Offerings

December 8, 1991

It seems dark, consuming
I just did not know mercy could hide
within this inky cloak.

The driftwood keeps knocking in my head
death toll for who I was
traitor with nowhere to hide
ceramic vase broken
where I stored something
and it is something
something loud, violent, and very much alive
tapped until the crack first appeared
encouraged, tapped a little more
and a little more and a little more
and smelling daylight
dealt the crushing blow
Whoever thought a neglected child
could hit so hard.

This is not the person I wanted to be
this is not where I wanted to live
these are not the memories I wanted
to decorate my hallway with.

Still alive

              At first she was only gone once a week.  But then she started taking private singing lessons on Thursday, in addition to her rehearsals on Monday and Thursday.  Once she signed up for the Flamenco class on Tuesdays Jonah said to her, “Isn't that sort of overkill?”

            “It’s not overkill.  It’s fun.  You would know if you went with me once in a while.”

            Jonah started to say that he was glad she was having fun—that he just couldn't see why she had to be out having fun four nights a week.  But when Debbie slammed the pot onto the range top he decided to let the subject drop.

Cutting

Tired but awake again

because wakefulness is waiting for

my answer

I am ready this time

ready to embrace the disbelief

to refuse the hand that

once could pull me to

my feet

Floating into ache once more

with no morning defense

when the sun broke me like

a cudgel to

the head

stole from me any

last moments for

dreaming

Memory waits still and near for me

I am endlessly choosing I am

at last losing what allowed me to

creep through the hole in the

floor

So tired of attempting

            to end this need for sleeping

Empty

It's not that we don't want to talk.  It's that we don't know how.  

We talk in riddles and rhymes we swing from chandeliers we scream at walls we turn away from the bones scattered on the floor.  Who will be brave enough?  No one is guarding the door.  The red straw network was the long way here.  Now we just need a volunteer.

Anyone?

Watching over

December 11, 2013

Hello, monkey.  How are you today?

Swinging around.  Swinging around.  Chaos everywhere.

The blank mind

And I could hate myself

for grieving over you

I could bury the make-believe

in a shoebox beside the house

next to the butterflies

whose spasms of beauty

are just one breath in

the oxygen tank

Hear me

I am sinking straight through

right down to the briny deep

You were the oxygen tank

crammed full of butterfly breaths

I so very much wanted to keep.

The world underneath

Every time Kitty’s family came to Nevada, her ten-year-old brother Jack would say in an affected voice, “The desert is teeming with life.”  It was a joking reference to Mr. Henry, Kitty’s science teacher.  In addition to running a fire lab every year that gave the principal sweats in more ways than one, Mr. Henry liked to quote nature programs.  Most of the quotes weren't worth more than a groan and an eye roll.  But this one…this one made sense to Kitty.  She liked how she could look for miles and see nothing but the occasional cactus when, in reality, all around her the desert was—well, teeming with life.  Just life she couldn't necessarily see.  Underneath the rocks, underneath the needles on the cactus, even in the sand underneath her very feet…everywhere.  “Life finds a way,” Jack would say in a fake creepy whisper, this time quoting Jurassic Park, but here in the scorching Nevada heat was the proof.

Life did find a way.