littlestorms

If I ever disappear

I know she will know nothing

about what shoes I wear.

Not only am I not a person

to her; she does not even see

what I wear – 

or who I am.

If I ever need help, or honesty:

contact others.

Those who should don’t know a thing about me.

Quietly, I hang the down-puffed jacket

of my man

as if it were a son’s

on a cedar hanger

in the closet in the hall.

The era of the old white male is over.

We now tell the stories and piece the dreams.

Those on the sidelines know the most integral things.

I heard my mom cry mommy today.

Read it all; this is for her.

She described it as only daughters can.

Thin hands as blood drains away;

the sound of death on lips.

She knew, and yet it comes.

The dawn, I’d hope to think,

maybe we feel it as stitches:

It’s woven together in our sides,

It’s cloth or some such pulling thing,

Some corset of pain and sorrow; it pulls us together

As we fall apart.

Mi madre, maman, mommy:

How can you leave me

Does it all seem to sink?

Oh mom, my mom, my mother;

How can I act but those cubs over bodies

Push wake up push come back push help..!

My mother; it’s you- I grieve, but you grieve it all.

I wish so much I could make it all better;

I’m good at fantasies; I could help there.

But let’s not.

You’re hurting; no one can take that away.

No one else will write it or feel it but you.

It’s no one’s but yours.

I’m unsure how to feel this sort of pain anymore.

Maybe the anti-depressants have done good work and paid their rent in my satisfied mind.

I’m still on a comfortable walk from Where I’ve Been to Where I’m Going,

but today I sit on a fence between worlds.

I see her lay on the emergency room bed; my dear friend, so unlike herself.

I know what she’ll say before she says it.

I know the fears and dead ends she runs into in her mind.

But I can only sit on the fence and watch angry doctors and nurses, sick of such disease and malcontent, and push and lift, and stay then leave.

I come somehow, slowly alive on the fear; this hospital fear, it bubbles like the Tar Pits and no one thinks too hard about it except those who can feel the dull ache and constant itch that circulates a disease like this.

I know the truth, so I say it in every way. I cry, I hold back. I am equal parts nagging and commonplace; I’m the prop in this room. And I’m okay with that.

I know the end. I’ve seen it.

These ends? They’re always around the corner for me, too.

But now I watch her bitten fingers clamp around me and clamor for the wrong kind of love; the right kind we in the room give to her is still unheard.

I miss her. I miss her so very much. She isn’t there; I need to retreat to save myself. To save all the ones who have sat on the fence for me. To those who listened to my excuses and little thoughts. I can only sit and hold her hand and tell her again and again how she is loved; I don’t want her to die. She says she doesn’t want to, either.

But soon she is discharged and says her insides are failing. And we have that look I’ve given to others. When you live so entwined with your end, it’s only familiar. The unknown under our feet, swinging on the fence.

Watching the Ferris Wheel. We could have watched from above.

But here is where we are now. The fence is where I leave them, somewhere between floor one and two of the parking lot of Kaiser Permanente off Venice. Somewhere there.

For every ounce of hurt I have faced, he offered a sea of love and gratitude. I have now paid attention to how our connection shaped me. In its purest sense, I felt awakened, more compassionate, and purely at my truest self.

Does time go by this fast