Ajax Kallistrate

Surrounded by cowbird chicks
in sparrow's nest, gaping,
greedy mouths,
I contemplate
my losses.

Every childhood home, every
friend, my parents' marriage
and then my parents.

Every secret place of nature
that had for a time (which
is all time when you're
a child) held me
captive with
its spell.

All gone now.

Abandoned in middle age, I pull
together a household in a
stranger's house, cook
on a stranger's stove,
disallowed by weight
of contract from
hanging even
one picture
on the
wall,
my
walls
(their walls)
decorated only
by nine images of
imaginary houses, grand-
fathered in (I'm lucky we're
allowed curtains; shh don't tell
them), the doors weathered by
generations of the spiritually
homeless (like us),
anonymous,
and when
we
depart
we'll have
nothing to bequeath
(except the curtains, as there
were none when we moved in).

I think about this only because
Degrelle brought it up.

A stranger unknown to me,
a man who died the year
I graduated into home-
less adulthood, a man
who fought and
suffered and
longed and
loved and
died
in
a
world
so beyond
my comprehension
I can't conjure it up, a stalwart
soul who contemplated what
might forge a stalwart soul,
and his first thought
(among hearts)
was home.

Not home address or where you
spend most of your time
(which is certainly not
home for me),
but...

Home.

House, furnishings, cupboards
(what a lovely word, cup board),
and all that surrounds it,
forest, lake, stream,
shore, horizon,
field, hill,
path.

We are explorers, he said,
we are travelers. We see
so much, but the heart
sees all and wants
only home.

Want is a good word too.
To want is to lack.

We want a home.

We who are vagrants in a world
that's been reshaped around
us to exclude us, we who
have been dislodged
(another good word,
listen to it: dis
lodged)
from
our
context,
deprived
of our history,
our ancestors,
and above all, a
place of our own, a
place to call home.

Rootless.

Homeless.

We want roots.
We want to go home.

August 11, 2026

Everyone stares straight ahead
and says

'this is the earth and the sky
and the horizon and who we are'

when it's just a black mirror,
a glowing screen, a curtain,
a shadow play, a wall upon
which a false reality is
projected

because

we've been taught to NOT look up,

so

we MUST look up

because

this artificial world has been built
around us to deceive us,
to trick us into NOT
looking up, NOT
noticing

them,

because

if we look up we will see
them for what they are

and

we will crush them
underfoot like cockroaches,

so

above all, they MUST NOT be seen

because

they are weak,

because, after all,

deceit wouldn't be worth
the effort if they were powerful
enough to enslave us by force.

August 5, 2026

All I want is that collapsed horizon,
all daydreams layered atop one
another; translucent, aglow
with a new shape, a
new pattern, a
new story.

We don't need much.

If we can't afford to stay warm,
let's live where we don't
have to.

If we can't get out into nature,
let's live where we can
invite nature in.

If we can't grow our own food,
let's live where we can
at least grow a few
tomatoes and
herbs.

Let us have the happiness
that dogs bring.

We don't need a bigger canvas.
We need brighter colors.

We need sunshine and fresh air
and the sounds of birds and
frogs and tree branches
in the wind.

We need a little place in the
country. We need to get
out of the city, away
from the devilry.

We need a quiet place.
We need our own place.
We need a reasonable
horizon, a reachable dream.

Either way, I walk alongside him,
at his pace, in the direction
he chooses.

That was the promise I made.
That is the promise I keep.

August 5, 2026

when you are the light
there are no shadows

August 1, 2026

What pitiful things we are!

So easily abused, tortured, corrupted,
controlled.

If I were a god I would not love us.

August 1, 2026

What a foolish girl I am to believe in
what doesn't believe in me!

Quiet as a mouse I am at least
(sometimes) loud enough to
walk away.

August 1, 2026

I had a father once, when I was
a little girl.

A blurry bug-eyed man in a photo-
graph I keep in an old-fashioned
album.

I remember his voice when
he said my nickname.

I can hear it in my mind if I
try hard enough.

Playful. Happy.

(But what do I know about other
people's happiness?)

I remember his mustachioed smile.
His teeth.

I don't remember his laugh.

I remember climbing onto his
sunblock greasy shoulders.

I remember shouting in a burst
of joy as I jumped into the ocean.

I remember a picnic table, a glass
carafe of wine.

I remember my mother saying
his name the way she always did.

She was afraid.

He wasn't a good man.
He wasn't a good father.
He was a man.
He was a father.

He was The Man.

I remember gritted teeth. Locked
jaw. Eyes illuminated from within,
a manic match to a Joker grin.

I was sixteen. I remember standing between him and the dog, him
and my mother.

"Over my dead body," I said.

(Which in hindsight is pretty
damned funny.)

I no longer remember what
happened next.

I no longer remember being
dragged down the hall by my hair.

It's only from long repetition of
memory that I remember being
folded over, my face crushed
into the carpet, lights exploding
in the darkness, a needle
pressure in my chest.

I no longer remember sitting
on the carpet, drool smear on
my cheek, looking at a clump
of my own hair.

I'm sure my mother was hysterical
(she was always hysterical) but I
don't remember.

I don't remember standing at the
window looking down at the
patrol car in the driveway as
my father and the officer
shared a laugh.

