Locked Away

“Oh, it’s some kind of tumor.”  His mother waved a dismissive hand.  “Who can understand a thing those doctors say nowadays?”

"But are you going to be all right?”

“Hmmmn.  Now where did I put that phone number again?”

“Mom,” Jonah loudly interrupted, “are you going to be all right?”

“What, dear?  Oh, that.  No, I don’t think so.  Tumors aren’t good, you know, and they can’t operate on it for some reason or another.”

“What are you saying?  Are you going to die?”

“Well, we’re all going to die, dear.”

“I mean soon!”

“It seems that way.  Can you help me find this phone number?”

Jonah stood there, watching his mother search the roll top desk that used to sit in Grandma Mueller’s dining room.  She’d missed a button on the back of her housedress, so that one of the tiny pink plastic buttons stuck out on top by the collar.  “Cheer up sleepy Jean,” she was singing to herself.  “Oh, what can it mean?  To a daydream believer, and a homecoming queen…”

The View From Here

I was one fear closer to here

lost in a night too dark for sleeping

was it me on the ledge        or was it you

whispering                                                             

                                                                 

                         don’t give up too soon

don’t give up

too soon               

when I am breaking           

I am a fool

where do I stand

I am a piece of stone mixed in

with all this sand

                                                               

yet full of proof

of what died         with you

                               

why did you bring me here to my cyclone second

when rage engulfs this bridge from earth to heaven                    

cinder through and through                                                                                                                                                           

                       you ask too much                           you do

for one whisper like the hint of water splashed on embers

for one storybook of dreams with its message tethered 

to the fading metal moon    

the sun  it can  be cruel

now that I gave too much                 too soon                                                                                 

                                                Is this your plan  

             

is this your one    

your great             

your smoky last demand  

or

my intention

my blue-flame doom

  

because

burned across my heart your forgotten message

the language lost in time with the words rewritten

resuscitate the girl she is out of breathing

collapsed under the hope she could not believe in

the soot was in her eyes she could only cry

was this my one great truth

  

did I give up

                too soon?

                

Fire Dance

“Just before your friend Andy came back here,” Alturis said, meticulously peeling an apple with the butcher knife he'd found in her kitchen drawer, “he shot and killed someone.  Did he tell you that?”

“No.”

“Well he did.  Even more unfortunate, that person happened to be my brother.”

Meg just looked at him.

“Apparently your Andy had never killed someone before," Alturis continued; his tone suggested that he found this detail amusing, even endearing.  "It disturbed him.  So he took a leave of absence and came here.  Which is where we found him.  And you,” Alturis added, as if it were impolite not to mention her place in his diabolical scheme.  “Bad information led me to—what was their name?—the Gergens or the Bourbons or whoever.  It’s hard to find good help nowadays.”

“I wouldn’t know.  I’m not in the market for henchmen.”

“And a good thing for you, too.”

“But that doesn’t explain what you want with me.”

“Doesn’t it?” he asked, smiling again.

Hidden

And when I choose to come here again                                                                     

will it snow how it did in my dreams

                        will I be

a story worth telling

                                    because the sadness—

it crackles in the night

           

for you           

the mistake worth regretting

                                                the faraway voice        filled with belonging

do you see where eternity ends

did you know that you were my friend

this planet a box that holds me

when she could not worship the sun               for so long she yearned to sleep         

but the storm came rolling in

                        the storm came rolling in

a million miles of prairie grass

and your golden-haired girl                            exposed once again

unsure how the course of right became the final turn wrong

how her rabbit-hole time for falling   

                                    just      gone

gone

  

gone

a triumph but for you 

my one truth worth deceiving

a child’s dream for tomorrow so good           it deserved to be buried

behind the wall a red she had never seen                  

     

if I had                        discovered

yet not been found

would your golden-haired girl           

be six feet underground

This was why you had to go

maybe I should have known

but the sadness—

no one told me it would come with the leaving

  

especially not you

  

my last hope worth believing

Fading

I know what hate is, she said.  I know how to hate him and I know how to hate myself.

So they sent her to someone who could teach her how not to hate.  He had nothing to do with God or Christs nailed to crosses.

It took a long time.  But she learned how to not to hate.  Instead she learned how not to trust.  

So Far Away

Spread your arms                                    wide

dive

the snow envelops my knees

it makes me want to believe                     in you

your candle is dim                                   a flickering light

in sight on top of the hill

I am pushing

a thousand clouds to insulate the sky

only the beat of the ice crunching                            underneath my feet

purple the color of your hidden majesty

in this river flood of oncoming night

                               

play your sad drums for me

underneath the tree

up there on our crayon hill

keep it steady           keep it still

but in a minute I am undone

I cannot cannot leave you now

in the world all gray I wanted to feel

zephyrs and sunrise against my face

it looked so warm

                it looked so warm

from the other side

so I strapped on my wings

took to your sky

                blinded by a million sparkling dreams

                snowflakes falling into infinity

the howling drums of wind and war echoing

around me…

and then the

candle

                went out

                                

Volcano

I met her at the cafe where I liked to read the paper in the morning.  At the time she struck me as nothing special—just another smiley college student waiting tables over the summer.  Only after she gave me the wrong coffee three days in a row did I really pay any notice to her.

During her rambling apology—“I’m so sorry, I just can’t remember if the white doily means vanilla or regular, I keep thinking white has to be vanilla and then I think, no, it’s the opposite, and then I get myself all mixed up”—I didn’t know whether to laugh or tell her to go away.  In the end I did neither.   Eventually I would come to wish I had done the latter.