that's mrs. mediocrity to you

i just want to say that i see you

pouring love onto
the sidewalk
doing your best
every day
to fill in all the cracks

i see you standing there
alone and afraid
and giving
and giving
and giving

burning bright
not just at both ends
but in a circle you’ve drawn
all around us
keeping the darkness at bay

you’ve outrun the odds
and the lot of us
beaten strife down
with the soles of two feet
always moving

taking you places
you’d rather run through
valleys of burden
and pits
of responsibility

and i want
to carry your heart
to the top of the mountain
feed you sun and
silent breezes

wash your blisters and build you
a sky-high fire
to throw enough light
for you to find
your own reflection

i just want to say that i see you

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for nana

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Today I am hosting Poetics over at dVerse Poets
with a prompt to write a poem telling someone you love all the things
you want to tell them, now, before it’s too late.

yesterday i read old poems
and laughed at myself

all that anger
leather
tethered
to skinny arms and broken heart

made up armor for mixed up girl
tough skin to hide behind
all painted red and pretty

somewhere along the line
i let it go

all of it

released it into air
that cradled and promised

watched it float away

waved goodbye

shed no tear

now, now

i sit in this same old kitchen
hard chair
curved back
worn slightly by years
of useful

use

i know the scars and scratches
that run beneath my fingers
each one could have been a sentence

or at least
a perfect word

etched along the surface
of sanity

marking time

yesterday i read old poems
and laughed at myself

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(This post first appeared October 18, 2011).

I find myself with no time for writing this week, barely time for breathing.

Whew. I’ll be back as soon as I’m able.

.

and the twisting vine

of time

offering no slack

no reprieve

no consolation

but these brief fleeting bits

of astonishing

beauty

.

.

.

.

and a handle

to hold

onto

.

life

.

.

.

A week of up before dawn,

asleep far too late,

and the merry-go-round

keeps on spinning.

.

A moment this morning

of quiet beauty,

an intake of breath,

both of us,

solitary,

reaching for

sky.

.

.

.

Prepared to run, poised for flight, yet standing my ground. The sky grows dark with words that flit by with the silence of bats, words used, expelled, offered in place of all I cannot give. The earth rumbles with those I’ve yet to speak.

I want to remember tomorrow before it happens and dream of yesterday’s chance. I want to be the bird that lands last. I want to sing with the abandon of loss.

Instead, I reach my arms high and offer sanctuary, spreading branches like wings and roots like scrabbling claw feet. I am sharp-edged and hollow-toed. I am filled with echoes.

I dreamt of you again last night, fooled myself into seeing you again, but even my dream felt the need to remind me that you are gone. And even in sleep I wondered if this is the way it will always be, and I spent the rest of the night wandering lost from room to room in a house built from memories of places I’ve never been.

We were there, together, just for a moment. Before I remembered.

Mostly, I’ve come to understand that the questions will never be answered. Mostly, I’ve come to embrace the lack of knowing. I am content to wander through this field of grass and bird and flailing branch. The wind is a challenge to stay upright, my map has sailed high into clouds of disdain.

.

And we laughed again
at free falling bottles and
broken stars. We laughed.

.

.

Joining in today over at dVersePoets with a Haibun, using Kahlil Gibran’s quote: “Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.” as inspiration.

.

.

.

sags and wrinkles

still

hanging on

.

.

.

.

Some days you have a story that isn’t yours to tell. The words add up and bobble around inside your head, bouncing off the boundaries you’ve put in place to keep them corralled. Silence fills the room like a big grey blanket. Everything is muffled, charged with static, covered over with the possibility of fog.

Today in one of those days, and all I can do is think about the ways we save each other in this life. The ways we save ourselves. The tiny little things that heal hearts, or sew them back together with crooked sampler stitches. Smiles and soup and hugs and listening. Being there.

Love is always messy and unchartered. And we are always finding our way together, bumping blindly along the path that stretches before us.

And the questions rise. How do you fit a whole life into a box?

The memories we have become a knot too complicated to untangle. We can only pull out a strand here and there and watch as it dangles. That day, that night, that violet neatly placed between the pages of a bible. Remember when? Heartache and happiness all mixed together in a jumble of once was. Love holding it all together like glue.

Suffice it to say that all we have is our story. Some of them are big and broken, some are smaller and demure. I am learning to cradle each one in the palm of my hand. Delicate petals dried and tucked away between pages that smell of time’s passing. Bits of hope gone dry and brittle, but saved, just the same.

Cherished.

And there it is, the dust of grace, gathered in the seam.

Some days you purse your lips and blow that dust back out into the world. Other days, you close the book back up again, ever-so-gently.

For safekeeping.

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