I love my little room
Warm pink womb dark wood dried flowers
Wrap me in silks and satins,
sex with myself or a man
In golden hour haze
A world my own in my window
Safety, she knows it well
Fun to wonder
How the seasons will texture her differently
Pull back my covers
Winter, thank you
For birthing this
Cause if I love her now
Ill love her then
I try not to stare at them
These two women
As they move about
Stripped down
Dripping onto towels laid out
Rubbing balms and lotions onto
Skin less taut than mine.
I want to look
Not to judge, but to study their ways
These women
Forty something
Pulling on comfort clothes
And crocs and boots
Packing up gym bags that hold no obligation
or compensation
Only gratitude for limbs
One blows her hair halfway dry
Not so much to style it
But rather to avoid catching a january cold
I trade quick light smiles
With each of them
These women
I wonder what they think of me
I feel young and naive and envy their ease
I note the whispers of gray hair
Unmanaged and unmarred
They take care of themselves
These women
For no one but themselves
Im doing the same motions
Standing exposed and body buttered
Not with confidence but with defeat
I spread and stretch and choose the shower with no door
Modesty is an energy i can no longer muster
Maybe one day i can be one of them
These women
Who call their body a home
Not a curse
think pizza should have a red sauce on it
come from insurance dads who love pistachios
know the stevie nicks wild heart video
were free on the Fourth of July
take honey in our coffee
went east to west
neither of us
saw this coming
or know how it ends
To rise and fall on
the belly of a kitty
A furry balloon ride
To snooze here and there
Peacefully erratic lack of
Schedule
To snail my body and doze
Then wake to a world that
Asks nothing
Arching high and stretching long
To breathe into a pile of paws
Wherever the sun shows herself
It helped to think
“Maybe i’ll meet someone”
As i silenced my alarm in the morning dark
After going through security
A man spilled my coffee a little and
Apologized twice
Maybe i could have been more forgiving?
I asked him a question, have you done this before? an olive branch
Later in a sea of sitting bodies
I studied the man briefly and made my judgements to let him go, dismissed
Not for me
I sat and thought about being “Single at heart” and added some validating titles to my list of books to read
At 11am we are told we are free to go, dismissed
We have fulfilled our civic duty
What a noble waste
With my freedom I drive out to Pho Mekha
Ryan’s favorite
More than a year ago he politely declined my invitations for this or that
I tell the empty seat across the table
I wish the broth wasn’t so sweet
Not the day i had pictured
No surges of color or swirling visions
Not a winding adventure through town
With hands clasped on the
Third day of Portland snow
We didn’t hold hands because it wasn’t so slippery that I needed your support
And reaching out just because I wanted to didn’t feel like a good enough reason
I paused by a frozen camellia and whimpered
We drank broth from glass mugs on Belmont
Sunshine and turmeric yellowing thick
You didn’t finish yours and later as we start fucking you say your stomach is upset
I think its my fault because I suggested the broth
You left shortly after you came
Trying to beat the sun home
I make an attempt to lean into the discontent
Sink into how it doesn’t feel as good as i want it to
So that later
When there is no more us
I won’t only think of thanksgiving morning
How right it felt to wake up with you
Wrap my skin in your wool blanket and wait for you to hand me a breakfast sandwich
Sliced in half and ajar
Yolk oozing out
Let it run its course
Let it harden and dry
Soon there will be no more
Soon I will smell you drip out of me for the last time
Can we never say never? I ask
Bargaining, mostly with myself
She shares her quesadilla
I bake cranberry ricotta muffins
She takes bites of my lasagna
I cut pieces of her mochi cake
I put a log on the fire
She feeds the cat
I take out the trash
She puts in a new bag
We paint our nails
We dance around in our abundance
Up and down three floors of cocoon
Footsteps weaving a house into a home
Let my tombstone read--
Insurance won't cover it
She tried on her own
A handmade wooden bed frame, oiled
“milk was on sale so i bought you some”
A quick phone call at night
Matching letterman jackets
“Do you want to leave soon?”
