when we don't see eye to eye that's the quiet place we need to be to pare open the soft underbelly of lies disguised as truth and set free that uncomfortable unrest that roots like a sharp spine through entrails of self delusion until some pale meaty bone breaks through salty soil and we are once again warmed by the flame of hungry intellect sparked by fifty- five million years of primate evolution when at last we see eye to eye.
February 12, 2021
little nugget is what she called some prospective offspring swaddled in lush affection.
i daydream on the words. little nugget some minuscule oblong shape that reshapes the future.
not mine, of course. or mine only by a degree removed. or two, really. grand mother i've never been either, of course.
…but to hold that little nugget in my arms (do they sleep?) safe and secure (if it squirms i'll return it to its mother) the product of my dearest boy…
a father a dad
a stranger who lived at home sometimes, who crushed the breath from me, who ridiculed me, mocked me, slapped me, threw me into a corner of the kitchen, laughing (he wouldn't remember) because i couldn't fight back. i didn't fight back. i don't fight a father a dad
the unexamined assumptions of third-wave feminism plated my abraded flesh at fixed points "Men don't want to be fathers." my armor in perpetuity over scars of rejection abandonment dislocation the primal fear of being exposed helpless devoured by wolves.
thirty years later bright eyes met across the gap of a generation (he could have been my son) and i can no longer retreat unchallenged to the cave of intellectual authority and sacrosanct belief.
a man emotionally invested in a fetus unborn, aborted.
he could have been-- he still wants to be.
words would have left me unpierced, dull darts against an armored heart. but in the depths of those eyes, in those unfiltered pools of honesty, i saw reflected the broken bud of grief.
maybe he loved me once, i'll never know. a man's world is encumbered by a silence he bears to the grave, his eyes creased by a folded bruise of unspoken loss, a wound trodden upon by careless wives, daughters, girlfriends, partners, an unblotted stigmata that blooms through my own life, weaving father to son, son to brother, brother to friend.
i understand, for one brief moment, the shadow cast by female privilege over long years of unhappy womanhood. i want to say 'i'm sorry' but find i cannot forgive.
i meditate instead upon the words little nugget and imagine some minuscule oblong shape that reshapes the past.
(maybe he loved me, once.)
February 5, 2021
how would i describe gratefulness in a world of glut overflowing glowing winterized tires shiny glass splinters under every industrialized finger waving an inhalation of never ending noise when i walk through the door to old linoleum pocked with cigarette burns greasy smear of road salt from last night's boots where i'll lay this night's boots in the watery light of an ordinary bulb and i hear your voice along the blank wall as yet invisible damp denim bumped by a fuzzy face i reach down i look up enclosed in that space my heart knows no loftier step no broader vista no more cherished resting place than a home built moment by moment on the jigsaw of risk that marks the high water line of love in a world of ten thousand glittering compensations for every tiny death of the heart in an unheard of unspoken to desensitized wound healed in a word when i walk through that door.
February 3, 2021
a crow never calls in vain a crow calls a crow a friend one or two or three times together over streets of intersecting lines of communication in four dimensions over time space sound social networks an electronic spider on a silken string we see and are seen in a flash of patterns against a gray backdrop of dilated consequence in liquid motion of wings we fly to.
February 3, 2021
It is the purest slice of heaven to share a household with you to dream a dream with you to build a life with you in a kitchen without a table we're content to sit on the floor.
"I can't wait to see you."
Dazzled. Humbled.
We share a meal, a game, a show, a movie, an anime. We talk, debate, (the intensity of those eyes), and there's that smile like a burst of sunshine, and that laugh that makes me smile, and we hug and--
You cough and I hold my breath. Are you warm enough? How did you sleep? Do you need a blanket, a glass of water?
All is right with the world only when all is right with you.
Am I a freak? Probably. Weirdo, to love some other mothers' child. Love, complete. "You are family." I cried on the bus but I always cry on the bus. I'm a faulty faucet a weeping willow a salty subject to a menopause mess.
Twenty five, you say? I'll raise you forty-six and childless, an old spinster, a nobody to anybody.
"What if I get used to this?" I laughed. "To having friends?"
You replied, as we walked side by side, "You'll build a life outside your trauma."
Speechless. Graced by your wisdom. Grateful for your friendship, your company, your trust.
You are my honest friend, my Millennial bestie.
You are a strong young man who drew an old maid from a deep well.
You were a good kid in a bad situation.
You were worth listening to. You were worth protecting. You were worth loving. Every moment, every day. You still are.
Believe it.
January 27, 2021
how can i convey what it was like
to learn to love at forty six?
in a storage room
in a throne room
listening and
listened to
i spoke
'i was not allowed to love
it was not safe to love
i need to love
you need to be loved'
my kids
my Millennials
my Gen Zees
my heart
broke open
when we
met at Moses
my best friend
my honest friend
(you saw me
i saw you)
motherless
child
childless
mother
i swam up through
oxytocin eyes
and breathed
in twenty-
five years of grief
bridged by the
backbone of
a titan
tapped out
in words that spilled
and spilled into
a pool
a stream
a river
an ocean
a thundering
heart
beat
folded into
steel
to pierce the
hooded eyes of the
world
in a little city
in a park
in a studio
in a storage room
in a throne room
in free fall
i opened my arms
and was embraced by a
life worth living
by a family worth loving
in the year of the virus
in the best year
of my life.
January 2021
