empty

Lord, my hands are empty.

My heart murmurs echoes
of what my mind denies.

I come to receive your will,

to oppose my own

in confusion & release:

lead me well.

time circles

I wish that time

and seasons

were not static--

that I could wake up

one day to fall
the next to spring,

that my body

did not age
in a straight line
sinking down,

and that watches

did not tick
in circles.

we are the same

You whispered across

dandelion aisles

during summer's first June.

I could not hear your muffled phrases,

lost in the floating seeds

between your breath.

One seed stuck to the stem,

& you flicked it off

to join the others.

"Just needed a little boost,"

you smiled, know that seed was you,

waiting for your own 'little boost.' 

being there

with your hand on my shoulder
and my hands on my face,
would you stay and be
the warmth on the outside:
the heat map red, only you.

with my wordless sobs
and your small sentences,
would you tell me what it's like
to know extended happiness:
a robin's song each morning.

with your thousand-mile distance
and my reluctance to leave,
would you reach out to me;
call me to yourself:
a child returning to her mother.

to belong

I built myself a fort

of books & journals.

The outside wind beckoned

deep, but my shivering skin

whispered deeper within.

Today, I belong here.

season

Every season reaches completion.

It’s a fading from one to the next;

I’m not sure exactly when

the change will happen. Maybe

it already has. Or maybe

it will remain

in the background

like rain clouds in summer

of the squeak of a porch swing

when no one is around.

truth

I've recently realized
that I've been wrong
about most everything
up until this point.

These may just be
my truest words.

In the Tomb

If Lazarus could tell his story,

would he say he wanted

to be raised?

Would he tell us

where we went

in his four days?

“Come out.”

asking God: how and why

How did God decide
what should be?
That he would be three,
that we would live here,
that all the tiny particles
would somehow equal life.

What does it mean
to have a soul?
To be eternal,
to hold something within us
that is ungraspable,
depths that science cannot reach.

Why did he deem us
of importance?
To give us emotion
and thought,
to drop us into confusion,
decision, determination,
loss.

What contributes to our need?
What contributes to his plan?
What reveals the inner workings
and the presence
of the great?

How are we to know the difference
between destiny
and fate? If it's already planned,
who are we to turn away
from the God
who somehow made us,

somehow breathed us
into form:
took the dust and made
our bones and blood
and called us
to be born.

Hope

She would never look at you
when she cried:
that sole expression
of the deep

because to see her eyes
between huffing sobs
would be to see god,
his disappointment
in us.

Falling
is the only way
to rebuild.

The Growing Season, Part III

III.

You spent years figuring out 

that Spring returns each year,

that the rain comes with it 

& the tulips

& the dew. 

Each time they returned,

you seemed surprised, 

as if you might have never

seen them again,

like a dog returning 

to its owner.

It was the long winter

that felt like the end.

Short days swept by 

into thick darkness.

Morning was brief and bright:

new mercies quickly passing. 

I thought it was the grey;

you thought it was the Spring.

We sat inside our separate boxes,

staring out the windows:

heavy winter, heavy rain.

But the tulips brought the 

light back, & the Springtime

brought the dawn,

& the source of every sadness

was your noncommittal gaze

at the busy streets below us. 

The Growing Season, Part II

II.
I was sitting in the reading chair;

you were watching the rain racing

down the glass of the old window,

the one that let in all of winter’s cold,

the one with chipped paint around the edges

and bubbled splinters underneath.

The light was dim, and you asked me

when winter would be over.

I told you about the groundhog

and the shadow, and you said

you didn’t believe it and that Spring would arrive

just tomorrow, in bursts of silent,

sprouting tulips.

Tulips sing the saddest song;

there is hardly a flower more beautiful, yet just at their peak,

they droop into the sorrow of dying,

heads hung heavy and low towards the dirt,

petals browning, then falling, then altogether

gone—nothing but a stem and a few powdery stamen.

The Growing Season, Part I

I.

You looked at me in knots,

knots like the roots

of paperwhites 

on the windowsill,

potted for too long.

You didn’t say a word,

as if you’d forgotten how

to speak, & the light

escaping between 

the blinds

kept you guessing.

I couldn’t grasp how

you could be so familiar

yet so distant,

like the far-off woods

of my childhood

that grew brown and crackled

in the fall.

I thought you would bloom

like the tulips

in April,

like the grass on a cool morning,

dew glistening like happy tears

at the coming dawn.

I thought you would remember.

I thought you would enter

the garden, the only place,

the solitary place. 

I thought you would stay,

and I thought you would notice

that everything looks different now.

You looked at me, past me,

like a translucent flame

against the dark, and 

I thought

you might not truly 

see again.

ghosts

I sat down

and found myself

revealed,

scars exposed,

I saw every part of me

to the ingrown hairs on my legs

and the bright ink staining my skin,

parts permanent, parts transient.

Tributaries traced my veins

wandering for the greater good

as water grieved my existence,

lying heavy on my eyelashes, my hair,

streams rushing over my face

in a gasping confusion

--water, air

Water racing down my open body

trying to get away,

but I am still,

eyes burning from direct contact,

Toes curling from the cold air escaping in

from under the curtain.

I am old. I have aged suddenly,

wrinkled, stuck on the ground like

a tree planted decades ago

Maybe I will never have to leave this spot.

The creases in my fingers and the panic in my lungs

tell otherwise

by the disorient, the uncleanliness,

the infusion

of wet on wet

of hot on hot

of cold on hot

of thought on empty sound

of running water and streets

buzzing and bumping

and beeping

and foreign, distant

echoes of your voice

in my head

I do not know you

I do not know how you to got to be

or me, for that matter,

and I look at my bent legs,

hugged to my naked chest,

skin on skin,

I feel it,

and I cannot see it,

and you haunt me,

and I do not know

how showers

are cleansing.

bathtub

the water dulls and illuminates at the same time

delayed heartbeat soon starts to shake the water

if I breathe, it is like a wind under water, the whoosh, the force of lung

the whale call echoing in my eardrums