You touch my hand,
Say my name
And because you do
I know instantly
I am free.
John 20:16
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Category Archives: grief
Thin (Fake news:real girls)
After the 911 call, the sirens, the knocked-in door. After the 2-for-1 autopsy, the souping-out of ballistic shards in layers of mother, curls of child. After the sewing up, the tissue samples, temporary storage in this antiseptic place.
After this near-final totem of mother-and-child.
the cool and empty morgue fills with an emanation of light, softly cupped voices, perfumed flurry, fairy godmothers. A little late she thought as they scooped and coddled the baby-little late she thought as they lifted her from the crook of each bent elbow, inexplicably washed and free of blood. Here child, they murmur, try on this, try on that. Blur of organza and tulle.
After the day she’s had she goes along with all the fuss. Come on, child, carriage is waiting!
And there they all are bippity, boppity, boop! Apartment lot for courtyard, uncajolable vermin with no intention of donning livery or pulling pumpkins. No signs of princes.
Unfazed she realizes that even here, in the weird, magic-less limbo yonder, even here the grownups believe in magical fairytales..
which still end up
doing no good for the real girls
Living then dying
Alone.
Fake news for real girls
once there was a real girl
who (lucky for her)
Lived in a city with superhero dolphins
So when the humans she lived with began to
Bruise bones beneath skin
Pull out hair
Leave signs of trauma on shared walls
Well.. the
The magic dolphins of San Antonio
leapt to action!
Circled the child
Nudged her to safety
with their silvery, bottle-shaped snouts
Clicked and nodded their unequivocal attention to all
The days of her distress
Used their shear numbers to buoy her up
Brought her
bits of fish and garlands of seaweed
And in an unanimous decision
Ferried her to their own
blue, cool comparatively safe
Under-water-kingdom
far from the
city where these human mothers had
Failed her
Traveling Clothes
You wake up after
This utterly life-altering event
Dressed in your wedding clothes!?
In a TSA-ish place
Long lines, blue gloves, weary travelers
Only the music is surprisingly good
Break-up songs
Break up songs for people
You did not actually want to
Break up with
Break up songs for old bones
Rough joints
The fear of falling
But also the grandkids
And the possibility of
that elusive die-in-your-sleep-ending
Standing in line
Somewhat dazed because the
Last thing you remember was planning
This church thing
Windy road…some singing in the van
The trip Home is always just
A normal day
But getting there-
heartbreaking
Like the confusion about light years
Just like the confusion over light years-
Unit of time? Unit of distance?
Grief is more than ordinary synonyms
Loss, sorrow, mourning.
No, grief is a place you go sometimes
Sorta like a cruise or a bus tour, I guess
Or trip to a fancy casino
Only of course all the slot machines are empty and
You have no stomach for the buffet.
At first you think
This trip will never end
But it starts to let up after
A very long time
Then, just when you thought you were home
Safe, with your bunny slippers on,
You fish up
Back on that dammed boat, that bankrupt resort
And somehow your inability to escape this
All expenses paid vacation
Makes you weep, weep in the weird soulless light
Of this world of broken pronouns
Standing in for faces in a picture, once so vivid alive
Before the fall…before all the terrible falls
Crash into light years.
Not-so-clingy Mcguffin
What if losing you
were like nothing so much as
watching a child throw
an erstwhile boomerang
into a once-drowned field?
Even with the approximate knowledge of descent, I pace,
Shift aside the long grace
..shift aside the long grass…with my feet
Look for signs of you-markings like the body of
a coiled snake
Glint of color, perhaps
but you are lost out there
Needle-in-a-hay-field
And I tell them things to tell myself
You are not a boomerang
Even a boomerang is not always
a boomerang (when it fails to return across the field)
Oh darling
Come back to me
in the end.
Dear Sir,
Imagine the mountains
you would move to save
The one you loved
then switch
to the hills you might shift
for someone you were
merely fond of
then calculate the dirt
in disheveled piles
you might consider
scooping here to there
for a stranger
then last of all take this into account:
all real love stories are also physics problems
Either stones rolled in place over deliberate tombs
or somehow, miraculously
Rolled away.
Sleeping Beauty and the treachery of images
they say her dress
obscured her face when they found her in the river
he as young as his eventual wife would be
when she went from girl to muse
muse is a tricky thing, Child
who never was a pipe
I inventory both the cause and the cure for addiction
The need, the proper remedy, the clouds white amidst blue in the cup of your head
Chose a different slumber
Not opioid, not heroin, not poison in the fruit or spindle, not locked in a room, not guarded by dragon
Medicinal sleep
Antiseptic reset, white coats, gently beeping monitors
Let the girl rest
Let her own dreams fell the dragon
So that when the spell is broken
The clouds and sky will spill out over her
Beautiful, fragile babies
What if this is the real world?
what if this is the real world?
what if you are the ghost?
what if it is your own child
you see in the sudden picture
on the other side of the scrim
Holding
worlds both together and apart
You do the math when
you see her–how old she
was, is, will be
If she makes it that far
Refrain in your head thudding
like fists on plate glass
because you are the ghost
voice thin and impossible
just the other side of glass
as you watch her slowly
slip away.
Brace yourself
Comfort girl myself
I rifle through the postcards from
The places you have been
Looking for things you loved
Always people, always broken
Then strain to hear your voice
As you tell them about the Luke 13 people
All dead, all tragic until you
direct our eyes into the deep
Pool of Siloam, reflected the tower before it fell?
Did the blind man know it was there before he could
See you standing there
Across the street from all my loneliness
Beckon me come close
Brace yourself, Love
Carrying Light 