It is hard to avoid stumbling across your face,
in this cyber world we roam in and out of,
and I note how little and how much you’ve changed.
Granted, it’s only been five months, but
I can already see your body filling out,
the sharpness of your joints less pronounced,
the same hollowed look in your eyes,
that persistent lingering question etched
in all of your features like the bark of an old tree,
pleading with anyone who happens upon you, who am I?
I am watching myself from some outside perspective
as memories pour from my ears. They rush down my shoulders
and bare chest and flow from the tips of my toes;
what started as a trickle is now an ocean at my feet.
From this sentinel post, every thought streaming in and out
of my body has a color. You are a violet midnight sky,
obscuring the blues and the greens and the yellows.
You are a heavy backdrop and my pale skin is tinted amethyst.
I am something pure and new as you claim everything,
swallowing those threads of pain that have so recently risen
to the surface of my skin like splinters.
I am fresh canvas. As you lift your brush, my skin ripples,
eager for the first coat.
Maybe you are watching the light playing on the bed sheets,
or memorizing every freckle on my shoulders or the dimples
that they dust over. I used to wish that I would wake up one morning
and find wings budding from the tiny hollows, like the fairies in Fantasia,
long and thin, the glistening membrane spidered with veins.
Maybe while I lay tucked into you, fast asleep,
mouth hanging open slightly, graceful only in slumber,
you will see them, finally, growing softly like a flower
opening for the first time.
Maybe when you shake me awake to marvel at this wonder,
this unbelievable thing happening right in your own bed,
I will know, instinctively, how to open them up,
these quivering newborn projections, and there,
sitting in the safe place we have made for each other,
our faces mirrored with the same reverent expressions,
I will finally know how to fly.
How to be free.
Have you forgotten me?
Forgotten the disparity in my voice
as I begged you to stop, please,
for the love of god, just stop?
Have you forgotten how
I screamed myself hoarse that night,
let hysteria get the best of me and
choked on my own tears?
Surely you remember the blood,
soaking my sheets and my soul,
a deep fiery red.
Absent One by Sharon Olds
People keep seeing you and telling me
how white you are, how thin you are.
I have not seen you for a year, but slowly you are
forming above my head, white as
petals, white as milk, the dark
narrow stems of your ankles and wrists,
until you are always with me, a flowering
branch suspended over my life.
I can see my mother, whose namesake I could never
pass on to another woman, clearly as a young girl,
cowering beside the refrigerator with her younger sister,
waiting for the yelling and banging to stop so that
my mother could tuck her sister and then herself into bed.
I can see my mother clearly as a young teenager,
out on the front porch in a tee-shirt and panties,
her breath coming out in steamy rivers, fists up
and ready to strike, her whole body red from the cold,
then coming away victorious, spitting out a mouthful
of mucus and blood, sporting a split lip and
daring the loser to ever threaten her sister again.
I can see my mother, now a young adult, clearly
as she walks into a one story house on Woodgrobe drive,
kissing her Aunt Jane on the wrinkled cheek,
(old even as I was a bump in my mother’s belly)
and sitting down to talk to her about the newest addition to
the family, hiding the newest addition to her face, a fresh bruise.
I can see my mother clearly, much older now,
as she loses sight of herself, and me, and everyone else,
as she grows more and more relaxed until she could melt
into the floor, and no one who cares can save her,
except for a man who just happened to be in the right place
at the right time, and had sense enough to ask for help,
a concept that my mother clearly could never quite grasp.
ONE
There was a time when
a good day was
climbing off your cold shoulder.
I remember when your mother
told me you were like
your dad, a spitting image.
I used to think
there was nothing better,
but I was never much
for shilly-shallying and
you would never buck up,
ever.
Imagine my surprise when
I realized my lazy days
were better spent alone.
TWO
Always one step ahead,
barreling towards some kind of finish -
Can’t you slow down?
Don’t you know how to enjoy life?
Even the best of us need a break,
following this beaten trail.
Give me a second to catch up,
hold my hand and we’ll walk together.
In this life, you and I are
Just two people out of billions,
keeping pace with the current,
lingering towards the back but
moving forward
nonetheless.
Often I wonder what the rush is.
People seem so desperate to
quell the ache of living.
Really, we are all just running to our deaths,
slowly finishing our lives as fast as possible,
trying to justify our actions along the way,
using any excuse we can to feel at peace,
valuing things we won’t take with us when we go.
Would things be easier if there were an
“X” marking our final destination?
You would run faster, I’ll bet,
Zeroing in as if you had a reason to get there.
Today is a strange day.
i am every person you’ve ever met and afterward wondered, what the fuck just happened?
also, thanks for the compliment. i’ll try to put some more up, although i’m pretty lazy with tumblr and i haven’t quite got the hang of it yet.
