I'm afraid. But I have choices

I’ll sit on my deck

I bet the warm winter air

Will blow my hair

In a way some might say

Is beautiful

I’ll eat a cookie

Meant for Santa

That I could not finish

On Christmas night

And maybe

There will be a star

To wish on

If I believed

In wishes

But I don’t

I believe in loss

Love

Mistakes

Pain

Wine

Chocolate

Hugs.  Oh!  I believe in hugs so much

Music is an amazing thing to add to the list

When I was young

I fell in “love” with boys who barely knew my name

I sang them songs

Plunked out on simple piano notes

No chords

Just words

And tears

I wrote tear stained poetry

And lamented

Tender hearts

Left broken

On sandy shores

I’ll sit on my deck

Now

Eating Santa’s cookie

Looking at stars 

And knowing

What it is to be alone

It’s so odd

What humans can do…

I hurt then:  I remember a babysitter’s bed

In Martha’s Vineyard

Where I learned that the “he” I thought would “be”

Had lied and “loved”

TWO others.

I thought my heart died that day

And I thrashed at the sheets and tore my hair

Till my everything was spent.

And off I went, to babysit

We live…when we choose to not end it

And when cancer and luck and heart disease

Don’t jump in our bath with a toaster

We live

And we remember the pains that painted everything

Onto our bodies

The backside of our eyelids

That changed the tempo of our hearts.

But left them

Beating

I’ll sit on my deck

My hair might blow in the breeze in a way

Someone might say

Makes me look beautiful.

I won’t feel beautiful.

I barely feel alive

But that

Is what

I am

So I promise

Thought I’m terrified to tears

I promise I’ll try

To honor that life.

I’ve known too many

Who’ve died.

Community vs connection

Both are foundationally

Exceptionally

Necessary 

for a strong way forward

ANY way forward

I’ll tell ya, this starts all poetically, but it isn’t a poem.  It’s just another tiny moment of realization.  I live in a paradox of gratitude and jealousy…joy and grief…optimism and depression

People from my past, and from the mist, push through and zap my family with light…a sparkling halo of calm and hope and comfort

And I am able to spread magic

Small, sparkling, splendid magic

And then, my little magicians,

They go to bed

I see one of my friends in my mind’s eye:  with his wife and his three kids

Annoyed at struggles, worried about vomit, with so much family and the love of his life

To put his arm around, and lay beside.

I see another friend:  so very betrayed, she spent years fighting to be the best mother ever.  Her heart is a living spark of hope…always has been…and she is no longer alone…she lays her head beside the one she found online

And another friend:  such a sweet connection, caring, yet intentionally distant. I keep reaching, accidentally, into the void where I think he stands..

There is also the one whose cancer came to her life while she was pregnant.  From a distance, she seems to have love, again. I am grateful...and, if I am to be honest, bitter...jealous

And the one whose death came on the birthing bed…a moment of talking to him, years ago, gave me moments of connection that made me pause, wonder, hope…for not long enough…and there isn’t even a friendship…but I see him in the distance, with a woman in his profile

Evaporation

Is part of the water cycle

we drink what once was
dinosaur pee
 

Disease continued a cycle that had nothing to do with him, My Love,

One where I end

Alone.

But cycles are about connection

And life is about community

Remembering that it’s the tiny bits and pieces

That make the puzzle of every picture

So, in the evenings, when the moon sings softly to the vibrating stars

And the sun sings harmony on the upside down

My task

Is unending and large:

Do not become what they were

Do not give up

Do not give directions on life based on what not to do.

     Imagine:  a taxi comes to pick you up.  In the back seat you say
     “I do not want to go to D.C. I also do not want to go to Baltimore.”

     And…?  

I do not want to be the women that were.  I do not want to be

A “woman in waiting”

I do not want to be broken, to be lost, to be afraid, to be

ALONE

But

I’m in the damn taxi

So I cannot choose from places of “I do not”

I accept the community that surrounds me,

From so many distances away

I crave so desperately the connections

I do not seem well enough to carve

So

I

Will

Breathe

And do my best to create a vision

Of what I

DO

Want.

Even when I do not know what that is.

poem with thanks to Into The Woods... (just typed, not edited...)

Things are bigger than

You think they are

And they are smaller too

What you do to me

Affects you

And like the butterfly

Wings flapping

The pluck upon the spider web strand

Reverberations

Spin

And tremble things into life

That otherwise would not have been

And the connections are layers

Topsoil feeding eluviation layers

And making regolith

Growth isn’t always on the surface

In the glow of the kissing sun

In the woods our lives

Are made of moments

Bad ones

Good ones

But if life were made of moments

We’d never know we had one

So they whisper in our ears

And guide our dreams

Through us they speak of respecting women

Regarding mistakes made

When we were too young to know

What our tongue could taste

And love

Love is all the things

And nothing:  connection and loneliness

Joy and guilt

Hope and hurting

Healing and destruction

Just remembering you’ve had an “and”

When you are back to

“Or”

Makes it all mean more

With nothing

Being easier.

So the song singing to the moments

Is my siren…remember them.  Hear them

Heed them.  You may not believe they are connected

You do not need to.  You may not know that one pluck

Keeps a heart beating.

