Same

I cannot help but to notice her pretending, my mind examining each feigned word like fingers lingering over hard-pressed indents left behind on parchment.
It seems mercilessly exhausting.

She pretends because that is what she has always done to get by.
Getting by has meant ignoring nearly every gut feeling she has ever had, and even when she did listen, it was only after enduring for far too long.
The gut feelings were always the real her, screaming to be heard.

I watch her disguised expressions as she speaks and all I can think is:
Did you mistake complacency for freedom?
Did you harden your heart to what loved you most?
Did you allow yourself true joy in anything?

Am I doing the same thing?

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Liquid

for many, the sun’s rising is a new start,
a spark of freshness and hope,
of some new unknown,
of possibility

but the sharp rays peeking through the black curtains were anything but;
they were sinister tentacles gripping and pulling her into the known,
which she fiercely wished was not

her blurry eyes were smeared with yesterday’s camo,
her mouth filled with sticky secrets she had tried so hard to swallow but never digest,
and this morning was just another in an endless slice of time that never seemed to pass

so she reached to the bedside table,
desperate, not for the glass of water,
but for the two small pills that would begin her swift transformation from a solid,
something rigid, too tight,
to liquid, not flowing and fluid,
but a stagnant pool of nothingness,
however fleeting it may be

Miracle

it was one of life‘s miracles,
the way my body was home to us both as we grew,
this body becoming larger as it rearranged itself to make room for you,
my self transforming into someone I’d never been,
someone I wasn’t even sure I knew how to be

but that grew, too,
exponentially larger than my belly,
stretching to fill all the open spaces of possibility;
it fed us both

and you,
from a tiny spark into a beating heart,
one that beat because mine had beaten,
one that gave mine new life

I still fed you when you finally made it into my arms,
your soft palms stroking the bareness of my chest,
fingers grasping at my own,
a lifeline only we could share,
a bond I didn’t know I needed until just that moment,
and I never wanted to let you go

now, all these years later,
you’ll be leaving soon,
out into the world to find your place,
stretching to fill all the open spaces of possibility,
another of life’s miracles

Fly

what keeps me here?,
I have wondered

and I know for certain,
it isn’t the walls
or the simple things inside;
we are deliberately humble people

it isn’t the long history,
the feeling of responsibility,
or some sense of obligation, even

Mary Oliver said,
“For the birds who own nothing –
the reason they can fly,”
and she was right

but, oh, isn’t it the best feeling,
to have the people we call home
to whom we can return?

Marvelous

I know what the problem is –
you get used to marvelous things,
take them for granted.
You try not to, but you do.
It all becomes normal,
nothing special.
But there’s too much wonder;
it’s everywhere.
And you have to never stop noticing.

Easy

I remember bringing you home like it was yesterday,
then I blinked,
and you were a toddler,
running us ragged, questioning everything

I blinked again,
and you were a teenager,
spending too much time in your room,
stuck inside your feelings,
treading deep in the soft side of strong

then, I blinked again,
and now you are grown,
about to get your own place,
feeling your way around adulthood

I often find myself looking at you,
and when I do,
I see all of you,
all the versions of you that you’ve been;
I see glimpses of who you’ll be

and I need you to know –
it may not always have been easy,
but you need never apologize –
you’ve always been easy to love

Rain

it’s not a midlife crisis,
it’s a cracking,
like thin ice on a puddle of water,
first just some hairline wrinkles around the eyes,
then the rest, all at once

it’s a 40-odd year journey of finally feeling free enough to crack,
of figuring out how to pick apart the shell and stand in the presence of myself,
of giving myself permission to unearth and to write,
but also to stalk my own soul,
and sometimes having too much of my own self

sometimes the stalking hurts,
if for no other reason than my skin doesn’t feel like it’s mine;
sometimes I panic,
because I’ve been staring at the answers for so long,
but can’t locate the questions

finding and asking the right questions,
speaking them out loud and in the open,
oh, God –
it turns the air around my words into weather

they say a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences,
but that isn’t entirely true;
if my past was all that defined me,
I’d never be able to put up with myself –
I need the freedom to convince myself that I’m more than the mistakes I made yesterday,
that I am all of my next choices, too,
all of my tomorrows

I am words into rain,
face upturned as the dirt around my bare feet becomes freckled with brown question marks,
my body a thing to be spoken with

and I reach out with open arms for those I love,
pulling them so close there will never be room for blame

Riveting

his face transforms as he stares at me,
a burning recklessness filling his eyes as he leads me into a wind tunnel kiss,
my whole self leaning into the sweeping lost

I become the warmth, the wet,
the tickle, the sting

we can’t let go –
it becomes the writing of a song,
a balancing act of unearthing,
the ferociously visceral sensing of the other as we sway,
back and forth in search of a revelatory harmony

and I realize the only time I feel alive is when he looks at me like that,
riveting me to the moment

Seen

he was tall but not too tall,
his lips thin but easy to smile,
deep viridescent eyes set beneath a strong brow,
not brooding exactly,
but very serious,
looking at her with an unexpected sincerity

she’d met him briefly before and had seen him around campus over the last few years,
and though she didn’t know him well at all,
this night, she felt a strange pulse of profound recognition

throughout the evening they kept glancing at one another,
their eyes each drawn to the other,
and normally,
she hated being stared at,
but this was somehow very different

it was the oddest, most intense feeling –
she had the sensation that she was being seen,
and she hadn’t even known she’d felt invisible

Moments

they’d loved one another for so long,
and sometimes life began to feel a little rote,
but when they came together,
they forgot the lists and routines,
they forgot who they were and what brought them together

but she didn’t forget he was the most trustworthy, honest, and compassionate human she’d ever known,
the reason she could be who she was in every moment

and he didn’t forget she was the empathic fire at his backside,
a simple woman with a complicated heart,
the beating of his own heart

what happened between them was always unexpected;
in these moments a new future opened wide –
a world where anything could happen and nothing was impossible