perfect piety

As I drove home from counseling today, I saw a billboard outside of a church. The sign read: HE WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU NOR FORSAKE YOU.

And I couldn't help but think that being molested in my parents' bed, and being dragged into a darkened alley and raped and left for dead, and crying in a downstairs bathroom, watching my first and then my second child leave my body as blood, instead of babies, feels like 'FORSAKEN' to me.

busy

There are parts of me still busy, still urgent, still saying: Protect him, feed him, keep him warm. Busy, busy, busy. I want to tell my body: Stop it! Stop torturing me! He's gone, and I can't get him back. Shush, calm yourself. Go to sleep.

I want to go to sleep. I'm sure I would rather be asleep.

sent

You came to me all involuntary
and hopeful, and helpless, and oh-so small,
and all you needed was my love.

It kills me that you never got the chance to live out in the open, under the spreading sky. Your life was close, and dark, and short as a midwinter day. But I kept you warm, at least. I could do that much for you.

sailing

white porcelain tub
an idea like a boat
reversed
with the water inside of it
rather than out
and bearing me nowhere,
slowly

my hot tears hit the swiftly cooling water and dissolve
turning it to salt -- like the ocean
like the vast, unfeeling ocean
I'd like to walk straight into the ocean someday
walk straight and steady and sure
like a queen, like a conqueror,
like everything I'm not
I'd like to walk straight into the ocean one day
and ask it to teach me how to be unfeeling
I would listen, intently, and I would not breathe
and I would watch the seaweed wave to me, unhurriedly:
"Goodbye."



Photo by Elena Kalis

permanent

I didn't need reminding. I needed something I could touch.

morning, mourning

Every time I crack an egg, I think of him.

my hands grasp only empty air

I want to touch you so badly. I want to touch your face, your hands, your tummy, your toes. I wish I could have said goodbye to you in person. More than that, I wish I could have said hello.

carried away

I don't know what will be done with those words, released like wayward doves toward people I almost trust. I feel so afraid. Come back to me, please, my doves! You are not safe to wander freely on your own. You were never safe, I fear; but you leave me here with nothing to hide behind.

musn't

What was I thinking, to voice such things? I want to scoop up all those words I said, take them and stuff them back into my mouth and swallow them back down -- and then maybe I could convince myself, eventually, that none of those things I talked about ever really happened after all. I could pretend, (if I hadn't already said it), that I was just imagining things.

The Chain (Ingrid Michaelson)

the sky looks pissed, the wind talks back
my bones are shifting in my skin, and you, my love, are gone
my room seems wrong, the bed won't fit
I cannot seem to operate, and you, my love, are gone

so glide away on soapy heels,
and promise not to promise anymore
and if you come around again,
then I will take the chain from off the door

I'll never say "I'll never love"
but I don't say alot of things, and you, my love, are gone

a minor inconvenience

I wander the planet with six billion faceless people, and I'm the boorish one with the audacity to hurt out in the open. My wound gapes messily, and my arms are too tired to hold it closed anymore. So I lay down, exhausted, in the middle of Everything.

The people who know the Rules stare straight ahead, and go about their business as usual, and step over my prostrate form as one might avoid a pile of refuse, or a crack in the sidewalk.

birthday

I lost another one. One whose skin would have been the color of a morning latte, smooth and achingly sweet. One whose eyes would have sparkled, limpid, darker than the night sky, deeper than the sea.

In my mind's eye, I trace one finger lightly over the fuzz of tight black curls that would have covered his tiny head... and kiss him goodbye.

Happy birthday, daddy. Happy birthday, baby.