my heaven

For Cathy in Missouri. xoxo


They are there, all of them, my little loves. The ones that belong to me. And no matter how far they may wander, freely, over greening hills, amongst flowers and trees, or out in a little boat on a glittering sea, they are never in danger and they are never out of my sight or beyond my arm's reach, never, not ever. They come back to me, happily, smelling of blackberries and nectarine and jasmine and we lay pleased and reverent under the arc of the stars at night, and listen to the ocean kiss the shore, and only sleep for the joy of waking up.



Words are no longer necessary; not even the prettiest ones, like lily and sparkle and aurora borealis. All we have to do is look around and at one another and we know, we just know. It's in our eyes and the turn of our heads and the slope of our shoulders and the way our ankles cross just so--or don't cross, as the case may be. How high we jump and how fast we run and how slow we dance and how soft we sing. Communication perfected, no misunderstandings to be had.

There are lots and lots of people, but still there is plenty of room, and no one is ever irritated to see anyone else. We are either pleased or even more pleased. And it takes exactly however long you wanted it to take to get from here to anywhere else. And it is perfectly warm, except for when it is perfectly cool. Life and Love and Light are there, and we want for nothing.

Lily. Sparkle. Aurora Borealis.

Don't you think?

medusa

Maybe there's a reason she's so hateful. Maybe there's a reason she's so hard. Poison in her, all through her; maybe it hurts. Maybe the hissing keeps her up at night. Maybe there's no magic. Maybe it's your own discomfort that turns you stone-still when you look into her eyes, her brutal and self conscious pain that stops you in your tracks.

Or maybe not.

Maybe she's just mean. Deep down, bone chilling, irrational, hates-your-guts-without-even-knowing-you mean. With a venom glare and an icy heart and her hair, even her hair! Restless snakes alive with silky voices, hateful songs. She could cut off all of their heads in a matter of moments (blood, then silence). But she won't. She's grown accustomed to their whispers, torturous but familiar. She's accepted the myth that they are a part of her, and she won't be parted from them now, not for anything, not ever.

----------

I have been struggling lately with my long held belief in giving people the benefit of the doubt. It would be so much easier if everybody was one thing or the other: bad or good. But we are, annoyingly, often both. Have you ever met Medusa? ARE you Medusa? What do you think?

raw

My consciousness streams like comets, like meteors. Streams like rivers running madly, racing to the sea. It could be like this all the time; this free flow of thoughts. This sea of ideas. But I am surrounded by sluices and dams, all meticulously handmade... I'm terrified of drowning, you see.

A seamless transition.

That's what we all hope for, isn't it. But does it ever really happen? Is it even possible? I don't know. I think it might be a thing we made up.

I feel like every change I've ever made has been wrenching, like ripping off a band aid--only not done and over then, quickly, like they say it will be, but awful and messy and the sting doesn't fade, it just gets overwritten eventually, maybe, by a new kind of sting that isn't any better, just different.

It is so abrupt, this wide world. Blatant. Blatantly kind; blatantly cruel. Lacking in subtleties.

Oh, subtlety.

How I long for quiet details, rather than this vast, raw experience I've had. Raw like meat. Raw like bones exposed. Raw like animals in the winter in the wild, cold, ravening, merciless. Harsh.

Weeks, months, years. My baby is dead, dead! And it guts me still, in the same beautiful, haunting way it always has and always will, except that my breaths get bigger, now, instead of smaller, and I am so excruciatingly alive I can hardly stand it. I want to cry and sing. Laugh and scream. Shake my fist at the falling sky. Dance. Dance. Dance.

I am alive.

Last night I dreamed I was pregnant, heavily so, and happy. Near the end of the dream, I thought my water broke, but I wasn't sure, because I'd never felt it before. It made me sad, in the dream. I didn't know what to do next, and I was so sad. I felt like less than the other mothers, the ones who had done this before. I felt that I should know.

I was still sad, when I woke up, still unsure.

There is indescribable pain radiating outward from behind my right shoulder blade, as if there were a massive hook through and through my flesh. (It's happened before, right there, though I couldn't tell you why.) I've been almost totally incapacitated for two whole days. Disheartening. I try to breathe into it, but it's deep deep down and it's boiling lava hot and it hurts-hurts-hurts-hurts-hurts, and I'd rather just lie as still as I can, and pretend it's not there.

Story of my life.

Oh god, it hurts. All of it hurts.

But I am fierce, and clever, and strong, and no one has completely gotten the best of me yet.

if her life is beautiful

+

Head tilted back to receive the sunlight full on your face, drawn like a flower toward its life-giving heat. (Completely alone and yet clearly visible is as close to safe as you know you can be.) Sand, vast stretches of soft white sand, and the sounds of the ocean to slow the painful staccato beating of your heart; paradise, just as you'd always imagined it. So young and yet already so deeply tired. Wishing this moment could stretch and stretch into eternity, or that you might simply dissolve into this place, lose your shape and your face and your treacherous skin, and become a part of the sunlight and the sand; or find your voice, finally and forever, in the ceaseless roar of the ocean.

