Waiting

February, 2005

I am trapped.  I can’t do this but I have to do this.  The Roman soldier is at the door: I must drink the hemlock, or be executed.  

Thanks for the email.

I’m surprised that you would think anything is wrong.

Nothing is wrong, I’ve just been taking time for myself to work on things.  But I appreciate your concern.  Everything is fine.   I hope you had a nice birthday.  Unfortunately I'm not having visitors right now, but thanks for the offer.

I hope your job’s going well.

Love, me

Cold

I have been thinking of you

Reminded it seems by

the presence of

something sadder than

you or me

How very long I held on

When now I knock against the

hollow inside

the abyss you left in each

part of my whole

So much and so completely ignored

ripping the hinges off of the doors

catapulting me into a world where

daydreams remember

How I would like nothing more than

to feel the cadence of your

pulsating love again

Nothing more than to know it is me who

you tried with your heartbreak

to protect

Instead I am left waiting on the hill

shaking with knowledge of

lost connections

I am left on the pier with memories of the dead

their sorrow pointed toward

the horizon

Postscript

I wonder who is listening

I am not

You close and you close and you

close

Because there is nowhere to go from here

Opaque

Back at my apartment I went through my pictures of Bryan again.  Studying the captured image of his much younger self on a city street, with his come-hither eyes directed on some poor unsuspecting waif, I wondered if a chance still existed for us.  Could I buck the common wisdom and go home again?  Might he still love me, if not as much as he had before, at least enough to save me from my downward spiral?  Because things were most definitely not getting better—they were getting worse.  Time and distance had provided me with nothing more than a lot of time and distance.  And Tim was not an option.  He needed someone who his family would welcome with open arms; it would be cruel of me to go back to him.  But could I go back to Bryan?

*From my upcoming novel The Last Confession of the Sun God, available soon

Shadows, Pt. 2

Tired but awake again

because wakefulness is waiting for

my answer

am I 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

Eventuality

I bumped into the memory man

the other day—

(we’ve been crossing paths often

lately)—

I listened to small things

which gave me small reactions.

But when he arched his eyebrows

as if asking, was I ready?

I left the memory man

where I found him and

conveniently forgot where

that place happened to be.

The only thing is that

he knows how to find me

he finds me every day

and every day he asks the question

and every day I say, “No thanks.”

One of these days, I guess.

It will be one of these days.

Another Place, Another Time

*The original photo is of an FA Cup Final Tie programme from 1947

Sometimes in her dreams she could hear the King talking to her...but, of course, Kitty never saw his face.  Nor could she recall what the apartment looked like that had been her home during her long stay in the Interior.  The much-faded scar where the Minister’s knife had gone into her side failed to jog her memory.  Even when Kitty went to visit the Minister’s grave, she found no marker, presumably because no one had known who he was.  Its absence only heightened her sense of unreality.  Not for the first time did she wish Jack could remember his trip there, if only  to validate her experience.  But she seemed fated to just forget more and more about the Interior until, somehow, it would cease to exist in her memory at all.