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: existentialism
Morphe
i am where between,
clinging
have misunderstood
the task, traced the lines
of my mother's face
too long –
blooming beneath
a canopy; i, stemmed
from dirt and runoff;
maybe will breaks,
maybe the sun slants
to see me like my father
once did – i, with one hand
who gripped the ledge,
refusing
splitting roots
one here and one
unreachable, and who
with warmth like the night
holds memory of heat,
stays time in its quiet
contemplation
of a dream - have
i misunderstood the task -
or am mercy, bloomed
within a spun cocoon,
stranded in hope.
strong sun
The sky was heavy the day
I decided I liked orange
and pink together, torn
down the gray, octopus curtain
and placed a flower-bombed
flag in its place
sprinkled bits of periwinkle
to calm the delight,
a shocked, blank edge
calling where the cacophony
of color concluded
and I would sink into the heat
of a long bath, another too
cold day - the sun has slept
for weeks in Seattle,
to float between the shattering
like when I was very small
like a torn hibiscus bleeds –
laying face-up in a kiddie pool
legs a tad too long and splayed
in the time-eating heat
I tried to rub the sun from my eyes
but it just sunk in more
until I could see it behind
closed lids
like a dream in focus:
my body a boat gone
adrift
and sought this halting heat
that pauses every thing,
this version of me –
just a little more time.
