Plaid

Fall is here.

It’s here in this little British town in October.

The leaves dying as embers and falling away,

Full of life.

The cathedral standing against an unsure sky

And the house with the ivy tattoos,

Beautiful images of the countryside.

And for an odd moment,

I want you here.

I don’t want you here to act in my play,

Write our names in the stars,

Or find me in hide-and-seek.

I just want you here

Comfortable in my presence, and I in yours.

The quiet burning of the tree’s arms

The warm brick buildings

And the energy in the air,

Bidding us breathe deeply the late afternoon

and curl softly into the chilly night

that waits for not a soul.

I just want you here so I can share my sight.

So you can see the clouds rolling over the green sea of life

Grown from fresh air and beautiful country soil.

So you can see me see it;

For I fancy that’s half the delight.

I’d like to share with you,

hot chocolate and thick plaid

warming toes wrapped in woolen socks.

I’d like warm hands matched with warm gloves

And warm hearts.

The world shrinks as the cold sets in, and

I want it to bring you a little closer to me.  

The Words

I tried to write a poem.

And the words fell out of my fingertips

and broke on the screen.

They made a noise like tin

and tasted like humidity.

I was going to lament things that don’t match up,

and bemoan my over-analytical tendencies.

I was going to wring my metaphorical hands

and curl up in a pile of beautiful words and cry.

But the words – no one told them

what to mean.

They were confused

because I am confused.

I’m trying to lure sadness out

but it is happy where it is.

I’m trying to force patience in

but it’s fed up and refuses to wait.

Mostly, the words were shaking because

I didn’t know where to put them.

I’m no expert and when I read my words,

they came back, “This is not how you feel.”

So I listened and made them talk about themselves.

But I must be so very selfish, because we ended up

talking about me.

                    -March 4

Telegram

STOP. Where do you think you're going?
Come back here.
STOP. What do you think you're doing?
You can't take that. It's mine.
STOP. Where did all the butterflies go?
They left so quickly and I'm wondering if they abandoned you, too.
STOP. What are you thinking?
Who looks at what's going on here and reacts like you do?
STOP. Please stop.
I knew it was going to be like this.
STOP. I wanted it to end earlier.
I knew that the further in we got, the harder it would be to
STOP the hope and the living outside of myself.
I knew the longer it lasted, the worse it could get.
STOP, I told myself.
Don't think like that. But sometimes I can't
STOP myself, and words come out and things are said and
I can't take them back.
STOP. No one's ever said things are broken.
No one ever said there was anything to break.
STOP. Why must it fall apart?
Don't think like that. You'll never
STOP. You'll learn to mistrust and misjudge
and you'll anticipate the end as a crashing fiasco.

But if we could all just STOP and consider how many times
my brain goes around in a second, we'd know that none of this even matters.
STOP.


First time you breathe deeply is the first time it'll go right.

Zero Gravity

I’m in another world.

This one is free from gravity and being responsible.

It doesn't include deadlines or sleep.

It's not reasonable and I'm braver here.

Because I have so much more to lose.

Reality has no hold on me until it crashes around me

But I stand

soaking and shivering and unable to move.

They tell me to wake up and smell the roses

but they smell so much better in my sleep.

Joy Exceeding

Every tear

was a crystal

that just exploded

shattered

shot in the air

a hundred bright shining pieces

so tiny you can’t speak them as they fall

but they settle into all the empty places of my heart

and for a small piece of forever,

a little chink of space-time,

everything is better than OK.

Parcels and Pandora's Box

Parcels.

Nobody uses that word anymore.

Maybe because our world has grown too heavy

for light, pretty words like that.

We don’t carry parcels.

I carry boxes, hand-made by Pandora.

We pull suitcases,

the invisible kind that we have to drag

up the stairs and make it look

Normal.

We struggle under the weight of boulders-solid all the way through.

Parcels. When people had parcels they had apple pie all the time.

They had white picket fences and problems that were hollow,

but what they didn’t admit is that their feather-light parcels

were really boxes of stone.

I lied    to you today.

Looked straight at you and completely, knowingly, intentionally

gave you my slick parcel, all wrapped up in the shiny paper of normalcy,

tiny problems like procrastination glinting in the bow.

But I kept my suitcase.

I kept my Pandora’s box and opened it later, when you weren’t around.

I didn’t want you to know.

But the tricky thing is that I can keep lying for as long as I want.

This particular boulder is completely invisible, and I’m afraid that

if I tell you about it

it’ll sit on your chest and

crush your heart.

But parcels, on the other hand.

Those are pretty.

You can take them with you; admire the normal size,

the nice wrapping, the all-too expertly tied bow.

But that’s as far as you’ll get. There isn’t anything inside

because it’s a parcel. It’s not real.

And the world has gotten a little less shiny, but not enough

that I can look straight at you after 19 hours and say,

“I’m explaining my wounds and dissecting my scars.”

You wouldn’t understand; you couldn’t in a minute, and that’s all I had.

And I was scared to lose you so I lied.

Forgive me.