Loss is a feeling in my body It is a literal hole in the heart A black vacuum where that person used to be And the size of the hole is in direct proportion to how prominent a role that … Continue reading
Three days of sun
Category Archives: poetry
Remember the Night Rainbow
I feel compelled to write
My sister told me to, but
More importantly
I have words that need to come out, feelings that have only festered inside, without outlet.
How should one respond when attempting love, one is met largely with contempt?
And worse, how does one react when that contempt is not really for you, just spurred by you, and the ambition you demonstrate, pointing out constructed flaws?
How do you report a theft to the police, when the gifts were originally given? Only the contempt making acts of love into things stolen.
I feel a shallow shadow of revenge porn, the violence is not in the shame of nudity, or stranger’s appropriation and comment
The violence is the turn
The gift given in love, or adventure or shared excitement- made into something so ugly it cannot be contained
How did I wrong you? Why did you wrong me?
Why are you so unwilling to own even your own actions?
Because my father owned more than yours? Because my drive was insatiable, and not for you?
Your cowardice, in asking me to pay the price for your insecurity and betrayal, in every way possible is unfathomable.
Money
Friends
Innocence
Hope
Trust
Partnership
Love
You married my namesake, perhaps we were just off in the rhythm, you were meant to find her, I happened to be in the way
I don’t want to find another you however. I want to move beyond that. I want someone who doesn’t need to make me small to feel bigger.
I thought you were an honourable gentleman. I thought honour was a universal; accessible by all. You made me fear it was a bastion of elitism. Is that true? Or was the crime limited to you and your peculiar deficits?
I worked so hard not to see your faults, to believe the best. You made my optimism into foolishness; another day, another week, another month. And how many years were stolen?
Or lost
The worst recrimination of course is for myself: why didn’t I see you for who and what you are? Why did I continue to invest? Why did I think that was all I deserved?
And you remain,
Oblivious
which is the worst crime of all
Reasons to love getting old (vol 1)
You get to make friends with everyone because you no longer have anything to prove… You can crawl in the dirt looking for bugs with children and no one looks at you funny. You get food first There are no … Continue reading
Trust
There are people in this world who will save your life
Who throw a lifeline if you are drowning, not caring that the rope will bind you
Who are generous, or loving, or thoughtful, or driven, and say ‘yes’ when you ask for help
Saying ‘yes’ saves at least one life every day but saying ‘no’ is so much easier when one is tired
Saying ‘yes’ inspires hope, and a renewed demonstration of commitment;
to each other, to the process, to ourselves
There is electricity in these ties that connect us, and healing
Acceptance is a powerful thing; generosity and kindness
A willingness to be wrong, to be vulnerable, to be open
The courage to risk, the confidence to fall, the heart to begin again
Life is a hard thing at times, there are monsters in the deep
And sometimes light is hard to come by
So we leave signposts, and whisper to the trees as we pass
Breadcrumbs for both me and the birds
if they eat the bread then surely they will sing my way home
Struggling to communicate
There comes a day When tears and recriminations are no longer required When breathing gets easier There comes a time When all the noise stops When the moment in between stretches There is nothing left to say No balm … Continue reading
Motherless Mother’s Day
There comes a brief glimpse
Of a choice: Happiness or fear
When you have the option
Do you choose yourself?
How much can you risk?
How open can your heart stretch?
When tears flow freely
And you don’t know which are for the bitter and which for the sweet
How tight should you pull the thread
When you sew your broken pieces back together?
When you set out on a new path
In an unknown direction
When you let the dam breach
And the river unleashes
What poetry is written in your soul?
In the quiet moments
I am fine talking to myself
But when I think about sharing with you my throat closes up (physiological response)
Being public unintentionally becomes just another psychosis
Another ‘you or me?’ moment
I reach so hard for ‘us’ and yet
It is something we both have to fall
in
to
Trust is so painstakingly constructed
And it is so easily swept away
In tides
And tears
And moments of thoughtlessness or frustration
I don’t like ‘you or me?’
It presupposes there is no ‘us’
That is what makes this hard
Hard to know when to risk being hurt
Hard to know when I’m strong enough for my heart
to
break
again
Its true that only mothers can understand some things
But we all understand love and exclusion
And overwhelming pressure
Sometimes we choose to let go
And sometimes we choose to hang on
We can only know the fit of our own oxygen mask
And we have to trust that we will be there in the end
It is hard
being the same
And different
Beautiful in the spaces between the pressures
The moments of laughter
And abandon
It’s so much harder to negotiate when we just don’t understand the words other people use
Makes the quiet easier in comparison
