Reflect the sky 

some things remain dark

Obsidian dark

No matter how much you try to put distance between

The two of us

The video footage cannot, will not excise your presence

Obsidian dark

Is not your chicken-scratch handwriting

The horrible story I made you write down

Or the things you left out…

That so many people helped to…diminish

None more than you

The damage which will always be

dead dog on my chest

Ghosts of dogs should haunt us both

But let yours bark incessantly outside the grainy film of your transgressions

While mine 

Returns whole, resurrected even,

To the cement driveway by the old house where the children played with the water hose and the blue plastic wading pool 

Joy

They fill the screen with joy

For a moment even you could see

The way the thinnest layer of water poured out on rough cement

Reflects the sky

Reflects the light from the endless sky

Reflects the glory of this endless day we

…walk toward the sun, my one-time-child

Before the night 

Falls forever

Quest

gone too long

A litany of good-byes 

Signifying everything 

We want from Light

The shapes of letters resemble

Hands raised in supplication

Bottomless things

Somewhere in between I find you

In the story you beg me not to tell

Even though you are the hero of it

The boy who quietly 

Saves the headstrong girl

From so many foolish choices

Hey Miss Veronica

When I first saw Finding Nemo it was so much about you.

And after all these years, Finding Dory is much the same.

I may have been your brief and most arbitrary mama, but I will love you forever.

And your foster dad and I will never stop laying down the shells…not just for your way back to us, but as a mosaic for how you changed us forever.

You, beautiful girl.

The Comfort Machine

by then their civilization had evolved to ruthless efficiency

Injustice and oppression had been outsourced to less developed countries

Leaving them only to

Eradicate grief

They tried all the usual suspects–

Hot tea, warm milk, kittens

Yet the mothers still grieved

So “They”

Invited the white coats to come

Put their heads together,

build the perfect

Comfort machine.

It worked of course, they were prone not to failure

As they stood at the scene of each tragedy

Bystanders on the side

…the Comfort Machine churned out its magic

Combed out the violence

scrubbed the murder

Bleached out the violation

Unthreaded both deceit and apathy 

Established a perimeter of fire

Around self-preservation

Passed a final round of shots

Among the dignitaries-

Bone bourbon, tequila, absinthe

They murmured in approval the way a barkeep might shout

Last call

As the music continued to pulse hard and fast through the crowd

Everyone turned 

To the mothers for some final sign it had worked

As the Comfort Machine idled and purred

Over the still deafening sound 

Of silenced hearts

Serenity at the dollar store

Her grandmother holds several objects close to her bosom as they make their way to the front of the store.

Serenity asks for a balloon.

Grandmother asks, do you want the balloon or the play-doh?

Play-doh, Serenity replies.

Behind them in line, I ask if I can buy her the balloon?  (In honor of some young women I love who used to be the Serenities of the world, all grownup now.)

Serenity’s grandmother agrees.

Yet after briefly snagging a balloon, Serenity puts it back.

You don’t want it? 

No, she replies, we are going to the park and it will fly away.

We inventory other possibilities–a two-headed dragon?

Nope. One too many heads.

A bag of plastic dinos?  Yes but only this one, and this one, and this one.

So efficient, young Serenity. I give her 30 cents worth of plastic.

She gives me joy.

Legal

It has troubled me for some time that in Texas people are legally allowed to kill human beings and use their tiny, defenseless body parts for “science.”

But the two people with the courage to infiltrate and expose this science-fiction level atrocity were indicted by a Harris County grand jury for using fake IDs.

So to recap–fetus harvesting: legal 

Fake IDs: a big deal

Or are they?

I spend way too much time listening to Texas teens brag about their fake driver’s licenses to believe that we in Texas are suddenly cracking down on forged driver’s licenses.

In fact, I wish we were. 

But in the case against the brave people from The Center for Medical Progress the prosecution is selective, punitive, and political.

In fact, one has to wonder how many of the grand jurors in this case have ever owned or used a fake ID?  How many of their children are using them now?

These are far simpler, easier questions to ask than how many Texas mothers have allowed their own children to be carved up, evacuated from their wombs, then bought for “science” while the rest of us hide behind the now meaningless phrase “everything they did was legal.”

In Texas.

Out of body 

the car crash in slow motion

The snake coiled to strike the child

The mother seeing bad news

In the doctor’s eyes

Some moments are so unforgettably awful 

The spirit rises out

Of the body, off to one side

Hovers over the disaster

Snapping shots of all the carnage

A heart just beginning to break

Operates differently than

One far gone into the cave of grief

the last evening you were mine

Was the first time you met

Your new mommy, new daddy

Strangers then

You were delivered back to me

Sleeping I sat with you in my arms

Time folded around us

Everything paused

For our unlikely pieta

I had just enough sense 

to stop everything

just to be with you

A little longer

The Girl in the picture

haunts me with her gray

Soul, robbed of light

Too young to ever choose this 

She is a ghost

Who in all other aspects

Resembles me–

Breastplate taken in battle.

Which is why I see your face before 

Me always

The iron bars invisible to all but

We two

Jailed by men with carved out hearts

I carry you, darling

Close to my own

Beg the God of air and light 

To teach us how

To fly

Away from the shadows

Where ordinary humans claw and devour 

All but unaware 

They have bartered their own

Nearly extinguished 

Eternal selves

For shreds of ashen dung

More

I told you

This was a two-part answer

Ironically framed

By the disembodied voice 

Selling cars in the next room

It’s like calling

A cathedral 

A room with four walls

And a ceiling

Huh…

I think as I finish

Stuffing variegated laundry

Into the high efficiency machine

That is true

You my darling 

Are no mere room

With four walls and a ceiling 

You are a cathedral 

And should be treated as such

Tear down this temple

And I will raise it again in three 

Days

He said

Evoking all

The foundations in the womb

Baby pictures and toothy grins

Girls whose smiles light up the room

Do not be content to be

Measured the way a man will

Span an ordinary room

Know instead 

It takes a lifetime and a fortune

To raise the extraordinary 

Cathedral

Flying buttresses

Stained glass windows

Columns and impossible

Arches

All to the altar

Rising incense

Gaze of the Infinite

God