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?

Advertisement

Broken

everything he could know about her
could be found in the things she didn’t talk about,
and she hadn’t been talking about much of anything for quite a while

but it was time;
it had become a sludge so thick it filled her lungs,
a slow hardening that made it difficult to breathe

so she gritted her eyes and tucked the shame into her cheek so she could talk around it,
and she told him –
she was failing

the dignified satisfaction at what had, at first,
felt like a victory,
had slowly and methodically curdled,
and now it was rotten,
all of it

what was once her most admired characteristic –
her callous resolve,
her stern determination to succeed despite the turmoil,
her pulling herself up at the bootstraps, again,
was not enough

and no matter how she tried to feel proud of her decision to give in,
to let allow herself to fail if it was meant to happen,
she felt no victory in it

even in the beautiful slaying of her ego,
she felt no triumph in being reminded she was broken

Rumors

we walk as we talk,
marveling at the sun’s slow plunge into the darkness of the sea,
the houses growing larger as we get further from the campground,
like an infinite row of monstrous nesting dolls,
larger and larger than life, it seems,
further and further from who we are in day to day life

I squeeze his hand and ask him if he’s ever done it before,
and he tells me no,
a slight pink shade growing in his bronze cheeks,
a raw, irresistible honesty behind eyes that match the bright blue of the sea in the morning

we come to a place where there are no lights or other signs of life,
nothing, except his rapid breath and pure excitement,
a slight shyness and awkwardness,
which I find riveting;
he wants me

and in the gritty sand and damp kelp that line the beach,
I let him have what he thinks he wants,
as the bold waves grow unrelenting,
spreading rumors of my rapaciousness back down the shore

Duality

there are moments of astonishment and resignation that hold me forever in debt and bondage to the memories I harbor from living a childhood in a small, factory town,
in a family in constant battle

I belonged to a family with a fatal attraction to intensity,
to instant gratification,
to outrageousness of response

we were instinctive, not thoughtful,
connoisseurs of fight and flight,
never happy unless we waged our own private war against the rest of the world,
priding ourselves in our ability to survive

and the war just repeated and repeated itself,
only revealing itself to be a war against ourselves,
lives in constant, unrelenting tension,
always dancing with blind risk and driven by fear of exposure,
a life composed of ice and falling rock

these frequent moments of surprise and consecration center around a singular fear –
a fear of emptiness in life, nihility, boredom,
the hopelessness of a life devoid of thoughtful action;
it is the death-in-life of the masked perpetuity of middle class,
the fear of the kind of deep dive that brings forth truth which sends a shiver through my soul

I often try to ground myself,
remembering the days so long ago when I buried my tiny bare toes in the clean grass,
the fresh smell of rain seeping through the cheap wooden screen door as I stood, listening, with my innocent forehead pressed against it,
and I try to duplicate it –
if I walk my tired bones before the sun rises,
take the time to breathe in the silence of the air and feel the moonlight on my face,
I am sometimes able to connect myself to the deep hum of the planet,
inject life into the marrow of these papery bones

but if I continuously turn on the television or bury my face in the rabbitole of my phone to avoid an evening alone with myself,
it feels as if I am admitting my membership with the living dead

it is the humble, messy, industrial town part,
the splintered, chaotic part of me that is most quintessentially and fiercely alive

those small town, tumultuous memories are the ones that infiltrate the entirety of whatever authenticity I continually bring to light as an aging woman

it is an intricate duality that exists –
they can both fuel and extinguish my flame if I let them

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

Ode to Dad’s Favorite Shirt

you were a gift from one of us siblings,
I’m not sure which one,
because we all bought him some variation of you over the years –
that’s what happens when a parent says to their kids that they like something once at Christmas

for a long while after,
he wore you all the time,
perhaps it was because you became more comfortable with wear,
but more likely because we couldn’t afford to have too many in the closet,
and he always made himself last in line when there was enough money for buying

many years after he unwrapped you,
he still wore you,
thinning and faded and frayed a little at the collar,
and sometimes I wished and prayed he would please not wear you in front of my friends again,
hoping he would wear one just a little bit newer

maybe I was embarrassed,
but maybe you also reminded me,
when I did not want to be reminded,
that he was growing old

I grew to dislike you then,
but, now, when I close my eyes and think of Dad,
there you are

because of you,
he was easy to find in a crowd if our hands accidentally let loose of one another,
easy to pick out in the bleachers after I hit a double and frantically searched for him,
just to see the smile of pride on his face,
easy to see a few isles down in the grocery store when I’d lingered a little too long in the candy isle,
stopping to count the newspaper delivery quarters I’d stuffed in my pocket

because of you,
I remember his consistency,
his sentimentality,
his humility,
his soft, steady comfort beneath my cheek when I snuggled in

Blister

some days, I can’t feel much at all,
but I can smell my own grief,
overwhelming, distant,
like the first hint of smoke hitching in the wind,
a foreshadowing of something larger,
gaining momentum

but there is always too much to do,
and never enough time,
so I snuff it out,
pinch the red hot phosphorus of it between my tired fingers,
leaving behind only scorched, raw skin

it’s fine,
it’s fine

I keep repeating it to myself,
but as I go about the day,
one mountainous thing to the next,
I keep catching a whiff of it,
and I can’t help pressing the blistering it leaves behind,
both comforting and chilling

and I wish I could just take a needle to it,
relieve some of the pressure,
but I can’t –
I can’t say I miss her,
I’m not ready yet

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?

Brittle

it’s the people you think you know that you really have to worry about,
because one day, you wake up,
and you don’t actually know them

you look at the person,
and they are so familiar it hurts,
but, somehow, they are also a stranger;
you know you love them,
but you no longer recognize them

and you realize the knowing is just a story you’ve been telling yourself,
the one that helps you get out of bed every morning

you knew each other once,
but, at some point, it became easier to write a story than to cross the awkward space that grew,
one silent, stiffening moment at a time

now it’s all too brittle,
and you just want them to leave

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.