The Black Hole

Just around the corner

you can be singing

in awe of the clouds forming

or the ants running

And then you will see nothing else 

You will wonder why you 

never saw it coming

Blowing the Whistle

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

Deluge

I see a man
on the top of a hill 
underneath a tree
I turn to face him
we stand there for a while
the grass is green from the rain
he does not know my name
I open my mouth and nothing gags
he listens
I turn to run I run run run
down the slope my arms stretched wide
I dive between the tall grass
the grass is tall from the rain
he calls for the daydreamer but 
I am gone
I am back in my bed
hating myself for the telling
it is too late
he does not know my name but 
he knows
there is no turning back

The Tomorrow that Never Came

I found your horses running scared
with apocalyptic thoughts and
moonlit hair
this is the dream you gave to me
tonight

I want to learn to cry once more
I wonder if I even could before
I reach to enthral your sky

But we are exposed along the line
nothing left to soothe our sunburned eyes
No notice of what still hides
and if we must wait for it alone

Because this is the dream we found tonight
this is not the dream I held inside
Gone and vapour undoing our glue

As I remember how you

found my horses running scared

shivering in the wind with

frozen hair

it broke to the touch

as you whispered goodbye goodbye

goodbye...

Pieces

Let me tell you what I know about

my broken heart

this is the rhythm of it falling apart

toss the stones in the river because

we are

we are coming up for air again

What did I even know about

guilt and sin

all of the dreams that

I was dying in

it was a curse it was a blessing it

was utter nothingness

until it skidded and came crashing

home

No telling how the earth will

record this disaster

whistling dixie in the wind

as if I had the answer

            ballet with fractured form

tripped up by vengeful rapture

the hammer flung against

the wall

Dismantled piece by piece into

a million parts

buried back with Santa at

the Christmas tree farm

what is dead is what is real to

the falling apart

we heard the siren but not the

alarm

I wonder how I will know when

the sky becomes my master

when dreams of yesterday stop

mocking me with laughter

tomorrow is today tornadoes

circling my trailer

I was wrong over

and over again

Now I whisper to the wind about

my broken heart

to unravel in slow motion

not a subtle art

toss the stones in the river because

I am

I am here alone at the end

Fading

I joined Bryan in the living room five minutes later.  He said nothing to me beyond what he was able to communicate with the cold, ferocious glare I had come to recognize as the precursor to his verbal wrath.  But too angry to care about the mushroom cloud forming over his head, I turned to Julia and gave her a big hug. “Thank you so much for everything,” I gushed. Julia, her eyes glued to Bryan, merely flashed me a wan smile in return.  

Bryan vacated the premises without so much as a peep in her direction.  Neither did he utter a word to me until we had crossed the border into Illinois.  The last time he had been that quiet, he’d thrown me into a piece of furniture and booted me from the apartment.  For this reason only it was a relief to have him say, in a voice that rumbled through the car like the echo of approaching thunder, “Why did you run away?”

“I didn’t run away.  I just came to visit.”

“Without asking me first?”

“I’m seventeen.  Do I have to ask for permission every time I want to leave the house?”

“To leave the state?  Yes.  You do.”

“I don’t see why.  You aren’t my father.  And, contrary to what you seem to believe, you aren’t God either.”

“Yet I am the one who has the final say, Rachel.”

“So you keep claiming, but I don’t know what your problem with Julia is.  What has she ever done to you?” 

“My problems with Julia aren’t relevant to you and me.”

Yeah, right.  But not daring to trot out the blackmail story—there was insolence, and then there was just plain idiocy—I said, “In a matter of months I can do whatever the hell I want, and I don’t have to tell you the first thing about it.”

“Which is also irrelevant.  Until that day comes I make the rules.  You don’t have to like them.  You just have to live with them.”

“No.”

Bryan glanced over at me.  “What did you just say?”

The undercurrent of menace electrifying this challenge was such that, had I been less damaged, I might have been quaking in my boots.  Damaged I was, though, so I answered him, “I don’t think I want to do that.”

“And what the fuck is it you want to do?”

“You know what the fuck it is I want to do.  You just won’t let me.”

“You can’t want to live with Julia.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’d be dead of lung cancer in six months, and she’s incapable of providing you with a structured home.”

“I don’t need a ‘structured home’ anymore.  Anyway, you should talk.  I don’t think kicking your ward out in the middle of the night counts as providing a structured home.”

For a brief second I thought Bryan might go apoplectic.  But I have to hand it to him: proving that you never know someone as well as you think you do, he exhibited the kind of self-restraint he was famous for lacking, and allowed my remark to dissipate into the air.  While unsure of how grateful I should be for that, I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

The rest of the trip passed in a dead silence filled with the despair of two very angry people—one of whom had at last come to terms with the only alternative left her.

Meoisis

I have been pining for you, old friend

I have been searching for clues of 

your existence

I have been listening to the buzz of

the lamps, my friend

but in the end we are all

without evidence

Because you are the final cause

you are my buried investments

When I search the heat registers for you

I find cotton balls that missed the garbage

can

I stand on my toes and scream

through my stomach

I fly off the linoleum by the force

of my breath

I plead to the cobwebs for you to listen

I wake up with charlie horses at 3 am

I lost my travel book centuries ago

burned the forest where you

were my favorite tree

You are the reality I cannot 

close in on

what flew through my hair that 

I mistook for permanency

I would like a chance to hold you, old friend

I would like to touch your materialness

But I beat against the kitchen table instead

keeping time with rhythmic

loneliness