cake dressed
in lavender lace
tastes of springtime
and sun
another sip from the chalice
another year done
sweet sixteen
and never been kissed
she wisps ’round the garden
in carapace white
kids run with kites
chilled champagne
sipped by mothers
who fight to think not
of the flight
of the numbers
a solemn promise:
to have, to hold;
a vow we aim to keep,
but few achieve.
you
two—
under that weeping willow of green,
in a sheen of white hydrangeas—
are the
picture
we hold up,
hold onto,
as
witness.
only you know
the true fullness:
the alchemy, the labor,
the bliss.
because we all know
it can be hit or miss.
a solemn promise:
to be celebrated,
honored, held
in awe.
you are a light
to each other
and to
us all.
the birds blend into the trees;
the small plain ones pose like leaves
perched on the edges of stems.
would that i could join them.
i wonder if they see me:
my long stare, the vacancy there.
i’m waiting for all the leaves to leave
like last year,
like all the years,
so the mountains can
swell up behind them.
i’m a long way
from the arm of the sea
but she still haunts me.
i see you in the piers,
in the long out-stretched palm years;
the way you fed me,
unrolled under foot
red words fit for a queen.
for a time they welled up,
filled me with a singing need;
but i couldn’t, wasn’t, didn’t, wouldn’t
just yet.
i knew they would return —
but — too late.
what was it we said about piers
becoming bridges?
what was it we did before
piers, bridges, boats?
we just stayed:
on the mainland or island
with those we were born to
and from and among;
and curiosity was just
a little ship
moored in the mind.
in our
dreams we
are mostly mouths.
we open at the center,
join two hollows. painted faces
hold years of words, of wounds,
the patina of warm hands twisting.
we take turns devouring.
each night, dream, decade—we
fine-tune: some day we will
walk right out of this
festoon and into
each other.
It is so quiet. I look around at all the things in the exact same place I left them last night. Nothing is missing from my medicine cabinet, from my bedside table, from my closet. There are no shoes, clothes, or dishes strewn around the room.
Sometimes I forget and think she’s just sleeping in the next room. Sleeping well into the afternoon, like she used to, until I would go stir her awake with a squish or the cat or toasting waffles.
Sometimes it feels like she’s gone for good. Like she has died. And I have to squeeze my arms around my body and tell myself: No, god forbid. She is just gone into her own cave for a time.
I’ve heard the term empty nest for years, and it never really meant much to me. I always thought, if I ever get to the point when she’s ready to leave home, I will be happy in the thought that I did my job, and that she has launched successfully—whatever that means. Hopefully it will mean that she has finally finished school, and we will celebrate!
What I didn’t realize is that after the graduation and celebration and milestone after exciting milestone, it would creep up on me slowly and silently: while folding laundry and realizing it is only my clothes; while washing the dishes only I used; while wandering alone around Marshall’s and wondering why it’s no longer fun to poke through the endless knickknacks; while trying to sleep but waking continually with a void deep inside my body as if I’m missing her presence in my womb.
The feeling is indescribable. It’s the first time you realize deep in your gut how attached you have been to your child; how much of your life has been devoted to bringing her into the world and introducing each to the other; how unsure you are of who you are without her there, inside the nest, pressing up against and under your body.
From the outside, this may seem to some like a desperate dependence or unhealthy reliance. But the feelings I am having—as I sit here looking out the window from this new home I recently acquired to share with my daughter—are feelings of pure love; deep knowledge that I have grown so close to another being that I can feel the body of her absence beside me, against me, within me. And it is a feeling of profound gratitude. Because I know real love is laced with melancholy—with the awareness, but also the transcendence, of the fleeting of time. And because I know she feels the same; I know she carries my presence in and beside and around her every day. We are forever connected. And nothing can ever change that; no one can ever take that away.
brown eyes,
gold skin,
black cross-hatching,
blue rivers of veins
running through;
i see you. i see you.
your fingers find mine,
carry their own heat;
i feel you. i feel you.
your open mouth holds
what we don’t need to say.
you unfold your acre arms; and
i fall straight through
to the other side.
she tells me to get up and sing.
but that seems to go against everything.
singing is for things with wings.
i used to have wings.
i used to suck the marrow out of them.
but this passage of time . . .
this long, harrowing voyage—
with all its mysterious baggage—
has left me standing alone on a
platform in the middle of the sea.
i want to jump off the seawall.
why can’t the devil be saved?
if love is that big,
that all-encompassing,
then why does he remain lost?
neither height, nor depth,
nor principalities, nor powers,
nor things present, nor things to come
shall separate us from the love of god…
is it because he is
one of the principalities?
one of the dark divides?
did he choose that?
can he choose not to be?
is he a he? an it? a piece of all of us?
is it that he/it/we will just never admit
to needing to be saved?
how long can wrath take the wheel
before it submits?
are we that self-destructive,
that self-loathing, that we would
rather die for an eternity than
admit we are broken?
i don’t know.
maybe this is why we get up and sing:
because everything else is just too hard,
and i’m tired of teetering
on the edge of nothing.
we are each born into this world with a dream.
when we first arrive, we know it to our core.
as time—and we—unfold, we begin to forget;
it burrows back down into our recesses.
sometimes small glimpses will come to the
surface, if we allow space: a painted picture, a
sculpted pot, a sleeping story. unmet dreams
follow us en masse down dark side streets,
find us in all-night conversations,
meet us under a portal of stars.
we climb the continual spiral—
toward voice, birth, source, love.
i walk beside the river in the snow.
my cat curls beside me on the couch.
we are in this world to rub up
against other things and beings.
we define ourselves
in relation to others.
try to describe who
or where you are
without prepositions:
the words of relation-
ships. even an
island is in the sea,
far from land and
longing for habitation.
jump into the water
and see where it takes
you. cast off your
past, the weight of
mistakes, the heavy
anchor of indecision.
it is time to sail, to
take flight, to feel the
wind in your wings:
in, on, through, between.
while we were away,
winter happened.
i came home to fresh
frost on the grass.
we share this set of days,
this slow creep toward
the center of the snow
globe maze. at any moment,
a child’s hand can scoop
up the glass and shake us into
oblivion. her delight is
our delay. in the falling
flurries, i find you: wrapped
in your mother’s red scarf—
holding the hand of time.
we are the child, the snow,
the mother, the scarf;
we are december.
lunachik 