Two quilted stockings
Being introduced
Saying “we”
The smell of ash is starting to disgust me
And my lungs are tired
Every hit feels hot
I tell myself i need to vaporize it
Cool it down in bong water
Maybe it just needs to be put aside
Ill pick up children and flowers instead
Lucky, these lungs
I’ll be singing and dancing and gulping in oxygen straight from the trees
I’m starting to picture her
The camp girl
I used to wipe your bum
Now you know words like ‘maybe’ and ‘matching’
Pizza torn around hot peppers
Its sficy, you say
And I fear I may have hurt a
Tiny helpless bird
“See how im holding her like this”
A prayer from your mother when you were half your age
Deep bounces into cribbed sleep
I sang the color song
“The night is robed in spangled black”
I may never lullaby my own
So thank you for running to me
One piggy flying and one still tucked
Grinning out loud and into my arms
You may be one of my last littles
I try to remember there is an alternate reality
in which I not only have less of you
but someone else gets to keep the change
in which I'm not only alone
but you are not
I'll take this plot line over that one
with gratitude and grimace
I try to pretend I don't wish for another chapter
either way its no use
the story of longing drones on
at least neither of us live happily ever after yet
I don't want you to read these poems
I don't want to think about how differently you'd write them
or whether you would write at all
I don't want to think about my last
mouthful of you
Years ago I wrote him a letter
I was far more loving then
An ode to a friend?
Sure, I’ll write seven
Handwritten on cards I painted and mod podged with pressed flowers
I made art back then too
Ohhh I remember her
Twinkle toes in the loose dirt stirring up dust
A long sleeve shirt and no pants in the last warm hours of an October day
We had all giggled in bubbles
High on us and freedom and mushrooms in the Mt. Hood wilderness in a way we could only be that summer that everyone stayed in a pod and away from strangers
He saw me in my light
Smiled and called me cute
And it was good to be loved platonically and I wasn’t yet lonely and it wasn’t yet dark
It was my birthday then, and all I wanted was to celebrate them
The ones I felt alive with
The ones I belonged to
It is his birthday now, and like all the birthdays the past couple years
I can’t seem to write a single word of appreciation affection admiration for any of these friends that I surely don’t deserve anymore
I send a quick text to ward off shame
He used to keep the letter on his desk
I wonder if it got lost in the move
I hope he rereads it because its all still true
Even if I can’t say it
Take off your shoes. Leave your jacket and hat. Go upstairs. Enter silence. Choose your place. Find your seat. Adjust. Breathe. Don’t look around. Maybe just a little. Listen. Breathe. Turn to page 48. Try to chant along. Pick up the tune. Carrots go up or down. Lines extend. Bow. Kneel down. Stand up. Bow. Kneel down. Stand up. Bow. Kneel down. Stand up. Take a seat. Adjust. Knees below the hips. Hear a list of names. An explanation. I don’t understand. Come with me if you are new. Go downstairs. I’m not the only one. Chair posture. Bench posture. Floor posture. So many pillows. They don’t call them that though. I like the bench best. Sit. Find a soft gaze. Don’t close your eyes. Notice. This sensation. Clothes on my skin. That sensation. Fluorescent light in my eyes. Breathe. Trace the breath. Hand posture. Thumbs barely touching. Holding infinity. Grounded. A string coming out the top of my head. Spine floating. Back aching. My knees will hurt eventually. Kosho. “What is it like to be where you are in your practice?” “Great relief.” Shoulders back. Thoughts will come. Let them go. Back upstairs. Grab a second pillow. Find my seat. Stack pillows. Sit on the front third. Knees below the hips. Hands in lap. Adjust. Ok breathe. Breathe. Body scan. I have to swallow. I do it. Was that too loud? Tongue gently on the roof of my mouth. Adjust. Try not to make noise. Left foot is gonna fall asleep. Let it. Back to breath. Left ear itches. Let it. Breathe. Thoughts will come. The thoughts are gushing. Start over. Back ache. Deep breath. Send the breath to my back. Left foot definitely asleep. “Do we always need to be fidgeting?” I need to fidget. Deep breath. Ok I have to switch my legs. As quietly as possible. It helps. Now I can breathe. Why do people keep going in and out of that door? What is behind that door? Stare at the ground. 6-8 feet away. Breathe. Back aching. Falling forward off the pillows. Unclench legs. Scoot back. Adjust. How much longer? Swallow. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Thought. Breath. Bow.
You looked so huge to me that night
Standing taller on my deck in the wake of my grief
Even your silhouette seemed lighter
I felt color in your shadow
I wish I could be up there with you
Lifted by dopamine and norepinephrine
Both of our worlds, soothed with balm
Our words ripe with hope
I've got some swimming to do
First, the brine
Then, the cure