I don't remember the time of year
or the weather.

I remember the year only from
long repetition.

It was referred to in whispers
as "the incident" but it wasn't
the only one.

(He never struck her, not once.)

I remember frenetic energy.

He was always up at dawn.
He ate almost nothing.
He ran, he jogged.
He went to the gym.

He was rarely home, less often
present.

(How do you spend seventeen
years in a household without a
conversation?)

That's where I get my frenetic
energy, the drive to do too much,
the curiosity to learn more, to
try the new, the different, to
strive for self improvement,
for enlightenment (even if it
turns out to be wrong, sadly).

I got his Polish nose, though
my hook is less pronounced.

I got his brown hair that always
looked like it needed a trim, as
if he'd never quite left the 70's.

It's funny how a moment of so
short a duration has elongated
through time, faded in its
particulars, lost its
details, blurred
into
an
afterimage,
a backdrop, a slow motion
scene behind frosted glass,
an infinite reminder of
finite possibilities
that has left me
unable to
recognize
the
world
without it.

I shaved my head once a month
for seventeen years.

I used to think about writing him
a letter, but I never did.

He doesn't know who I am,
who I've become.

He can't remember who I was.
I've been blacked out by blackouts.

In the end it doesn't matter.

I've changed too much.
I know too much.
I've grown too old.

I used to have a dad, but that was
a long time ago, when I was a
little girl.

I don't miss him.

I don't miss him anymore.

August 1, 2026

Nature Girl has been beaten
into shape, beaten out of me.

I've been left alone on a foreign
shore, a foreigner abandoned
in a world I don't belong to,
inside a world outside
the outside.

I
can't
breathe
in here but
that doesn't matter
to anyone, not even me.

I'm a space cadet without a helmet.

There's no path back to where
(or who) I was. I am bereft
of context, an orphaned
asterisk.

Eleven
years later
and I still don't
have one right answer.
I'm no longer in the wrong
class but now I wander the halls
in a stupor. I no longer try the
doors, I just look out the
windows, unconcerned
as to their reality as I
can no longer count
their dimensions.

A pixel, a picture, an unreachable
reality, what's the difference
to an old woman trapped
in the perpetual motion
of poverty?

I know the score, I've done the math.

Sometimes when I drown,
the water is cold.

Sometimes when I drown,
the water is warm.

Sometimes that's the only
choice I have.

When it rains on my virtual island
I stay inside. I pretend to shelter.

She did too, back in the long
ago day, crawling in between
the skinny legs of sumac.

She thought she knew things
and I learned to disbelieve
and now I get it:

She knew the important things.

But none of it was enough to
fill up a world that's been
emptied out. She'd
never heard
of
the
strangler fig
and wouldn't have
been wise enough to be afraid.

I'm afraid, but not for her.
She's gone.

I killed her.

And I've lost far more than I've
gained from it, all said.

I thought I had no choice, and
maybe I was right. Poor thing.

She sat in that dorm room alone
and cried. Heartbroken.

I have to do this, I said and wrote
(I may still have it somewhere).

I can no longer follow the changing
of the seasons, each sign given
freely, like a gift.

I can no longer watch for the
Wild Hunt or listen to the
chorus of a billion
insects or delight
in the antics
of
snapping turtles
and wolf spiders and
tree beetles and water scorpions
or search for the bubble eggs of
frogs and toads and newts or
peel the bark from wild
grape or run my
fingers
over
the silky
smooth wood
of fallen pine branches
or listen for the trickle of snowmelt.

(She was always alone but
never lonely.)

It's all gone now, I said, I wrote.
I have to give it up. I have to
join this world that closes
off the world that isn't
beholden to time.

And I did.
And I wish I could go back.

None of it was worthwhile.

Over thirty years later and not one
moment was worthwhile.

There's no key here.
There's no breadcrumbs.

It's just a complicated mess,
all backwards. And yet,
I'm not bitter.

Only sad.

I remember her.
I remember who I was.
I remember who I sacrificed.

I never want to forget.

August 1, 2026

Don't touch me, SIR.

"He's such a nice guy.
He says Hello to everyone!"

I'm not your buddy.
I'm not a man.

Don't clap me on the shoulder.
We're not on the same team.

I don't know you.
You don't know me.

I am another man's wife.

I can't keep my dignity so
I keep my distance.

I earn less than the man who
mows your lawn, sir. I earn
less than the woman
who cleans your
house, sir.

So don't touch me, sir.
I am not yours.

I didn't make the rules but
I will not play the game.

July 30, 2026

The man I married and the man
I spend all day with both
call me 'kid.'

This disturbs me.

There's nothing I can do about it.
There is no remedy.

This is the world I live in.

The older men who politely stand
aside to let me out of the elevator
will also politely stand aside
to let me struggle with a
heavy box because to
do otherwise would
be to endanger
my ability to
support
my
family.

This disturbs me.

There's nothing I can do about it.
There is no remedy.

This is the world I live in.

The young men who manage my
time, my space, my movement,
and my body are indifferent
to it all because they were
raised by single mothers.

This disturbs me.

There's nothing I can do about it.
There is no remedy.

This is the world I live in.

July 30, 2026