brainstorm.

Stuck in traffic, I begin to write.
Testing a phrase for sound
and looking for the hook
to pull the listener full-fledged
into the narrative somehow
 soothes the numbing tedium
of brakelights to the horizon.

For two years, it was the speech
I planned to give at my best friend's wedding.
There were Twinkies, and quilts,
and at least one good death threat involved
because there's no solid toast
without the murmur of bodily harm.
I had that speech down cold.

I never gave it.
The night of her wedding I sat,
staring across the parking lot
to where my husband slumped
across the steering wheel,
adrift on a sea of sedatives.
There was nothing to say.

In Houston, there's always a slowdown,
highway construction, or some accident.
Storms come up without warning.
I take back roads, mutter at red lights.
The radio plays too loud
I'm considering a fancy bluetooth headset
anything to keep the story from starting.

These days, if I let myself loose
to wander in my mind,
I spark sentences,
layer memories with sounds,
and catch myself choking.
The street swims within my grief.
I'm writing his eulogy.

Gravestone

There is a fist-sized rock
that rests above
the grave of the baby birds
that God watches over.

Today I wish I could
take it up from its hallowed ground
(for if His eyes are on the sparrow...
then all this land is holy)
and lob it straight and high
with all the cumulative heartbreak and rage
(and the one year in middleschool
where I was allowed to play Little League
because they didn't have enough boys)
straight into his stupid glass house
with the see-through floors
and transparent walls
and the perpetual harp playing
that barely masks the eternal dirge
that rises wailing from this
hump of earth underneath which
are broken wings and silent beaks
and baby birds that died
while God watched them.

I hope it breaks all the windows
and leaves shards on the floor
and everyone needs to walk carefully
lest they be cut by the tiny slivers of my grief.

Betrayed

Already you have dragged my heart
to death's dark door,
forced me to stand sentinel
with my soul bared against
all the whispers from it's shadowed maw.

When Orphyeus' string broke
the snake startled, struck
and not all the song in the world
could redeem that discordant note.
I hear it ringing still.

How dare you take my love
and hammer it into chains?
To tie it tight around my neck
let loose your weight
and call it freedom?

And can Persephone once bought
with the ruby juice on her lips
be free again from her oath
though it binds her still
in death's kingdom?

The stories tell us time again
that death, the traitor, always wins.
Love outrageous, love once mine
can only last as long as two undivided
stand as one.

hostile territory

We fought first
about the fair distribution of comforter
resorting at last to a peace of separation
with each their own blanket to clutch.
In the 26 days of your despair,
I have tried every way I know
of reclaiming our bed.
I have spread books by the stack
heavy with sentences I know
to provide counterweight against
my tangling of the sheets.
I have crept far to the side
toes extending off the edge
to decrease the chance that sleep
might sprawl me into the gaping hole
of your absence.
I've tried centering myself
with deep breaths as though
there were never two sides to this space.
I have stolen your pillow,
washed the sheets in newly scented soap,
spilled lavender oil into the mattress.
I've curled around the baby
with his chubby limbs akimbo
absorbing all the space he can.
I've stared out the window,
counted the seconds by the glow of my phone.
I've given it up all together
and cried into the couch cushions.
Now in this separation,
I surrender.
There is no peace
and less sleep.

MDD.

This disease knows no boundaries.
It disregards any demarcations
I have tried to build.
It strikes on holidays, on holy days,
on days when I have pleaded for peace.
It poisoned the floor of my balcony
with broken glass and pill shards.
It interrupts my dreams, disrupts my breath,
destroys the areas I had marked safe.
There is no negotiation.
Only the demand that despair
come quickly and in many shades
with darkness indulged in every corner.
There are days it's not a disease
but a demon.

Third.

There are birds that sing in the middle of the night.
I know this because my window is rolled down
while my headlights light up the spray of the sprinklers
and it is hard to remember the gate code at 1 am.
It has been a long day.
It takes three tries.

He has tried  three times.
I know because I have heard the story
to each doctor, over and over again.
Today I took the suicide note
out of my husband's jean pocket
where he meant for me to find it
later. 

I gave it back to him,
told him I wouldn't claim it,
refused the weight of grief he tried
to tie around my neck.
It has been a long night.
There has been night after night
and days so dark, I can't recall the sun.

But tonight, there is a bird singing
in the blackness that envelopes me.
Tonight I soaked up death with charcoal
and tomorrow I will set it ablaze.
There is a bird singing in the dark
and I can damn well sing too.

Ode to the Peacemaker

You send your laughter through the room
paired with perfume designed to diffuse
and I wonder how you manage
to arrive always at the point of ignition.
Beauty clings to you
the way a nursery lamp holds
the last drops of sunset the dark night long.
Any other woman would bring
a hint of gunpowder with her:
the potential for fireworks.
For all your glowing light,
I've never seen you spark.
You take your translucent joy
defuse the room, dampen the cynic blades
and suddenly we are determined
to glisten in your shadow.
Shine on, sweet lady, show the way
peace in your hand and love in your wake.

Changing the tempo

The boy turns my belly
into a drum
beating against its swell
with pudgy fists.
He delights in its vibrations
striking my thighs
to watch them shake.
In all its motion
he is absorbed:
an explorer testing
the outside of the universe
and measuring its edge.

I want to tell him
that he made me stretch
into a swelling horizon,
how the tight skin ridges
that make him giggle
were mountain ranges formed
by his tectonic dance.
Some days I want to accuse
his bursting frame
for the way that t-shirts cling
and my occasional grief in
harshly lit changing rooms.

But in the face of his joy
I have no response
because of all the bodies he loves
mine is the one he knows best
the taste and scent and sound
of all I am
for all his life
has been safety, strength, and home.
So I'll sing along to the rhythm he finds
in the softness of my skin
and feel the glory grow
in the reflection of his eyes.

Momentary

My baby smells of sweet basil
his boy fingers stained purple
by the blossoms he has ravaged
from my herb garden.
He is all body
full awareness
centered in his own skin.
His knees are wet with mud
and he has eaten
at least two handfuls of dirt
but it tastes like life
so he tries for a third.
Someday there will be plans,
a list of things to be done, a
finish line that keeps retreating
but today there is a whole world
in three pots and a watering can
which clangs against the concrete.