Stepping up with
one good leg I
make work of light and
lift my bale, hoping
under all my thought
that up is up and
not a fall disguised
by some mean
trickery to make me
see the road ahead
instead of down
before I fly with
tissue wings that
cannot hold.
Stepping down I
shift my load to give
away for other arms
the burden of my
thought and knowing
little seeming more
like fogging up the
air where high
things live and so
I doubt the down
and pause to
ponder, adding to
my weight then
climbing when I
meant to drop.
I got a card the other
day, from a woman I’ve
always loved. I knew to
wait for morning to open
it. At night her words could
flow to my feet and grind
their pace in the hallway.
This time I waited then ran
to work, to think on other
things, wishing my smile
weren’t thrown sideways
by the air in the envelope.
The card arrived from
multiple planes and split
into many translations.
Linguists could debate
the many few words
from a language known
only to three. I didn’t
need a linguist. I read the
note and knew the love,
the unlove, and the
twisted fight with
anger. The empty space
where the words were
born was bigger than
I could answer.
Waiting for them to turn
off his phone, snatched
somewhere between
here and 5th, we think,
as he walked past a
thief, unknowing. That
phone’s a lifeline, a point
or connection, a royal
pain in the ass.
Will he still be a person
without his access to
wi-fi and Google-maps,
to mark his place on
the pavement, in the
spaces between
destinations and the
persons who hold his
identity in the ways
they blink their eyes?
It’s blocked now, nothing
in or out, no words
or numbers traveling
through the between, as
I write about it on my
own brain that I carry
outside my head. We’ll
see if we’re deleted in
the morning.
She didn’t cry when the
seagulls died, or seemed
to, their nest uprooted
with a handy plank and
discarded in a slick black
trash bag on the roof.
She didn’t cry then. She
cried later, when she couldn’t
find her keys, and when
she sat with friends
discussing completely
unrelated things, and
when she went to check
her email. Grief is funny
like that.
The birds were
okay. Watched over as
they had been they
never knew someone
checked every morning
to see how they were,
named their babies,
worried over flying
lessons. They didn’t
know how much they
were loved, messengers
of hope in a concrete
landscape. At first
she felt stupid for
grieving. Idiotic birds
making messes. Most
people don’t even like
seagulls. But then she
realized, the loving was
in the seeing, and most
people are blind.
He came onto the bus like
a flurry of bees, energy
shivering off him in jagged
rings radiating out in ripples
with the scent of turpentine.
I’d been reading. I put down
my book. His life was too
loud for me to concentrate.
While endeavoring greatly to do nothing, my heart endeavors strongly to be heard. All those tears and shiver-making thoughts that I’ve captured and boxed and stored in places I no longer remember, come pounding back at once and I become small, like a
seed
at the bottom of the universe. These feelings are all lost, gangly teenagers who don’t know how to express themselves, hoping to be strung somehow, like
pearls – which
I would be happy to do if I were big enough. Perhaps there’s some warm soil for my seed from
underneath a galaxy.
The slicing nature of
everyday things is
wrapped in foil, frozen
sharp at midnight. My
muscles part and shiver
in the burning cold where
there is no soft, only a
metallic grate into which
my heels press upright, as
quietly as possible.
Surprised by my tears I
duck and hide behind
my hair, unsure
who this new person is,
living in my skin and
and borrowing everything
but my feelings about
the world.
My friend, for one who can be so quiet the voice you have is bold. I don’t know where you find the courage but invariably you own your words like land you’ve bought with blood. Heartsick, your broken drumbeat pounds inside the knowing all the breaking in the world. I always thought you’d be a cello, you know, instead of tympani, but then, your mother played the pipe organ like a Gothic god. It’s no wonder part of you is tuned to always hear the cracking of her bones. Her suffering was silent to everyone else.
Everyone else.
No one else. It made you alone to hear it and there was nowhere for you to go. Go now. Buy earplugs. Listen to woodwinds until the channel can change. Make friends who only drain you in the normal way, then fill you up with hugs and affectionate disagreements and eyes that see you crying in the rain even when it looks like the sun is shining bright. Even when you have to tell them but you can because they’re not the sort to faint at the sight of blood.
You are purple. You are complex, hot and cold and hard and softer than that silky white cat who saved your life when your brother died. You know how to leave but you always choose to stay. The world still needs you, telling squirrels you love them and seeing flower songs shimmering opal along the edges of the evening sky. It’s your legacy. You get to see and love, but you have to pay for the seeing.
Maybe it won’t always cost so much. Maybe you’ll be reimbursed. Maybe you are even more lovable than rabbits or marmots or baby dear ducking their heads in the grain fields. Maybe the strength that seems like it’s cruel, forcing you sometimes to keep breathing when you’d rather stop, is actually being kind because if you just keep breathing there will be beauty and joy and surprising comfort that will make all the extra breathing worthwhile.
I want you to hold onto possibilities with the same tenacity you’ve employed so you could take ownership of your words and live. Life is the goal. You’re not alone. You are loved. You are worthwhile and you have a lot to offer this crazy, fucked up world, but you (listen, you) are not fucked up. You are wounded, but you already know that’s not the same. A person can be wounded and be a rock star. That’s you. You get extra points just for breathing, because you’re unique and valuable and sensitive. Being you is good. Be you.
Not Quiet Any More 