The soil remembers
each flower that bloomed
and died upon it,
each drop of blood,
each insect,
each fruit,
and carries these beloved ghosts
within it,
waiting for new life.

My father and I sit side by side at the vet's office
my first dog sits between our feet
panting in pain, eaten by cancer.

I stroke her black fur.
I have never known death before,
but I know
this is the right thing to do.

My father has known death.
He is silent, somber.
He didn't want this.
Even after she stopped eating,
and started whimpering,
he didn't want this.
My mother and I forced him
to come here.

We sit and wait for our turn.
I wonder how many of these animals
sitting  around us will die today,
and if they know.

'It's the waiting I can't stand," I tell my father.
He shakes his head, his hair almost as dark
as the dog's fur.
'Don't say that. Once it's over, it's over.'

I turn away.
I have not learned this yet,
the finality of things.

I have not yet realized,
how much of life is
really just waiting for the needle,
the knife, the bullet, the bad news.

I don't yet know that life is what happens
between the skin and the needle,
that the thin sliver between
existence and oblivion
is where our entire world rests.

Then they call her name,
and I learn.

'Want to go for ice cream?" he asks me, after.
His despair is heavy and silent.
"No, but we can, if you want to," I say.

Slow warm decay of days passing
this soft cotton music, everyday lull
does not fit
does not fit
the hard final chill I know is coming
the grinding of bone against gravity and time.

No matter what words I scatter
luminous pearl pathways
will get ground to dust, eventually,
under marching boots.

You fool yourself,
thinking they will gleam forever.

We are so alive right now.
This cruel and vibrant world
that we have all built together--
how can it end? How can it crumble?
How can we die?
Why can we die?
We can all feel it does not fit.

When they called
there was only one question
they wanted answered,
though they always asked it
in different ways.
Did he love me?
Does he love me?
Will he love me?
Sometimes they spoke of jobs
of houses, of children and family,
but these were nothing
but a backdrop against which
this horde of lonely, faceless women
propped up a mannequin of longing.

You stood on the border
between the front yard
and the wilderness stretching out
into the shifting hills of sunset.
You were an inky shape against the land
gazing back at me with dark, gleaming eyes.
Wild eyes, born to this place,
filled with primal truth.
I was only a child,
but I knew you were going somewhere
I could not follow.

Someday I will have a house
where the sun pours through the windows like honey
and the gentle moon gazes at me as I sleep,
where I can bask in the star shine...
Somewhere away from here
away from this cramped den
of murky shadows and burning, soulless street lights.  

Someday I will have a garden
with mimosa trees and the perfume of honeysuckle
filled with butterflies, with strawberries,
with crisp cucumbers and tender tomatoes,
and my hands will smell of mint
from my fragrant herb garden...
Somewhere away from here,
where not even a tree grows on my street
where the view is a drainage ditch,
dumpsters, broken glass,
and stained mattresses thrown onto the sidewalk.

Someday I will open my windows
and hear the sweet birds sing,
and the crickets chirp,
and hear the song of the wind
chiming like fairy music...
Somewhere away from here,
where the sound of a shot tears the night,
where the cars never stop,
and our upstairs neighbors stomp in concrete boots
all day and dark.

I will not let despair steal my someday.
I will escape this place.

He wants a sugar spun girl-
no lemon *****, no licorice, no peppermint.
Hard rock candy.

You gotta be sweet for him to crave you.
Sweet on the tongue, sweet on the eyes
in a package easy to tear, pop, unfold.

He likes it dayglo and with sprinkles,
marshmallow soft,
moldable and meltable ,
milk chocolate, white chocolate.
He shies away from bitterness.

Don't you dare fill him up.
He has a real meal waiting,
somewhere else, later.

Your job is
to be consumed.
What you need doesn't matter.

He wants candy, girl, not a meal.
Better sugar coat it,
or he won’t buy you
and you want to be bought,
don't you?

I walk past the old woman
who wears unflattering red lipstick,
vivid as cartoon blood,
and jeweled chopsticks in her hair.
We meet haunted eyes,
full of defiant sorrows.

The pudgy little girl streaks past,
pigtails askew, sandals mismatched
by herself or a harried mother
she is either running to, or away from.

The boy with the closed face,
like a letter that no one opens
for fear of what it might hold,
reaches for the same book I am reaching for.
We smile at one another, surprised.

Such small things bring recognition.
We are the same inside.

You followed sweet temptation over the edge
into the dark, warm water.
You tried to climb my body to save yourself.
Even once you had been lifted out,
damp and shaking and frightened
you swooped down
on that bloated, abandoned mass
of oatmeal and raisins
and gulped it down with the frantic abandon
of a dog that has just ****** in the face of death.

Damp on pavement.
Droplets in grass.
Reality enameled
with dark quicksilver.

A girl with worn galoshes,
raincoat full of faded flowers,
stomps through the mud,
green rising lush around her,
forest on all sides.

She’s gone out into the world alone.
Every rubbery step rings
like a gunshot in her ears.
Rain fills her eyes.

There is a playground here,
abandoned for years,
or perhaps drawn
out of memories
and set here to lure her.


The paint peels from the slide.
The swings are rusty.
The sandbox is a square of dull mud.

The days of dandelions are long ago.  
The days of laughing friends have ended.

In the sunlight, that sandbox would gleam
with a thousand tiny diamonds.
This whimsical, illusory wealth
would call to her, fill her with
breathless wonder.

Beneath this rain,
the girl she was has drowned.