i just broke up

With “advanced laser solution”

Not that I don’t need advanced laser solutions…

I do.  I truly do

Physics and history work their genius

On so many pieces

Of me

Slipping from freedom

I cut lose from these persistent words

To all the other liberating break-ups–

People I used to know

Now so many

Strangers.

there have been times

In the last six years

When I have thought

Look! The insomnia has abated 

…Low tide….

….Rain after a drought….

…A decent President…

Ephemeral

You think, saved! But your reason retorts–not so fast

I get irritable by 1:47 in the morning

Knowing why I inhabit these midnight places

Ghosts are familiar

Girl in the dark

I wish I could have travelled back to you 

There believing only you 

Were awake in the world 

Travel back to tell you

I Am.  I am here

J reminds me of this–one more videotape I could not watch.  Each night I would attempt to make sense of the mess–hand wash dishes, sweep floors.

This particular night there was an apple, red, nearly perfect.  Only one baby bite etched into its skin.

A few inches away there was another.  Same MO–one tiny bite removed from its skin.  Then another and another until the rest of the bag lay at the end of a trail of beautiful red apples, each grazed by the tiny perfect teeth of a wandering toddler.
Baby, really.  You were still just a beautiful, perfect baby.

We laughed at your perfect crime.  Filmed it for posterity.  Aware that you were borrowed and that the trail you left was indelible.

the door of the world

Is ajar, my Love

Spilling darkness through the narrow gap

Where light should be

I have this math-

Ematical conversation with

You in my head

I know you don’t believe in God, but do you…believe 

In oxygen?

Seeping as it does

Into the fiber of your being

Take a breath

Tell me

What will you  do

On the last day, the very last moment

Of

 organic grace?

that you are loved.

Surely they must have loved you

To have acquired you
that way

I tell myself you must have been precious

Jewel heist precious

Only your mother had no insurance

No private investigator to find you

when she lost you she lost you indeed
every milestone, every turn of hope

When you were stolen she lost
trust in

.. the judge, the lawyer, the case worker, the adoption liar

Who should have all said no

This was never my job

To help rich people steal babies from the poor

not
my
job

i see them on the most pedestrian

Errand–

Cartoon clouds!

So different than their fancy-assed Latinate cousins

Cartoon clouds loft 

And float

Resembling nothing so much as cotton candy..or bunnies

I do my best to capture them in my memory

I cast my gaze about the sky

For the Inevitable Cartoonist

Who would squander such casual splendor

On us.

dear one

My email is elegylea@gmail.com

In case you need me

We love you RT, RT, and HT.  
Happy 18th birthday

the year I lost you

I made rules

No pride

Do anything…legal

(So running to Canada was out)

Believe God is big enough.
I found your mother through the ghost of a house burned to the ground

I remember how normal 

Her bathroom was–soap, shampoo, hairbrush…

No signs of the cosmic upheaval they want us all to believe 

Your beautiful mother
Sat on the futon next to you as I memorized how right you looked together

With your baby pink phone repeating may I help you?

In her metallic voice Asian?

There is a picture somewhere in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Of a man you once knew

Ultimate grief

Is a synonym for all the lies they told us

… 17 years to say, I love you

Rapunzel girls, women now.

Know your true names

Your true history has always been

Beloved, Little Ones

Happy birthday.  I love you
Sept. 6 1997