Relics

I carry summer scar tissue
at the juncture between my jaw
and the slope of my skull
tight and strained.
It aches in the middle of the night
as my teeth try to sharpen themselves
grinding to a point.
It would be nice to be able to bite back
but snapping at shadows is a waste of time.
To smile is a strain
and I suspect the white filaments
of reknit skin stretch along
the whole of my body
sitting under my skin to tighten
at odd texts and a room that's the wrong kind of quiet.
I don't like to be alone for long
because my brain keeps working to reconnect
these wires that fried themselves out
with week after week of electric fright.
How many times do you press a bruise
before the stain spreads?

Stranded

The tide is turning.
At a granular level this must be
apocalyptic.
I wonder absently
if the moon figures as some abstract villain
wreaking havoc on lonesome crabs
who scuttle desperately for cooler sand.
Do sand crabs tell stories?
I imagine between their horseshoe shells
and snapping claws there exists
some tiny spark of brain.
Is it enough to feel the fear
of the future being peeled away
by some distant foe too vast
to do more than shake a pincer at?
The moon does as it wills
and we must scurry on.
Inside of you I picture a blood red moon
pulling at each neuron in your brain
leaving them firing, haphazard, at each other.
I shake my fist at it
as pointless as a pincer
and watch you pull away into some darkened space.
Perhaps the world is cooler there
within your self-made burrow
but it leaves me all alone
in the crashing waves.

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.

Phrenology

The concrete nature of the face
inclines itself to support
certain artifices of character
as carved into the features-
the aquiline nose transformed
to discipline, or power,
the lips, when soft,
denoting sensuousness
that touch-thin line
between a smile
and sex.
To build such things
into a face
presumes stability
a certain predictability
that allows the cartilage to grow
at such a rate as to ensure
an equivalent visage to virtue.
It demands the mold,
still wet,
to change and cling
for the merest moment
birth perhaps
and then conform
forever more towards that form
which best connects
the skeleton and the self.
These things may be
but still the face
may grow to be
more artifice, than architecture.
The only sculptor known to shift
the structure of a skull
once stiffened into selfhood
is Love.

Sinkhole

A puddle two inches deeper
than expected and slicked with grey mud
is exactly how this conversation feels.
I am thrown off
(balance, guard, off my rocker).
You are caught out
(of temper,  of patience, out of bounds).
Your mouth moving means
next to nothing
in comparison to the old tree stiffness
in your shoulders
and my silence is shouted over
by my shuffling feet.
The slick puddle sinks
and us with it
till we are both, unexpected,
drowning
thrashing about, lashing out,
a deep grey sludge
that we stick in
slowly solidifying.
There is no reason for this.
Two stiff statues
staring each other down.

Button

As I wrestle your fish body
slick and soft
two hands full of fat and skin
no muscle to speak of,
the knothole in your stomach
folded in and creased against itself
surprises me again.

Your first scar stands
as proof of humanity
the incision which sealed
you into your own skin.
I watch you twist and stretch
making tiny waves against the tub
and remember the warp
of your small foot pushing up and out
my skin distended with your force.

There is no sense in it
this resentment of a fold of skin
It is symbolic at best
but still I struggle
with your squishy kissable self
to forgive that memorial
of the day you were cut off from me.

Votive

My bones are one long fuse

Knotted at the joints

With calcium threads braided tight.

All my life I have feared flint

Carried water made holy

By my fear of fire.

I take deep breaths to smother flame

Pause before speaking to deny the spark

Its necessary air.
Fury glows like a coal in my heart
and I cannot snuff it out.

Since motherhood I feel the world

Is made of loose lit candles

A place of danger swelling bright.

Each day a thousand angry matches light

Hungry sparks reaching for your skin
to burn through your bones.
I carry always this smoldering truth
you need me like cool water
to soothe the heated hate of this place.
I ache to feel so fluid but still

I feel the anger in my bones

And it will burn out the heart of me.

Undertone

Motherhood is a perpetual grief. I see you, skin separate from my skin and I am stretched a hollowing elongation my body split in two. Fact: bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh my breath was your breath my blood your life and now the same life to life, milk to mouth. But in a series of celebrations I taste loss on my tongue. You sit, you stand, you sound out your own sounds with your soft skin flexing and stretching and changing and I do not know if my heart can swell to the size your distance demands as though these growing pains of yours tug sharp in my belly where I bore you where I bear you as my closest secret. Motherhood is one long loss from skin to speech and no one told me how to grieve it.

The milk of human meaning

I pour out my life in mason jars Measuring meaning in ounces Performing my daily miracle Transform the water into weight Into rolls around the knee Into sleep on a taut belly Into a spine that sits up straight. I spend my day in friction The constant act of pulling forth Contractions left over from the birth I didn't have Squeezing drop by drop into the jar. The bulging cycle consumes me Minute after minute the fear of not enough, The fear of overflow. I sink my heart Into glass jars all creamy white and cold.

Forge

I ate iron daily Small pellets ground smaller Dust mixed in food, in drink Sinking to my stomach And then disolved To drift my bloodstream The globules gathered drawn one to another Till their weight distended the balance between skin and spine and something had to give. I smelted within myself In the heat of my longing The fire of my fears A massy thing All iron and blood tied to me
through red communion This daily pill Dust to dust Gave form I have birthed my anchor And will never drift again

Gehenna

The etymology is important The distinction between hell and the burning place. I still smell the smoke around the corner Normal in the breeze between new rice and river mud. The long slow burn of tin cans and last week’s vegetables, Old cloth and twisted lumps of refuse. The heat curled sullenly beneath a layer Of newer waste, still shiny plastic or damp newspapers But its hunger gnawed through it all Spitting out chalky soot and sudden belches of stench. It was a dare, the sort of whispered threat When a fight was imminent but no one wanted to be caught. Dare you to stand, two feet in. A half minute, a full stretch of eternity with the sting Coming up through the soles of your feet. No shuffling or dancing. Penance means pain. When in anger, I think of damning you I see you there, ankle deep in your own spew, Feet on fire smelling all your wasted love

Terms and Conditions

Misophonia is the spike of hatred that shoots through the spine at the sound of chewing actual rage at molar grinding.

Hydrophobia is the shrinking of skin away from fluid life from liquid life because the fear is electric

Motherhood is the sprinting from bed at the sound of the wind the ache to wake my son and to keep him sleeping

Terms give rationale a treaty between the neuron jolt and the neuroses once identified, then nullified. To name it is to know it.

What is the name of seventeen death scenes and a mental list of who to call at the end of the world because your brain can't stop telling the story of what if the baby was dying?