i.

It’s the late 1990′s and you’re a kid

You’re skipping down the path in the garden called memory lane

Holding your mother’s hand

Suddenly you trip and fall

You see the lacerations across your knee that sting for days when you try to shower

For the path in the garden of memory lane has tripped you over by your nimble child legs

Wounding you temporarily

ii.

It’s the present day and you’re a grown woman

You’re walking down the rocky road  called adulthood, wringing your own hands together in frustration

Your husband was found dead in a crashed car with another woman

Drunk driving and infidelity do not mix

You don’t see lacerations anywhere

Nor feel the ache of wounds that sting for days when you try to shower

For the rocky road whose name is adulthood has tripped you over by your last legs

Wounding your heart instead

For life

Childhood address remembered
all these years. Used now as
a password, a code, a credit card number:

the place itself a mist
of memories, light palpable
in the smoked filled air

Lawn springing downhill,
steeply impossible to mow,
steps winding up to a green door
as if in a dream.

garage below where is used to hide
among small dark thoughts
hanging from their webs
barely discerned in the dust
of time.

That’s where it all began
the endless internal battle,
the wasps’ nest of emotions,
the constant buzzing of the mind’s
heavy present that always
“seems to fail this bubble of a heart.”

Gently you patted my cheek,
with a tenderness piquant,
not  known hitherto to us both.
Those quivering long fingers
exude motherliness,I miss ever after,
my mom has gone to her last pilgrimage,
And I crave for at moments of pain intense.

From the layers of memory darkened
by distance,I recover that feeling,
to place you instantly at a level higher,
than that of a sultry lover to whom
desire than anything higher binds together.

In to my lackluster eyes, you peer,
see the ineptly hidden drop of tear,
in the corner shivering plaintively
before rolling down to lose forever,
it's in the memory of my mother,
who rhythmically tapped my back,
led me to the cozy cloud of sleep,
when outside raged the rain storm,
I now gather, to a women I owe
when, time after time she takes
another avatar, of my mother,
momentarily, at times,when earth slips,
from under the feet
unexpectedly.
                         You did see the storm raging
inside and the child looking for solace.

You hold me close to your *****,
and I travel to a world gone by again
even when wolves howl refusing to sleep.
and let me doze off to wake up in another world!

i remember
rainy days
spent gazing
out of cold
windows
we'd race
raindrops
with our
fingertips
breath misting
the glass
creating
swirling
inner worlds
of hidden
messages
and signs
we were young
enough then
to remember
how to sing the
melody of rain
and understand
its secret language
of ebb and flow
in an echo of time
ageless and pure
in its sincerity

~~~~~~~~~~~~

me and my dad used to
fight over who
got to have the coveted, comfy, not-made-of-disgusting-yellow-foam
feather pillow
it wasn't really much of a
prize, I guess--
the feathers were so dead the
thing was practically
flat
but
it's the principle of it, the status that
a feather pillow brings to
my sleepy eyes-shut head

most of the time,
I won
he probably let me because
well
he loves me and
that's what parents do
But
he'd still fight
for that pillow he knew
I couldwoulddid fight
back

now, I walk into my bedroom and
see that feather pillow
already on my bed,
clean sheets,
neatly arranged

I wish for the fight

I remember,
Back in the old days
When life was simple,
Kids
Playing around,
Having fun,
Laughing.

The park near my house
Filled with life,
Looked like a painting
Animals,
Flowers,
People
All happily together.

The old memories
Share from grandfather to father,
From father to son,
Never being forgotten

From generation to generation.