Monday, May 20, 2013

Loss.



I sleep alone
and the willow whispers to me
softly
sweet verses
cut by the white of the moon
through her branches.

I sleep alone
and in that dreamless sleep
my heart echoes
the soft pitter-patter
of rain on the window,
yet there is no rain.

The nights have grown cold.

All I have ever known
has been shaped by these nights,
by poignant dew on morning petals.

All I have ever known
has been your face.
But now

I sleep alone.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Eternity.

Cheryl, you got me thinking and I ended up just sitting and writing something instead of doing my laundry.  Enjoy!




My darling, her eyes look like yours.  Long black lashes outlining a ring of glacial blue.  

How I wish I could be with you.  How I wish that I could watch her grow and sleep by your side, our feet intertwined, as we become old and grey.

When I felt the blossom of life inside me, I knew it would be the end of our time on this earth.  So, I made the hardest decision.  I held her in my belly and held you both in my heart until her arrival, which became my departure. 

After my living heart and body stilled and began to cool, I watched you with her.  I watched your face when the doctor came to tell you of our baby girl, the final product of our undying love for each other.  I watched your face when you learned I would never hold her; that you would never again wake to watch me sleep beside you.  I watched you crumble and think you, too, would die.

It’s funny how the living heart can keep beating even after the reason you’ve lived for so long is gone.  Funnier still how the living heart can stop and the love within it can stay alive. 

This is what’s become of my love for you, dearest. 

I lay beside you each morning as the golden sun shines in our bedroom window, the motes dancing with joy only the early morning brings.  I keep you warm each night while you sleep because I know your body radiates out heat like a skin-covered furnace.  I sit beside you as you make our little girl chocolate chip banana pancakes, something you were always better at than me.  I remind you to put the milk away and to make her lunch so that she never has to eat food from the school cafeteria. 
 I help you out of your chair at night and push my hands through your hair so you can fall asleep quickly. 

I never let anything hurt her.

And no matter what you do in this life after my body has left you, know that I will be with you until one day, not long after our daughter delivers a daughter of her own, you fall asleep in your armchair and come to be with me.


There are things I have been waiting so long to show you, my love.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Annis.


The last time I saw you... You were a blonde, blue-eyed baby.

Annis.

I was so sorry to leave you. To leave you with him. I prayed with every bit of my being that he would hold you tight every time you cried, that he would never let any of your needs go unmet. That he would never mistreat you, his perfect baby girl. I prayed that he would never treat you the way he did me.

He lied to me. He promised to let me go if he could keep you. I made a mistake and I knew what it was from the moment I left you with him. I gave you up so that I could go on without him, but I should have known better. I should have known that I couldn't just give up my baby girl. I should have known there was no without him.

He gave me a five-year head-start, then began tracking me like a dog. I don't know how he found me, dearest Annis. I changed my name. I changed my country. I changed my hair and my body. He still knew me from the start.

One day you will know the truth. You will know how he pushed me down in the street and how he pulled me, screaming, off the sidewalk and into the alley. You will know how no one blinked, as if I was not even there. One day you will discover how your daddy crushed my body as he crushed my soul until nothing was left but splinters of bone oozing with warm, sticky blood. My blood. You will know how he left the fragments that had once been my body in a cold and dirty alley in a country that is not your own and was not my own.

You will discover how he led the dogs to feed on me and you will not seek revenge for the loss of the first home you knew in this world, but you will not forgive him.

Annis.

Never forgive him.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

The Saddest Story.


I lay on my floor, staring at the ceiling.  The mess that usually occupies most of my floor-space has been cleaned and put away.  All the hangings from my walls are wrapped in newspaper and carefully sorted into boxes.  My sheets are clean.

I try to think of the list I’ve had in my head for weeks; all the things that needed to be done.  I think I’ve finally completed the last item.

The walls seem so white.  White and naked.

I set my iPod to repeat a playlist I made months ago.  All of the songs that make me think of him.  Of the person I had built him up to be in my mind before he let me go.  Of all the things we went through together that should have either made us stronger together or broken us, but really did neither.

Until he left.

I guess maybe our entire relationship was based on one of us leaving the other.  I probably didn’t realize how often that was because I was usually the one leaving.  I just always came back.

He never did.

I fill the bathtub with warm water and bath salts.  The smell of lavender wraps around me and floats out into the apartment.  The only light comes from a candle burning on the counter.  It flickers and dances some pagan ritual.

I slide into the warm water.

I close my eyes.

I disappear.



I can’t do this anymore.  
I’m so alone my bones ache.
I’m so poor my stomach aches.
And I can’t take this kind of stress without him.
I’m so sorry.  I love you all.




He was sound asleep by her side.  I could feel my heart ache for him, though I no longer had a heart.  I sat by his feet and he shivered, then stirred.  I lay down on my side, my face in front of his.  His eyes opened and he sat up rapidly, staring, speechless.

“Hi, Bambi,” I said, sitting up with him.  His eyes opened wider.

“What the-“ he started almost yelling, then looked at her sleeping and tried again.  “What the hell are you doing here?” he whispered.

“Saying goodbye.”

“How the fuck did you get in here?”

“I just thought about you and then I came to you.”

He quickly snapped into understanding.

“What happened?” he asked as tears choked at his words.

“You lied to me, Bambi.  You decided never to come back.”

“I decided not to come back for now…  I have a good thing going here.  I didn’t want to fuck it up.  I have a chance to make some real money.”

“I gave you a chance.  I told you if you denied it, it was for good and there was no coming back.  You ignored me.  I just…  Couldn’t…  You know?”

He stood and walked out of the room.  I followed him without step or sound to the living room.  He sat on the couch.  He was crying.

“You left me, Bambi.  For good.  That was your choice and that’s okay.  This was my choice.  Because I don’t know how to be anything but yours.”

“I don’t want you to be anything else.”

“Then you should have told me that while it still would have mattered.”

He began to sob.  In a way I pitied him.  His tears would never bring me back.

 I sat beside him and wrapped my arms around him, pulling him as close as I could.  He shivered.
“I still love you,” he said quietly.

“Bambi, I will always love you.  And because of that I will always be with you.  Now I will never be with anyone else.”  I kissed his lips, which were wet and salty with tears.

“But you can’t be with me, either.  I never wanted that,” he said to the empty room, not realizing I had already gone.


“I will wait for you here.”  My voice echoed in his mind.

When he came to find me I welcomed him with open arms.