I was young once, living on hope and ten dollars
in an upstairs flat in Royal Oak, Michigan.

I used to eat at The Busy Oak, where junkies and drunks lived in the weird apartments on the second and third floors.
I went to the movies at The Washington.

I remember buying a jacket at Joe's Army Navy Surplus,
and a bright red scarf at some corner boutique where 80s chic was so thick that it made this ordinary girl feel out of place.

The sky was a brilliant September blue that day,
and I was on my last fine free days of being semi-employed,
an art I had perfected all through my twenties...

I needed time to read Vonnegut and Tolstoy,
and to go see Far From The Madding Crowd and Desert Hearts.

Late that afternoon I sat on the wood floor of my little place,
listening to Joni sing I Had A King, while I read the album jacket and my dog slept in the only chair.

My door was open, as if to let the future in;
I was getting sober and I was getting older.

Who knew then that I would shortly get a real job, a car,
and marry some other damaged soul?

Who knew that the Busy Oak would become trendy stores for out of towners,
or that The Washington would become a stage theater?

Who knew that I would ride by those places every day, a couple of decades later,
having divorced, come out, come clean,

Or that I would still listen to Joni sing about kings and seagulls,
and still wear a red scarf against the chill?

Not me,
whoever I was,
waving to her future self
going by on the street like a ghost begun
but not yet walking the earth.
_

When I met you, you were day-sleeping in somebody else's car
and running around scrapping all night.

With your shaggy hair and that roll of your shoulders,
you made me jelly-kneed right from the start.

Sunny, you kept your loneliness hidden from your running buddies,
your feet on the ground and your eyes on the stars in the Texas night.

I kept you coming back by feeding you, like some Italian mother
with a full pantry and a real bad crush. Come onna my house, birichino.

You had nothing, expected nothing, and were fearless, so fearless,
but when I fussed over some new cut you turned boneless as butter.

When I drank you turned to a rumor, gone like smoke, hating the stuff
yourself, and somehow above it. You made me want to kick loose of it, like you.

How did I charm you into staying, my gorgeous one?
How did we teach other what love was, with your silence and my words?

Til the day I die I know my heart is full of you, and all that you gave me.
I held you in my arms as you gasped and ran free, in the black hour of your end.

Oh, I learned to care again, about life, about myself, about it all,
but it took a long terrible while. and it was the hardest thing I have ever done.

Girls always fell for you like autumn leaves, light as sighs, stars of a moment.
I know how lucky I was to be the one you gave your heart to.

It's been thirty-two years and I still say your name and picture your face
every day. Even the angels won't be able to tame you--I won't let them.

Wait for me. When my hours are over I will find you. I will come running.
_

I am more than a dress,
a blues song you clothe me in
so your darkness won’t feel
as heavy as your tongue.

Where there’s bone there’s wings.
I can fly a sky of notes you can’t write
because freedom is a place in me
you can’t find.

Will and weather, cloud and feather,
what you think you hold isn’t even in your hands.
This black and blue bird is a sister of crows.
When the spirit says go, a ****** will grow.

When I was younger,
I washed lettuce heads in cold water.
I would set them on my cutting board, gently,
as if my hands hummed with lullabies.

I lifted tomatoes from their cardboard carton beds
and lined them in a row like nursery babies,
my starched jacket always white and clean.

I knew romaine and bibb,
beefsteak and cherry.
I kept my hair tied back, my nails short,
the right knife sharp and at the ready.

I didn't know, then
that lovers remember the wine, not the greens;
the sugar, not the side plate.

I wish you were here to kiss my hands
with their swollen knuckles and cut scars.
What was I doing with my tenderness
when I had someone who wanted it?

When I was younger,
I had a paying job, a small talent,
and a driver with a dolly at the back door
coming every day to keep my walk-in cooler stocked.

I thought that was bounty.
I thought there was no harm in staying on through another fall,
never considering that what I made was not mine,
Or that someone else was paying for it all.
_