I miss you girl
Miss your sister
Your nieces, nephews, cousins, children
Used to sing
Break-up songs for lullabies
Wish I could write you and me
A happy kind of story instead
No lost loves, no broken promises
Hope changed into
The steady gaze of a man who can build with his own two hands
Homecoming tabernacle
For all us, broken
We are all shadows, finding ourselves at loose ends behind unexpected doorways, always reckoning with the ghosts of younger selves accompanied by their shimmering, transformed companions
The dead, haloed in what they have become
Forebear all hymns, celebratory, solemn, or liturgical
Just wash the stuffed animal
Mammalian, maternal
Using sewn-on paws to clutch
a miniature version of herself
To her belly, too big for an ordinary machine, she curls without consent into
The grey plastic washtub
Fetal position
I think, anthropomorphizing
Everything
Matthew 1:3,5-6 NIV
[3] Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, [5] Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, [6] and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife,
It can be tempting to ask why all their names are not there.
It can be tempting to ask why Uriah never got a son, or why Judah was such a freaking loser but still got to be on the list.
But they are there–the prostitutes, the good girls, the chronically misunderstood. Most of them anyway, because the God of Sarah, Leah, and Mary told the Israelites keep all the babies, they all matter to Me.
It is a small label inside a second-hand London fog. Sez “waterproof” in a way that means tell the dam story. Which I tell in my head in one way or another
Every day
Protagonists too vivid to fictionalize and actual jackass antagonists who are surprisingly two dimensional for real people in a small
Awful story I don’t want to tell, but my lovely black raincoat says I must.
A million times a day
Is just hyperbole
For often
As often as it takes
For a smallish bird
To beat itself to death
Against this inscrutable
Window pane/rib cage
I have been a little off today. Not looking in my side mirror enough, burning the toast–I wanted several times today to nap. Just nap. Today was a beautiful day and I could see myself caved up under a quilt.
The old dude I did not see in his shiny jeep would have preferred that.
This time I know what is wrong. It is more than my usual December malaise. It is more than my customary invisible arrow lodged in my sternum.
No. This was the weight of grief. The unavoidable heaviness that accompanies grief–knowing that ordinary families like mine are facing hell for the long haul, knowing we are not safe.
I do hold my children tight and I am constantly aware of their grace in my life.
It hurts to know the terrible thing we all face in death. The sign of a torn universe, waiting for consolation.
We have to talk about it
Even though we don’t want to
The ways we are broken
The way the past haunts me
I don’t think it haunts you
The same
Like two different ghosts
Mine brings me beautiful picture
Then wryly points to
The darkness behind them
And yours
Merely piles
Rejection letters on your desk
From all the cool people
And the clubs they go to
Without us
You will say to me
Why are you grieving?
And I will show you the limp form
In my hands
You will ask
What is it?
And I will say
A dead salamander
You will say
They cannot live for long
And I will say
But it had a name–
I cannot say it
And you will ask
What is the big deal?
And I will tell you
Hope.
But what I will not say is that the prone and lifeless
Body of a man
Too easily resembles
This ephemeral creature
The day I spent for him
The last day I spent for him
Looking for a hat
Big enough to cover his fatal
Head injury
Fatal head injury
Never far from mind
The bodies of our dead.
Carrying Light 