As long as you were aware, you closed your eyes and shut the light out. You grew. It was great.
Then, the light receded, and you were left with yourself, and a few items that you would cherish:
A long stemmed iris. A glass full of wine and cherries. And what else? What else could you need?
I thought
of you when I saw these things, you little and working at the drive-thru. I
didn’t know.
*
I didn’t know what to give you that would be part of me and that would preserve you.
I can hold you and promise that everything will be okay, but even that isn’t enough at times.
If you need me, don’t fail to call. I want to be there for you. But what can I say about the pain?
Only that
the edges don’t stay as they should. All punctum, the loss of smiles. What
about you?
*
I want to burrow my face in my hands and weep, but the PTSD overtakes me. It’s all I see for now.
You look at me as if you could keep me from remembering, but I’m not so sure. I never am.
My brain falls into mush. I don’t know what to think. And then I realize all that uncertainty seems.
I hold the lion that cannot speak and find that he is comfortable with me. But what is his name?
*
Name is a name. I can’t help but think that it means little. In the end, we’re all dust and ashes.
I weep into the name; I weep into the pain. There is almost nothing left, no elf, shelf, or kindness.
I can’t see to see, but the lady in front of me is weeping enough for both of us. And not so much.
I color my hair in the underpass. You cry some more, both for me and for you. It’s a tragedy.
*
The walls were slipping down, as easily as a wall can slip. I fell into my body out of the Alpine years.
As you can imagine, it was unruly and wild to have a body at all. What do I do with it? Etc.
As much as I can love it, I can try to hold on within it. What is the beginning of the body, though?
I try to take down my own wall. I hold to it in fever, but I end up getting all the bricks apart. Help.
*
I can’t seem to organize the slats to fit myself. I am only one person in a small world, after all.
But the smallest is not the best, no. I wish the world were bigger, full of people, carefully placed.
So I catch myself up the rails, crawling up to the ceiling, as if I can’t help feeling any different now.
My friend can’t catch up to me at all. He travels slowly, and then we are both too far apart.
*
Far apart—but how? It’s like we were looking down the wrong hall, in between good and bad.
I wanted to feel it that way, but I couldn’t. I sealed myself around you and wanted to crawl inside.
It was too late for anything else. I didn’t know how to slide out of neutral and becoming a new thing.
But surely there would be answers or naysayers, set apart from the beginning of the scene?
*
There would be, but different than before.
The walls down, all walks taken.
All edges, hence made plain/cut to the bone.
After all, what is at the crux of us? Do we know?
*
We lie there together carefully. It seems almost holy.
But there’s nothing holy in the world, anyway. At all.
In the
next world/next life, someone would appreciate the Icelander in her.
I grew out of every country I visited, said the president to his mistress. Oy veh.
*
Every heart I walked across was the same cri de coeur, over and over again.
It seems the same for us, here, living on the edge of the desert, eating the ether for dinner.
The Flower
If you can
hold it in your hand, thank the gods for an edge to the petals. Just enough
edge for now.
*
Take a deep breath; take in the scent. Write a psalm with the important lessons in mind. But what are those?
*
I make a list, but it’s not too long. I wonder about the intricacies of country music. That’s all.
*
I pull out each petal, one at a time. You smile across the table at me wryly.
*