I am happier now
than I've ever been,
and your absence is not
a coincidence.

earthquakes happen so frequently
in the snow-capped mountains of Anchorage
that the people living along the outskirts
like to believe that the reason why it always
snows after the ground breaks apart like warm
apple crumble is because it’s the only way Mother Nature
can offer God a tissue after He sneezes without
being too rude about it.
in the winters, it gets so dark during the day
that sometimes she forgets that there is a world
beyond the four walls of her bedroom,
and maybe she is okay with this,
because it mirrors the silence she’s grown comfortable with.
she’s also grown comfortable with sleeping with
one leg hanging over the side of the bed that she
spends most nights alone in, so that she can sprint
for cover when the ground yawns beneath her.
she never runs, not even when she hears glass shatter
in the kitchen and the dogs whining when the bookshelf
collapses in on itself from too many years of carrying
the spines of all the stories her daughter would have loved
to live if she’d still been here.
and Loma she realizes then that maybe skeletons
come in the guise of yellowed, bone-dry pages and leather covers, too.
you can learn to get used to watching the world
fall apart around you,
and yet some pain lingers like a ghost,
taking you by surprise every time you open your eyes to the night
when you’re expecting the sun.
in Anchorage, you can watch the sun rise and set
within the span of five hours.
light is so precious in december that she swears
every household invests in halogen lamps because it is easy
to lose yourself in a room full of people when the day fades.
sometimes, she thinks it’s better that way.
like now, when her bed is the rowboat threatening to capsize
from the waves of motion rocking her along to a place where
the sea meets a starless sky, but only for 19 hours.
the phone rings somewhere far off,
and it’s probably her husband calling.
she lets it ring,
lets the answering machine take responsibility
for all the things she’s put off saying to him,
and it’s only when she watches the photo of her daughter
slam face-first to the floor in a glittering, fractured spectacle
that she gets up, the covers tangling around her as she removes
the photo haphazardly from the destroyed frame.
she walks through the living room with it,
ignoring the swinging chandelier.
pushes open the front door,
waiting in the doorway with her free palm pressed
against the wooden frame as if searching for
a sign in the shuddering heartbeat of this house
that is fragile with the weight of time and loss and love.
foundations crumble too easily, she decides,
her bare feet sliding against the icy steps
as she makes her way out of her home.
And to anyone else, it should be a miracle
that she has made it out alive
But at that moment,
she’s not thinking about miracles,
the red beet stains she won’t be able to get out of the walls later,
or the china shards wedging themselves like
knives to punctuate her footsteps.
the snow is falling like powdered sugar laughter
and for once, she is grateful that the biting cold
numbs her ****** toes.
above her head, the sky is breathing again,
exhaling in short bursts of violet and molten copper,
and if everything around her
is hell-bent on shifting into new and unrecognizable forms,
determined to split along its seams and swallow her,
then it won’t be so bad,
because here God is -
blushing -
after receiving a tissue.

if my body is a temple,
then you've desecrated it.
touched me with irreverent hands.
said            

'woman'

like it was a heresy
in itself
to breathe
and feel beautiful
in the form I have no control over.

have you forgotten
where you came from?
you have made martyrs
out of saints.
out of your mother,
and her mother,
and her mother,
so far back
that you no longer recognize
a goddess
when you see one.

the womb is a place of worship.
every curve,
every flaw,
every edge
of her body
a hymn waiting to be written.
we have made sacrifices
upon sacrifices
to appease the entitlement,
to cover the shame
they make us feel
when they say

'woman'

at an altar.
at a shrine
men made
to make themselves
idols.

'woman'
she's somebody's daughter.

'woman'
somebody's sister.

'woman'
somebody's mother.

'woman'
somebody's lover.

'woman'
somebody's friend.

but first,
she was somebody.

my mother tells me that I cannot be

         everything for everyone.

she is, of course, right.
but I do not have an explanation scripted,
so I gape at her.

        how can you be everything for everyone,

she repeats,

        when you are barely enough for yourself?

        these games you play,
        don't you tire of them?

        how long will you keep pretending
        in this charade?

says it as if this is what I want,
as if insufficiency is what I desire,
when it was she who first
taught me to play.
I am jealous that she has
so quickly forgotten that
these games are all we’ve ever known.

         what do you stand to gain?

she demands again,
and I am not imagining
the desperation echoing
my own unanswered pleas,
imitating the comfortable pretenses
of my own well-worn facade.

her voice is the gunshot in the marathon
I can’t remember if I’ve

started or finished,

and I wonder later if it is

clarity or confusion

she detects in my eyes when I respond,

          what do we stand to lose?

we are sitting on the curb of your driveway.
you are peeling an orange and I am watching your piano fingers
twist the tough skin away in a methodical rhythm that would be
almost comforting,
except I know that this isn’t real and you aren’t here.
the backs of your knuckles
are covered in constellations of scars still.
it surprises me that I thought they wouldn’t be there,
as if somehow your ghost would no longer carry any traces
of the pain I was so oblivious to six years ago.
I can hear your sister fighting with her boyfriend
in the kitchen again.
back then you used to joke that he’d end up in prison one day.
you were right, and I’m sure you’d find it funny if I told you this,
but I say nothing and I am ashamed
that this part of me has remained unchanged.
you pass me an orange slice and
we are probably listening to an Eminem song,
though I can’t be certain which one.
it doesn’t matter,
because after all,
this is a dream.
I will pretend I don’t know the words like always
and make up my own raps,
knowing that you will laugh.
and in this dream, I will laugh with you.
In this dream, I do not hate you for leaving me only
with these perfect memories and hazy recollections
for company.
instead, I will think that perhaps
time has done me a favor by erasing
the parts that would would make me hate myself
more than I hate you.
your face is never the same when I look at it.
mismatched and jagged,
as if Picasso had painted a loose likeness
from the scraps of days like these.
and I know that this is my punishment
for never noticing the important things
while you were alive.
six years, and I am already forgetting you.
I wonder if you would be disappointed or delighted
by the way I recite these seemingly insignificant details
to strangers when they ask
what you were like
not for them, but for me,
because one day I will wake up and no one will remember
that you had a bicycle bell voice,
and that your favorite color was the stinging blue
of candle hearts,
though you could never get your hair to match it quite right.
they will never know what it feels like
to hear your name leave their lips,
always in past tense.
the private agony of
was and must have been and I’m sorry.
they will never know that
I still write you in the present
and that one day
I will leave this poem for you
when I no longer need someone else
to peel my oranges.