This morning I contemplated creating (Galatea-style), a metaphorical anger mascot.
Something with breathable fake fur and big flappy hands.
But I realized I have real pets who fit the bill–
An anger dog, an anger cat.
She rolls on her belly so I can pet her, but barks mercilessly at her compatriot
He snuggles close, however briefly, attempts his most disingenuous
Resting cat face
But I know I cannot
Let them
Run free.
It helps me sometimes, to picture all of us in our sheep costumes, thin elastic chin straps, holding on our faces.
Helps me to remember
We are all sheep
If you don’t count the wolves among us
And all we, like sheep have gone astray
So you will not be the one to forgive my helpless anger
At all the lambs lost to slaughter
While the Shepherd was away.
We are collectively surprised at how ephemeral the boat is, balloonish, easily punctured. As are we. I wonder if the others have drawn the same conclusions-we have become ghosts in our erstwhile stories, still haunted by the house, by the spouse, by the hope we left behind.
Only Lazarus whistles a chipper tune. Why is he so happy? Because nothing is a cool hand to lose.
We sit in the shade, it is all shade here, so incorporeal, so many of us, all waiting for a voice, for a light, for The Before The After, the now and forever, we talk of sunsets, the way the sun might send one last piercing shaft of light up through the darkening sky, faith-hope-love coming for us, they say, these men who have seen the-greatest-of-these-is-love
But when? How long until
We are irrevocably
Called to life.
You tell yourself it is just food, knowing you want
To keep it for another time
when you could rejoice
For a year, for the first year after, for as long as it takes
like the frozen wedding cake
As though love could last forever
The way he says it does
Manna in our wilderness
I don’t know why they came then, at the heart of the hardest season of our lives, but we took them to the Aransas Wildlife Refuge. He sat in the back of the van with me and I made him do a Bible study about Jesus inhabiting hearts like they were houses, a Chinese box filled with simile and indelible pain. If I would write our story as a clever fiction I would insert a frumpy birdwatching stranger and I would accost her with my incoherent grief-
Anger is at the heart of love
overturning tables in the temple
In the house of God
The day that Miracle died we walked in the mountains. Two bears walked ahead of us and their presence seemed ordained, magical.
It was magical I tell myself even though she died.
Sometimes I feel like I am out of mantras, out of coins for the machine, no longer capable of telling myself to believe it will all be ok.
Then Casey Hathaway tells us all about the bear who kept him company in the woods we have all got lost in and
I go there to find Him too, lean into his ursine chest, sob a little.
Believe He is real, despite the feat in our eyes.
It is a note on my phone, metonymy for bottomless loss, I call her name every day, aware that lost causes are lost causes are lost causes
How will we ever heal?
How will we be whole again?
I would ask the boy on the other side of the over-priced desk
If I had the heart to keep
Picking my battles
I call her name
Stalk the neighborhood
Take the dog
Print out sepia copies of
Her sleeping, staring pensively at the lens
Reminding of me the others
All gone missing
You look at wonder every day
For love or pay
I look for love
Every day
See the missing
You.
First there was the shock-shock, which I would describe as a blanket of cotton, a fog, a zoned-out staggering thing. I am not sure how long this stage lasted, but it began to ebb when the nice women at the crisis center gave my five year old and her sisters their crime-victim quilts, hand-made, with such kindness.
The quilts underlined the permanent nature of the gift–beautiful crime victims. Undoable. Irrevocable.
Our story seemed one way for years, then just as things got safer because we knew and could protect them
The truth rolled over us, applying permanent tattoos everywhere.
I did not realize I had a thrill-seeker, risk-taker issue until the months of hunger, tears, and fighting were over…all technically either lost or a draw. Until after I wrote the book. Until after people began to disappear.
By then I had begun to walk through cold water.
Now I know why I do it. I do it because…I do it because
Because when I walk in cold water I can see you there
Through the dust
The crush of angry humans
The agony of your bedraggled well-wishers.
Your own pain indelible on your bloodied face
Dying for me
Deep
In cold water.
Carrying Light 