A thousand situps and
a punch in the stomach
Crossing the finish line
of a one hundred meter sprint
Catch your breath
Don’t be sick

Trying to ***** your heart
out of your mouth
Hands around your throat
Vice clamped around your head
Can’t breathe
Can’t breathe

Everything goes quiet
but it’s noisy still
Somebody said it
They mentioned her
but they didn’t know it

Quick as a breath there’s a
brick in your stomach and
hands around your throat
An Army rucksack
thrown on your shoulders
Your heartbeat aches

Stood still in the centre of a hurricane
Life happening around you

You face her
But you can’t reach her
You feel her
But you can’t touch her
She’s right there with you
But you still miss her

Silence
Oh sweet silence
Silk to my ears
Cocoon of light
In a stormy world
Seep into my skin
Flow into my bones
Melt my muscles and
Lift my soul

My thoughts are loud enough
Without the chaos of the world

In sync they walk arm in arm
Along the tracks of an unused farm
Stabbing pains are in my chest
As I see their love at its best
Little do they know the joy they radiate
Or the pain in my heart from my own mothers fate

I wish that was me
That sweet synergy
Of arm in arm
Love in love
Together
Bonded
More than
The sum of its parts

“I’m here” she said
Through the warm breeze
“I’m right here my beautiful”
So reassuring
So magical
So you
Don’t hold it in
Don’t hold it in
It’s okay

Twenty-one years ago,
I was running my last speech tournament,
Serving this community of brilliant young people
Who spent our weekends
Telling other people’s stories
In cluttered classrooms
Of empty schools,
Longing to touch another human
To bring tears or laughter
With just our words
And the spaces between them.
And when the awards had been issued,
And our guests departed,
We seniors told our own stories,
Shared our own tears and laughter
As we prepared for what comes next.

I was not prepared for what came next.

Twenty-one years ago,
I walked into a house too brightly lit
For the middle of the night
Confused by the presence of people
I didn’t live with
Who looked away when they found my eyes.
And someone kind led me to my mother
Who held me tightly when I screamed
Over
And over
And over
That he shouldn’t have been out,
That this was stupid,
That... just... no.
And I sat on the swing
With a friend who could listen
And found my words lost
To the spaces between them.

Twenty-one years ago,
My story changed.
My tears changed.
My laughter changed.
Like the song I used to play on the piano
That includes a note the key no longer sings.


And today,
I use words
To remember.

I found my grandmother the night she died
The room filled with mourning tears
My mother slapped me
because I hadn't cried in two days
At 18 how do you emotionally process a body that once held a life?

Disconnected from my thoughts
I felt neither pain nor love nor loss
How could I say that, without feeling defective
but I couldn't get past that shell with empty eyes
that stared at me until I noticed they weren't smiling

When the body turned to flesh
she was gone and I was lost
in those empty eyes that seemed to
hold a universe of nothing
and if I stared too long I'd disappear in that void
where her light used to shine

**

Too soon, I held my mother's hand as she passed
and watched the life leech out of her skin
The eyes were the last part of her to fade
I stared at her
Willing with all that I am that they would
spark and reignite the fire of who she was
But her skin ran cold the second the light ceased
So cold, yet so very soft.

Two days, and a blended family to hold up
Even with makeup, dressed to the nines
It didn't feel less... wrong
She was beautiful, but she wasn't my mother

I couldn't escape the knowledge
of invisible sutures
As I held her face and fixed her hair
I cursed those television shows I once watched with her
The ones that taught us how things worked
The ones that burned the knowledge of
the sutures into my memory
a memory I couldn't escape

Four days and two shoulders heavy with tears
Too busy with paperwork and wishes
to bleed tears of my own
Thankful for things to do
So I wouldn't get lost in her empty eyes
that stared at me whenever I closed my own

I sit here, grown, wondering how to
emotionally process a body that once held a life?
Praying that she will slap me for not being able to cry
Just so I could feel her

With tired wings you still soar
with a Grace few can ever muster
Sleep, my love
and dream of the days
the garden was full of flowers

Orange blossom sweet
and jasmine sultry
you will always glow like a gardenia
on a summer afternoon

Your nest, so filled with love
will warm your coldest days
keeping you forever beautiful
as you have always been

Fly with the angels on waves of peace
this world could never offer you
Every flower-filled breeze
will be like kisses filled
with memories of you

Her eyes shake in her sleep.
Is she awake or is she dreaming?
Dare I ask her and bother to interrupt?
No, I'll wait for her to naturally wake up.

It's so loud in the nighttime. The silence is deafening.
The hums of the refrigerator,
air conditioner,
the small city rurality.
Crickets chirp like frog croaks,
dogs bark at bicycle spokes.

She murmurs in her dreams, words that make no sense.
Completely static expressions leave me in wanting suspense.

I wonder where she is now.
Blurry confines of pianoforte,
soft & loud,
like our bed sheets and pillow tops.
Comfort without a sound.

Sleep for her is an ease within which she slips carefully.
She wakes with dreams and stories, descriptions bare
vividly her soul for me to sip.
She happily spends a third of her life having the plaque
of her mind scraped fresh and waking anew.
From the autumn dusk to the spring dawn,
the drying evening to the morning dew.
I sit here awake planning out a future based on days long past.
Watching as dust lingers in the first reminders of sunshafts.

Have you ever watched a loved one wake up from a gentle kiss?
Feeling guilt in the hope of having her wake with your wish?
Seeing the smile split her lips wide and her eyes linger longer
as if she had been worried in her sleep that you had forgot her.

I was always here in the nighttime making sure you were safe.
I'm sorry I fell asleep on you while you were still awake.
But I saw your eyes and they were thriving in their shake.
I assumed you were dreaming, my darling.
Now I'm left with guilt and shame.

Another whimsy, a flimsy summer.
A ******, another loaned heart.
The heat is beaming, the lake is teeming.
With a thousand tiny fireflies,
lighting up the world and dreaming.

A scatter of mattering, a tatter
of matted mating. Cheery cherubs
bathing; in the teem off shore,
a bore, a long lost dream lost
in the hills of your lore.

A fistful of live, a heartfelt of pound.
Woke in a fritz of too-loud sound,
a smitten bit lip bleeding and sending
off to the predators around the way,
an approximated coordinate.

Cordon off the crime scene.
The air thick with iron,
though she was anemic.
I breathed in what made her veins thick.
I shook in my hands,
my fingertips amiss.

For a while I wondered, where the **** was I?
Surely this is still a dream, lakeside,
and lit now were not fireflies,
but cortisol levels and adrenaline eyes.
Pulsed and bugged out, wide.
You never were to see my surprise.

You beat me to it.