her memories
grazing quietly
on my grave....

Grief is my religion
And oh, how earnestly I worship

I hate these
******* gnats.
My apartment is
clean, not
sterile, but it's
where the heart is.
The floor is
swept, the dishes
are done, but these
******* gnats bother
me constantly.
I clap my
hands together,
occasionally killing
one or two, and then
I'm grateful that
God doesn't do that
to me.

I'm trying to
write, and these tiny
flying buzzards won't
leave me alone.
Then, a moth
bombards me,
fluttering around my
head and ears,
and I think,
what's than son of
a ***** going to
do to my Irish
whaling sweater?
It's 50% wool, 70 bucks.
I **** it.
Dusty *******.
I feel gratitude that
God doesn't do
that to me.

Don't these flying bugs
die when it gets cold?
I open a window.
Late October, maybe
there hasn't been a
frost yet.
I **** a gnat.
Perhaps I'd be
safer outside.
I need to do
some research.

This is the story of an aching love.
A hopeless schoolgirl kind of thing.
He was a basketball star player on
The Monticello Mustangs team,
Not showy, but quiet and a little shy.
He was glorious to look at
through the lenses of my brown eyes.
I had to work to learn his name-
it was Finnish, spelled Laulainen.
I said it lots of different ways until I heard
somebody say it right-
Ed     Law lie’ nen
All the bells rang out and bluebirds sang
As I crooned and whispered that magic name
In the quiet of my room.
I never had a class with him-
he was a year ahead.  
He wasn’t part of rowdiness
when passing in the halls
from one lesson to the next.
If he walked past I turned into
A pillar of salt dyed crimson
From the blood that burst my heart.
I don’t recall now how I came to have it
But I had a small creased snapshot of him and
I slept with it under my pillow every night.
I touched it and looked at it and imagined
him touching me.  The thought of him
kissing me was far beyond my wildest dreams
I suspect my mom knew it was there,
but she never said a word
And I guarded it like my virginity.
And my best friend had no idea.
He never knew I was alive-
he didn’t know my name.
I was one of the nameless girls
That are present but unseen.
One day I was sent to the cafeteria
For something the teacher needed.
Standing by the now closed door
Was God Who Walked The Earth,
Ed Laulainen in the flesh.
The shock of standing next to him
paralyzed my tongue.
I dared not look at him
and finally only said “Is anybody there”.
Did he answer - I don’t know.
I was terrified and in paroxysms
of ecstasy. I was sharing the same air he breathed.
He left Junior High for Senior High and I lost track of him.
But I loved him with ferocious fervor and wishful longing
If desire could have made him mine, Midas would have
been poor by comparison.
OccasionallyI think of him and the plain little girl who worshipped him.
Where did he go - how did  he grow - what kind of life did he live.
In ten more years the little girl could have most anyone she wanted
but the crinkled photo stayed in a trinket box for a long,long time before
it washed away on the tides of new loves, real loves, and living.
I wish I could see him once again to tell him the story of
the little girl who chose him to love with all her soul and first flush of emotion.
                                   ljm