
So with tepid hope
And resigning repetition
I keep looking
And I keep grasping
At tethers showing tenable-enough sincerity.

The hours will pass anyway
And, for now,
I retain the belief
That my languid attempts
At thwarting history's absconding of my contemporaneity
May eventually prevail
In standing me upright,
Existant in currency.

Then I may turn
And face remembrance as I please,
With ankles rubbed raw
And stationary feet.

I can visit the displays
Of bygone horror
Without becoming part of the atrocity
Again.

Clutching fast
To the most invariable helve
I've yet found,
I only fear that the past
May rip me in two.

Leaving me halved
And but a fragment
Of the entirety that I was
Before recollection animated
With retribution against me.

I beg to heaven
That he possess me
With the same fervor that I cling to him
And that his coherence
Stays material enough to
Wrap my despairing fingers around.

The songs you watched me cry to,
Remembering him,
Have rearranged memories
And are now about you.

What I crave to do again
Has shifted forward,
Framing new dates
Like a rotating exhibit
That is always a year behind.

Borrowing the soundtracks
From the reels of older grief,
Unarchiving the loss of other lovers,
Taking the signifiers of pain
And giving them to you.

And when I stumble over the artifacts
That have found their way under my feet,
Coming directly from you,
I pick them up and hold them close,
Tracing every angle and seam
Hoping to feel some trace of you.

I listen close,
Pressing my ear to the glass,
Closing my eyes to focus on the silence
In case one might ring,
Just a little,
With the sound of you.

Now I see why I've been drinking so much.
Because through the glasses full of laughter
And the warm days stained hues of whiskey,
The taste has turned into you.

So now I drink,
Desperate for mouthfuls of you.
It burns me the whole way down,
But to swallow your fire
Is how I stay close to you.

I pretend that maybe,
On the other side of town,
You drink me too.
Taking your gin warm
To remind you of my blood
You couldn't help but spill.

I know you don't,
Because I am a chore to remember,
But I hope sometimes
When you drink,
You ******* fire too.

No words follow your visage.
I think of you
And my mind materializes your face,
Your shoulders,
Your hands.

I see your blue eyes
Clear as a stream,
Your wispy blonde hair
Balled up in my fist,
Your jagged nose bumping mine.

My heart jumps,
I hear your slow laugh.
I smirk,
Watching you turn away,
Looking up to the side,
Your hands deep in your pockets.

You are every sensation
As stark as memory allows,
With no definition,
No rhetorical root,
So I struggle to write about you.

You don’t say much
So it follows
That my mind has not assigned a vocabulary
For mourning you,
Though I continue to.

The regret resounds
And I’m at no loss
For names to call myself,
Knowing that I held you
And let misguided indecision
Let you go.

If I could take it all back,
Un-drink all that wine,
Un-cry all your tears,
Go back in time and tell you I love you
The second I thought to,
Maybe you might still love me too.

But the damage is done,
Our bodies untangled,
The pills have all been swallowed,
And you’d rather
I just give up.

So I will lie in the mess I’ve made,
Drenching myself in the blood,
The drinks I have spilled.
Soaking up the guilt,
Absorbing the hurt I let spew.

I will grapple with wordlessness,
Yearning to poeticize my longing.
But I will get what I deserve,
Silence and prosaic grief.

Only images remain,
Flashes of your face.
Tactile memories come in pieces
And I hear your exasperation
In short breaths.

This is what I have left of you
And with this
I must make do.