I once was so sad
I came here and found a community
People like me
Restless and needing understanding
Lovely people
My account was hacked and I lost everything
I didn’t even get to say goodbye
Or even copy my poetry
The seen and the hidden
I have missed my friends so much
If anyone remembers me
Please let me know
The hugs will be endless
I have suffered the loss of you all
Deb

cracked asphalt of the modern realm

and court jester Gus pushes a shopping cart
he borrowed from the A&P to collect

bottles and cans
for a pence, perhaps a schilling.

the alley cat he cared for was named Maggie
and Gus slept with Maggie
in a kind person's village cellar.

it was rumored that Sir Tommy R.
shot a flaming arrow
into Gus's wooden leg.

young knaves
called Gus a *** knowing he'd chase them,
wooden leg and all,
and he was swift.

some threw insults, some threw eggs.
the village was a ballroom
fit for lords
in search of a court jester.

Gus the ***. I saw him

i saw him limping through the rain.
my heart was thin.
I threw him apathy, feigned sadness.


his heart still glows in my sorrows garden.

nobile misfit. all Gus sought was a smile, bread,
and a kind word.

Mortgage-bruised pilgrims
linger along Silver Strand,
pop caps against plywood boarding,
edges furred with salt-rust flakes
from storms that chewed the pier.

Seabee retirees
swap tide updates on porch steps;
third-generation surfers
stitch wax into their palms
and still call this south jetty 'church'.

Here my son and I rinsed sand
from our ankles with a garden hose,
him shrieking, laughing, shivering
when cold bit his feet.

I once yelled at him, raging
for dropping keys into surf,
as if that mattered more
than a day of chasing, wrestling in the tide.
He doesn’t remember.
I can’t forget.

Now, he’s taller than me,
vanishing downshore.

I stand outside, voices rise
in the salt-hard wind.
Barbecue smoke drifts
from driveways, tailgates,
settles into dusk-lit lawn chairs.

Boarded bungalows peel to raw board,
splintering porch rails;
nails weep orange along the grain.

A bike frame, chainless,
reddens into memory beside dune grass
still gripping sand.

There is grace in forgetting:
a tide lowers its voice,
sand swallows what was said.

I.
Box fans and mowers drone below,
distant traffic murmurs through summer’s heat.
Memory presses: teeth and old thunder.
Regret. Punishment. Hope. Repeat.

My ears ring with histories,
sometimes cicadas, sometimes sermons,
sometimes her humming, barefoot by the creek,
sometimes the sting of my father’s belt.

Sunlight slants through bloated magnolia leaves,
thick as tongues,
slick with old rain.
It stains the walls with a color like yolk,
like aging joy.

II.
I wake in moonlight,
before the rumble.
Step barefoot onto concrete
still warm from the last sun.

The sky is full of stubborn stars,
hung from the last funeral.
I watch. I wait.
No birds yet. No breeze.
I stay.

I tell myself this is peace.
But the silence knows better.

I loved a star that never knew my name,
a silent flame,
fixed in the wreck of night.
Her stillness fooled me
into believing she sang.

She blinked once
in some long-dead century,
and I’ve lived ever since
by ghost light.

They say she's gone,
burned out or broken,
but I keep whispering psalms
to her afterglow,
drinking to the shape she made
in my sky.

I don't need the truth,
just the dream
of her burning.

Like something that waited for me,
not knowing I was too late
the moment I began.

Oh wise poet, tell me something that is true...

In life, there are two certainties:
“Death comes for all of us,
and every man pays taxes.”

There is no greater truth than this...

I watch them fly
With grace, so free.
Unburdened by
Prosperity.

No time for entertainment.
Hearts not weighed and balanced against gold bars.
No defendants, and no claimants.
Living in each moment only where they are.

Light enough to lift off.
Strong enough to stand.
Each day is faced,
With strength and grace.
No expectation. Nothing planned.

I watch them perch
With purpose, unknown.
Each one a force
Itself, alone.

No need for supervision.
Making no objects, hoarding no wealth.
Living off of flight and vision.
Living for the flock, and for the self.

Only motivation, sunrise.
Only purpose is to live.
Perhaps thoughtless,
Perhaps unknowing,
Still, it’s wisdom that they give.

I am

decorating.


Renovating.

I slide my lone box over
a few centimeters to the right,
all the snakes pile out, all the
crocodiles cry in the new light,
all the bugs
call me mother
or
something
of the like.

There is a draw string
that I never pull.

There is an empty corner and another
and
another and
oh, well
too many to count
And a memory of
my father
gesturing in silhouette
something I
can’t make out,

but he looks like
a womb, and
he looks like
my husband

and I have to clean


this


room.


I use my
little fingers to trace
the paths of echoes
long silenced
just to taste  
a familiar kind of quiet
because it makes
more sense than this
gnawing,
        idle
           knowing
come upon me as I age,


I must

clean this room

But
I
return

with dust.



There must have been,
I think

Something brilliant here,


once.



My
lone little box, housing my
lone little feather
Underneath my
lone little light
with its drawstring untouched,
because
it flickers
as it likes

All the crawling things beneath
This paltry foil
to my utter
desolation

The snakes,
the bugs,
all plaintiff

I don’t do things
I don’t put things
places,
I don’t
make the room full

I just
wander away.

But I am

decorating.

Renovating.

I slide my lone box over
a few centimeters to the right,

all the snakes pile out, all the

crocodiles cry
  in the new light,

all the bugs

call me fat.