I once hid in the closet
to be with my being
especially to be
unneeded –
how the sun erases all
the little stars, and
I was contained there,
or was it with pressure
how I filled with unsafe
words in the first life –
would the stones not
have shaken when I
began to yell - would
mom still have died
if she had stayed with me
and I had stayed with her
when she tried to come back
and said she was sorry,
too insincerely – would she
have said I wasn't wrong
to save myself if we
had one more chance
and do I even need it;
anyway, she told me once,
children ruin a person's life
only a handful of years
after she left
and nonetheless I thought
too often I was weak,
made like taffy, of push
and pull, sweet
and ephemeral, once
believing need must
mostly go unmet,
same her sorrow grew;
the cruelty she could
never look at too
closely without panic,
so instead, I tried to wear
my father's blue sweater
when I turned thirteen,
backside-front
like an armor,
hands hidden in the
too long sleeves
where nobody could
suddenly grasp me, and
she thought I was just
a tomboy, she would say,
when I began to do this
but really I had no idea
how to speak except
in these ways – a little
warm, but smooth
as a mirror
in every frightening
moment that followed –
having like a tree
in a drought drops
the leaves; I pushed
into my own roots
beyond any reach
every joy and win,
same all the little stars
grow bright behind the sun
when the sun does one day, dim.
Tag: confessional poetry
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-second iteration of, “Surfside”
A stone in the sand
dents me:
at the edge of frailty,
I am of parts, of
the jagged coast
when she dies –
a tide, and every
new line in the sand,
of some certainty
inclined to be redrawn.
I wonder, was it the
same for her, my mother,
who went back despite
where waters were warm,
where the ocean kept
a song of us –
the one she loved.
She tried, more than
many will need
having, from cruelty,
a type of softness built
designed to enchant,
and beneath that a knife
I sensed most as she slept
not knowing where to step;
I felt lost without her.
Worse, was the forced inattention
to laugh when she would laugh,
to stay silent unless
in agreement – a
perfect pet,
and so, I existed in fable,
made by nature one
who will test
where is it that I end
and the world begins,
again and again
until like hard metal
snaps made off-center,
I am timeless: in pieces,
become every stone once
left in places I marked -
‘here is a feeling
of freedom,’ being
ravenous for sky,
the likes of craving
for fire in a long snow,
of craving her.
I bump against, time
and again,
my artifacts of freedom,
curving the edges
of my created, heart
denting them willingly,
to let as close as is possible
once dreams that were my own
and to remember, of
love and loving,
always authenticity, when I am
shaped, first, as I was made,
relentlessly malleable:
the needed form,
the remedy.
Adaptation
Once living in blue,
how deep the hand in my head
loved by a hungry sky
would become sharp of edges,
ripped my born wings that
a songbird bound; crawled
crushed flowers placed
in pockets I thought
could weave a crown.
It was that I knew first
having arms of cirrus:
insubstantial and searching
like water feels every
form of inauthenticity
and fills it;
I would bleed when needed
and not wanting to die
have untied each
found fiction to see
its kinked rope.
When once there was
first, forced inattention
like my mother unable to
hug when unwatched
could it be enough
that never like her father
left her broken,
she only left –
and a love that made me
has tried to take me
and save me same
stumbling into what is
familiar, many times
until older, I have felt
long beneath a snow
like a seed dreams of
a tree they will know.
