What I’m Made Of

all my life I’ve wondered what’s inside of me,
what I’m really made of

is it all hope-driven gears, creak-cranking,
squeaky with cynical grease?

or is it luminous rays of wonder and awe,
eyes, blinking and seeking love, pure and true?

is it all smoke, a fevered kiln of passing time,
age-dried straw, a mess of flaking atrophy?

or is it a not-so-flash flood, raging, rising,
the result of an aching, beating heart?

is it all waves of water and crackling fire,
opposing forces, one constantly quenching the other?

or do I simply burn for all that I am not,
for all I do not have?

-artwork by my daughter

Origami

as the weight incrementally increased,
she folded her desire in half,
then in half again,
and again,
until she could barely feel it at all,
tucking it into that hidden corner of her heart,
a minuscule origami equal in measure to her worth

Familiar

amidst the chaos,
amidst all I don’t know,
all that isn’t mine to maneuver,
all that is out of my reach,
I know this familiar misery,
this misery that’s all mine

and I can make as much as I want

Smile

they had all gathered to celebrate,
a room full of family from near and far,
her longing to see them equal in measure to the anxiety she felt in a crowded room,
one full of prickly expectation

she tried so hard to be the mirror others expected her to be,
but her smile was like a wound that had thickened as it healed,
nothing but rough, numb skin where nerve endings once existed

Recalculating

I recalculate
convince myself
I am cotton candy
sugar and air

but sooner or later
in the inevitable heat
I become a damp wad
of weeping pinky-red

Somewhere Else

as we sit in the quiet,
I wonder,
is enough of me still located here?

I lead a pretty normal life:
I work, I have conversations,
I make grocery lists and cook dinners,
I parent my children,
I am a wife;
I am not always stuck inside my selves

but it feels so often that part of myself is in this place,
while, at the same time,
the most important parts are in a different place,
a place that can’t be accessed in the mundane,
a place so deep I need to be alone to open,
be alone to sift through and allow to be free

you gently break the quiet;
you speak to me in your raspy voice and I can hear you,
I can talk and follow along the well worn paths we’ve created in our many years together,
but my most important parts are somewhere else,
and I can’t seem to locate them

Time

I have been wake-walking in a worn-out tired that’s perpetually nauseous,
ravenous for something, but not hungry, exactly,
raw in a way that takes me by surprise and frustrates me;
the most trivial things are the last straw,
and there seem to be so many lasts

I have learned it’s not possible to wake up on the wrong side of the bed when you never really slept,
when there was no restful sleep,
just the tiny spaces between the cyclical blips of a never-ending SOS

and no matter what face I put on,
I am not greener on the other side,
I cannot find the sweet, restorative spot,
and too many days it feels like life is a zero sum game –
you only win until you lose again

I have been here before,
in a place that was a slow slide into conscious unconsciousness,
and the difference this time is that I know where I am,
I know who I am as I rest my head on the warm side of the pillow,
because I don’t have the energy to flip it,
and the flipping is never fast enough, anyway,
is it?

time isn’t on my side, which is funny,
because time is the only thing that matters,
isn’t it?

and I just keep asking myself:
what would be the point of living,
if we didn’t allow time to change us?
if we didn’t realize that time is the purest form of love on this earth?

What If?

I’ve been stuck in a sinister roundabout,
involuntary traveling in circles,
swallowing so many words

but there is devastation in silence,
and my tongue in not well-trained in sitting still for very long,
so, sometimes, when I do speak, it sparks,
the words rippling and licking at our bridges to burn

I don’t know what to do, then,
because it’s so strange to want so badly to talk and wish for silence at the same time,
to feel so uprooted and stuck,
so lost

so my idle hands rip and crinkle and unwrap,
and I gnaw and choke and chew,
trying like hell to drown the flames,
seeking for and feeding the source in the deepest pit of my stomach,
but it only manages to metastasize into rolls and folds,
unable to stifle the unbearable heat

and when I do manage to let it all bubble and rumble it’s way to the surface,
I shiver, despite the swelter,
because all I can do is wonder:
what if, even though we see that all our mistakes are forgivable,
when we hold hands and lay time flat,
silencing the maelstrom into white noise,
we find that nothing we had hoped and expected to evolve actually changes?
what if this is as good as it gets?

Cartography

she always did that,
went three steps too far,
trying to map things forward and back

she had to;
she could trust only herself,
and the things she knew to be true

Prison

papering over the cracks doesn’t make them disappear,
but life is prettier when you do,
isn’t it?

but pretty is temporary;
paper is thin,
the sun goes down

I often wonder where other people go when they turn off the lights

are they peaceful?
do they drift and dream?

or, are there some, like me,
who often wander into the crevices within themselves,
digging around inside the shadows of their blackness,
clawing away at the dirt of memories they wish they could forget,
running from maybes and what ifs,
grasping at illusions,
hoping like hell no one else can see this fitfully desperate place?

daylight ignorance isn’t bliss,
it’s only fear postponed to a later date,
and control is an illusion that can only really be felt in the letting go

denial is the most destructive form of self harm,
isnt it?

it’s such an exhausting work,
and the truth is always there,
lurking in the shadows,
refusing to be silenced,
demanding to be seen when the lights go out

it’s a self-inflicted,
ruinous prison

I built my prison meticulously,
with solid walls made from bricks of guilt and obligation,
walls that seem to have no doors

but the way out is always there,
I just can’t always see it –
I have learned I just have to be willing to watch myself crumble