You know, any moment now, one of your parents will break your reverie -- and for no other reason but that they simply like to break things. They feel the need to remind you of your place in this world: a low place. A cold place, far from the sun.

----------

I wonder about this girl. I wonder if her life is beautiful. I wonder if she was happy, at the moment this photo was taken, or if she was wishing, like I did at her age, that she knew how to dissolve.

this day, this beautiful day

Laundry hung carefully on the line. Sudden rain.

Sitting in the car with an oceanside view, eating takeaway pizza. Walking down the beach in a mist of drizzle, arms flung out into the wild wind. Whisper-soft sand between my cold toes.

Movies in the afternoon. (It's what you do, when it rains. You curl up on the couch and watch movies. Right?)

Lamb for dinner, lamingtons for dessert. Authentic Australian.

Drive to find the perfect beach. A million soldier crabs, the sound of them skittering along the shoreline. Two hours searching for a spot with no crabs or people or waves. (Or crabs!) Finally, found.

A small break in the clouds. Stars.

Assembling lanterns in the dark. Lighting candles against the wishes of the whipping wind. Pam burning her thumb again and again, determined to get them lit. Photos. Exquisite pain.

(I remember you, lost babies. I remember you, lost mamas.)

Ocean and wind and heartbeat and breath.

Tiny fish jumping in the shallows. Building a fire on the beach. Feeling so thankful for my amazing friend. Imprinting memories behind my eyes.

speaking of stars

Long after dinner was done and the coals in the kettle barbeque gone nearly cold, we stoked them back up again and toasted American marshmallows over the low flames on fondue forks scavenged resourcefully from a kitchen drawer.

Hovering too close for comfort over glowing briquettes, fingers and tongues both burnt willingly on molten globs of sugar. The scrape of the spade across the grate, making golden splinters of light fly in every direction. The unique, peculiar sound of a marshmallow, burning. (Have you ever sat and listened to a marshmallow, burning? It's fantastic.)

Overhead a million million stars glittered in the night sky, like a massive firework whose sparks have never stopped falling toward us. And I thought to myself: I am happy. In this moment, I am as near to happy as I have ever been.

continuous

My thoughts move seamlessly from past to present to future and back again like a pendulum's swing. Will I ever be able to just be here? If I'm honest... do I really want to be?

The past is ugly; I shy away. The present is unstable, the future unknowable. Wishing, always wishing. Wishing what has been had never been, wishing now was better (wishing I was better), wishing I could know what is to come. Back and forth. Constant as pulse or breath. Changing as kaleidescope colors.

Shifting, shifting... *Sigh.*

sensations

I'm sitting at a computer on the opposite side of the world from where I usually sit, in a chair that, ironically enough, just like mine, doesn't fit the desk in front of it. Outside my guest room window are tall trees that swish about like an echo of the sighing of the nearby sea, and there are many different birds, with their sweet chirps and shrill calls, and an army of cicadas with their deafening whir, and even a sleepy koala or two.

My hair is a touseled mess of saltwater curls -- and I like it that way. Now and then I try to run my fingers through but they only get stuck, and I shrug, and leave it be.

It is early yet, and cool outside, the sky shrouded in a veil of low clouds.

----------

I cannot, will not get over the singular sensation of walking straight into the ocean; the push and pull of the tides, altering gravity's power, the sliding sand beneath my feet, bits of seaweed slithering slimy past my skin. The prickling fear of jellyfish and sharks. A quick prayer to whoever is listening, that I might emerge with all limbs intact.

I like to wear my two-piece bathing suit to the beach, so that I will feel sun and water against as much of my skin as possible, without baring all; but the ocean sees no sense in my silly modesty, and the waves attempt to take it off again and again. At times I am tempted to let it; if only there weren't so many people.

The waves slap and tug and push and pull, and resistance only earns you a more deliberate buffeting. For so long as you try to oppose the sea, you can never hope to win. But if you give in, if you let it do with you what it will, then you become a part of it, and all its strength becomes your own.

----------

Bike riding in the afternoon. The warm sweet smell of summer air, hibiscus and frangipani and a dozen other flowers I haven't got names for. The sound of silence and of falling leaves, crack of snapping twigs, husshhh of grit and sand beneath rolling rubber tires. The everpresent sighing of the trees and of the sea. Muscles moving and straining beneath obligingly supple skin. Push, push, push! Nearly there...

Achievement. Ache.

