my 5 year old daughter only wants to run
through the park, loping beside our wolf-puppy,
both lean & fierce, joyful
as she tosses her hair back
& suddenly I see my body
in hers, tireless & certain,
despite my pounding heart
& damaged limbs, I run&run&
then she gives for a moment,
tumbled full-length in the grass,
feeding the puppy from her cupped hands,
& demanding, scratch my back too!
then down her sides & over the ripples
of her ribcage, her leaping heart
& tummy, still baby-soft,
until the shadows reach us & I
must give her back, inch by inch,
a long, twirling hug
my mother will echo with sad arms,
murmuring, you look really good,
the letter that never arrived by sunshinegypsy, literature
Literature
the letter that never arrived
as if grief had never hollowed out my heart,
caverns echoing with the memory of a laugh,
as if despair had never stolen my voice
until love whispered in my ear
and I knew what mattered,
to speak
of knowing: there are things
you will decide to protect yourself from,
pain
you must never relive,
and some you must live
and live again,
no matter the cost
The upstairs door slams just after midnight,
the other renter’s teenage wife, who lives across town
with their son and her parents,
doing fuck knows what
except setting off the dogs and waking up everyone else in the house
but I bite the tip of my tongue,
her obliviousness vs
knowing
when I finally do fall asleep it will only be an hour or perhaps two
before I wake the house screaming
until I go hoarse, or more often these days
until my body can’t stop wrapping itself like a fist around my empty lungs and
I finally wake,
choking on vomit that tastes sharp and metallic,
like I’ve been eating pennies.
As if I had be
there are more important things by sunshinegypsy, literature
Literature
there are more important things
Without a voice to speak the world is suddenly strange.
My memory closes over me like a wave, merciful darkness, and this time
no one to tell me the story of pain.
The next time I surface I am on the 3rd floor of the local hospital
and I am home, here
the nurses are both kind and fierce
and if you choose a therapist, they unlock one of the many rooms
to trees or rivers or dim silence and here there are no clocks to watch
and no one disputes my vow of silence,
until Polly brings me a slip of paper with the name Rhiannon,
and I love you
and I realize then there are more important things than words,
there is a phone number waiting befo
I came out of the darkness talking, talking, spilling words to cover the sharp edge of panic, speaking so I didn’t howl at the chaos, at the fingers grasping at the corners of my shivering mind, so I didn’t weep or beg or have to listen to the barrage of voices harshly shouting me down, muzzling me into silence,
the high, trembling voice of a wide-eyed nurse – it’s not English. You’re not speaking English!
echoing silence and all my swallowed words tasting like copper pennies in the back of my throat, and a scream shattering the silence, an endless violence I could not crawl away from, the despairing sound, tur
September 12. 2012
There is a break
in the world – a bend
in the wind
& I lift my body on
trembling limbs,
this voice is our voice,
it is the sorrow I know,
how you are the steadiness
as the world ends,
the cracks slip –
I want you here, my arms
want your weight, know
how you will fit.
When I dreamed of
you, you were a tree –
large, scattered branches,
shades & leaves of music
& I am winding myself around you,
limber & fleet.
November 10, 2012
After the same nurses keep coming
with full syringes, night after night,
they ask their questions: Who
is on the phone? Why am I alone?
Some days are a compromise, some
teach you how to give up
gracefully,
in sickening pain, unrelieved,
and they call Robin even though
it’s the night shift, to tell me I cannot eat yet,
nor die, nor sleep,
just a sleepy scientist rubbing his thumb
against the back of my hand,
murmuring, you must stand up,
against the sideways world,
then, shhh, as he lifts me,
fragile and burning,
surprising a giggle,
musically alive,
as he carries me
into the dark
where the machines hum
When you read to me now
it’s only Winamp
and the hum of your AC,
the dripping pipes in the basement
where I curl around my computer,
marvel over life before filesharing
keyboards, instant word-thought-
desires.
But the echoing leaky pipes have
the music of all water, a wandering
river in summer,
when you read me poetry or sometimes
sing in Spanish, your voice shakes off
her laughing, human edge. You caress
the word, god, as if you knew him
and his dark secrets; devil is smooth
and fierce. They are players on your stage,
this must be what all the texts mean when
they grandly claim the big picture
and immediately follow with,
To my father and my brother:
I hate you for not losing what I will lose
I hate you for not being capable of such loss.
And for not allowing me to speak of such, for stumbling
to the end of sorrow alone,
unspoken,
for bearing out injury
and pride,
unspeaking.
And the blame laid at my door for loving,
for shameful
animal grieving,
for the way I was carefully unfolding
my heart
in words.
This morning I woke up and wasn’t
who I was supposed to be,
only in name, just a small word
that holds no meaning anymore,
and I stop saying it, today,
because coming from my tight throat
it sounds like a trapped bird,
not hurt, yet, just confused
and calling, lightly
and relentlessly
for home.