Lovely view, lovely company, lovely air rushing in and out of lungs.

inexpressible

I wanted to put a quote here. A poem, a song. Something. I've been searching and searching. But nothing is working. And I find I am trying to describe something that I'm not sure can even be described in someone else's words, or maybe in any words at all:



I am trying to tell you what you mean to me


What it means that you were here


What it means that I'm your mother -- your mother


Not someone else's


Not anyone else's but yours


----------


What I picture in my mind, as I'm thinking about this, is the ocean, the wild breakers of the South Pacific ocean, at night. And I see so many stars overhead, unfamiliar, and very bright, the moon a shining silver splinter, and the waves foaming right at my feet, washing beguilingly over my toes, and then sliding away again. The air is warm, and the water is cold, and I stand there for a long time, with my head back and my arms outstretched, as if I could embrace the whole world, or gather the essence of you back together between the palms of my two reaching hands, gather you back from where you have disappeared into the heart of the universe. I can feel the whole of the earth missing you with me. Wondering with me, where have you gone, where are you now? Every rock and tree and flower, all the sand beneath my feet, all the whales, and the lions, and the mice, and the bees. We notice, we remember, we pause.

We look up.

And this string of moments is like a string of perfect pearls, or like a string of notes in a perfect melody, our solemn, silent song of acknowledgement, and memory... for you are a part of this story, this poem, this Place. You are part of us, and it -- and me. And we remember you.


----------


So this is it, baby. This is it.


If I had a picture of what I'm trying to say, this would be it.

selene

Mystified by my inability to fall asleep last night; but then I looked up at the sky. Turns out, I've just got moonlight in my veins.

This too shall pass. And then come again...

voyage

I.
From my place on the front porch, I feel as if I am seated in the prow of a great ship, the spreading tree our figurehead, the sound of rustling leaves and rushing water almost interchangeable.

Out on the horizon, the sun goes down silently, without a fight. I watch, my arms wrapped tight around my knees, as its fiery glow dims and fades and we continue to move steadily forward without it, intrepid explorers that we are, into the evening and all that is unknown.


II.
From my place on the front porch, I feel as if
I am seated in the prow of a great ship, the spreading tree
our figurehead, the sound of rustling leaves and rushing
water almost interchangeable.

Out on the horizon, the sun goes silently down,
without a fight. I watch, my arms
wrapped tight around my knees, as its fiery glow
dims and fades and we continue to move forward
steadily, without it, intrepid explorers
that we are, into the evening
and all that is unknown.

etiolate

Everything is sun-bleached, here. Old paint, and foliage. Brick buildings, street signs, stray dogs. The rolling hills, the water, the windmills, the moon.

Especially the moon, straying absentminded from it's hiding place too early in the day. White as a fossil, half-uncovered, in a detritus of faded sky.

interior renovations

It's astonishing, really, how much love I've discovered can fit inside of a person. I used to have a lot of empty space in me; dark and cobwebby places, with a few mouldering boxes, damp on the bottom, marked DO NOT OPEN. But I've done a lot of work since then. Opened windows, let in the light, chased out the spiders. Dumped out the boxes, sorted their contents, threw most of it away. I'm still busy, scrubbing down walls, moving a few things I already had to a place of honor, and preparing space for more: Courage. Hope. Strength. Love.

Turns out, I've got lots more room for love.

don't think, jump

I just want to feel powerful. In control of something, anything, in my life. I want to know how to set attainable goals -- and attain them. I want to write, and write, and write. Books, screenplays, stories. I think I need a project. It would be fun, cathartic even, to sketch out the bones of the fairy tales I already know by heart, and fill in the empty spaces with my own imaginings. A ready made collection, a place to start. Something to look at and say: "See, I did this. I can do more." And maybe it will help, if I am in every story. If I am big sometimes, and sometimes small. If I am answering riddles, and tricking wolves, and finding my way out of thick, dark forests. If I can find the right words, and arrange them the right way on the page, perhaps it will begin to hush the ceaseless noise in my head, the tumult of lost language, the clamour of a voice held in for far too long.

breathless

I think I never saw anything as lovely as your face. It squeezes my heart, squeezes it so tight I wonder if I'll ever remember how to breathe. Until the air startles its way into my lungs again for me, reproachful, long after I've forgotten to try.

I blink awake, and you're gone. Gone. As if you were never really here, though I know you were, if only for a little while. I still see you, so many nights; you and that once-possible future that is not possible any more.

the heartbreak moment, on repeat

It happens often. In the tub, or getting dressed. As I wake up in the morning, or when I'm going to bed. It's when I wrap both arms protectively around my belly and, vaguely surprised, I find no tightness there, no gradual slope, no movement. I am confused... and I remember, then, why this upsets me. There should be a baby. But there isn't. There should be. But there isn't.

But there should be.

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.

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.

lost

I've never even seen your face, but I would know you anywhere. You are a piece my heart, flown away, and it hurts to live without you.