It just does

And thus

You continue

Moment to moment

Springing and singing from strand to strand

In the hopes that your dance

Brings life

To someone

Somewhere.

Somehow. 

Cognitive Dissonance

My space heater rumbles

Like a part is loose

Everything inside me

Stumbles

In the first place

Every place is hollow

I promised not to say broken

So my fingers hover

Over keys and my heart argues

With my mind

I can’t write

I can’t love

I am nothing

I am everything and everyone

I can do it

All

And every choice screams in the echoes of our hearts

We betray

We honor

We help

We harm

How many of our foolish steps are

Steps we took to save something

That ended up

A pirouette

Into a place where our deepest insecurities

Slide and melt us

Deeper

Into

An illicit

One. 

our last first tooth

I prefer my pets to people

It’s not that they are perfect.

My dog has destroyed my couch, ottoman, three pairs of my shoes, my daddy blanket, Cecilia’s daddy blanket, two of Neil’s shoes, 3 of Cecilia’s, my sheets, my new blanket, three pillows…

I STILL like that mother fucker better than people.

Today, my baby, our baby, lost his first tooth.  It seems like it took forever to happen!  But now that it came out, I want to shove it back in!  And revel in the awesomeness that is his growing up.  And the hollow that rings in my chest echoes and echoes and echoes.  John didn’t even get his first tooth.  There is that silent screaming thing I do, again.  I don’t make plans for things often.  I guess when I do, I do it without realizing.  I have always loved kids, but never planned on having them.  Mostly because I didn’t think I would ever find anyone I’d want to have kids with, anyone that would love me, anyone I wanted to be with.  I even threw my coins in the Trevi fountain in Rome and asked only for a husband.  Because I had to be sure.

As far as I can tell from this side of things, "sure" ain’t nothin’ but a deodorant.  And I’m here raising three kids on my own, going to bed night after night, getting up and going to work, and on and on ad infinitum…never having a best friend anymore.  Always having to create the safe space, never entering it.  Comforting and caring for.  How do we do it?  The single parents who are single forever?  How do you keep going?  I feel like a life vampire has been attached to my hip for three years, on and off, mostly on…sucking away at my life.  Count Rugen’s awful torture machine, set on low and made to be worn like a back pack…increasing the loss of life incrementally.  I see my hands and they seem to represent the slowing and drying of my heart.  The psoriasis hasn’t fully gone away and there are always spots that are peeling.  And I so often think to myself in a mumble how I don’t want to do this anymore.  The loneliness is a poison dart in my spine.  I got nothin’.  So I take a breath.  I go to sleep.  I try again tomorrow. 

And at least I have my pets.  Between them and, for now, my kids, I never totally sleep alone.

Lessons in self love

The 22nd of the month
will always be a date of power:
the two of hearts
and two is better than one
and a number to the power of two is more
than twice itself

22 is the most powerful number in numerology
able to turn dreams into reality.

He died on the 22nd day of the 5th month
5, the number of harmony and balance

It seems he lived and died with power and balance.

And in the moment when unsolicited words
wash around your head
attempting to seep into your soul
you realize
that numbers
are everything

I am 42.  The Answer.
To life, the universe, and everything.

And in this 22nd day of the ninth month
I read that our fall equinox brings She Who is Black
and I dance inside, embracing her
for I do not see black as bad,
or death
destruction
I see it as a color that protects you, allowing you to
suck
the power in
deeply

For Kali, the Black Mother, is shakti
Kali is existence

And I, also
am power
I am
existence

I live in the shadow of his death
learning to love in me
what makes others cringe

My voice is LOUD
so loud it cannot be lost, will no longer be languid

My love is large
larger than mere life
for I have lived to hold the hand of death
and I see

I see that destruction can be
exquisite
I am tender and tough
crying and raging

and continuing.

No coin has only one side
and lo my coin spins
lands,
and spins again
one moment grieving
one moment living

I have faced that which stood beside me
which I wished would never die

I will face what lives inside me
that must die

I will devour the weakness that makes me stumble
in favor of the strength that makes me speak

There is change coming

And toward it I dance
singing loudly
wielding both and pen
and a sword

laughing large and loud
swing wide my arms
to embrace it
all

A coupe of p words

Three years.  It's like a lifetime.

I still feel him.  I also feel strength, like I haven't in a long time.  I'm finding my way, slowly but surely.

I'm finding it in awkward ways, though, I think.  The things that make me think this are the party/social events I've been to recently.  I'm worried that I don't know how to interact with adults well anymore.  I went to an event with church people...my community.  UU's.  And they were interesting and nice and easy to talk to...and I still hung out with the kids.  And then, tonight I went to a work party.  It was fun.  All sorts of people I like.  I still hung out with the kids, mine and others.

I'm obviously still learning things.  I wonder how I do that in bigger ways, so I got back on a dating site.  Too many people too far away, though.  I don't want a long term relationship.  I am not sure I want a relationship at all.

But I was tucking Aiden in the other night, seeing him at 10, knowing him, loving him...and I realized that I do not want to live only for my kids...or even for them and work only.  I want to have a full life, not for the sex, or even the relationship...but for the fullness.  The ability to see and hear, help and connect...to another adult.  I don't want to put the pressure on my kids that occurs when they are all you have.  They deserve better, more...and so do I.

I feel so different than I did after he died.  I was terrified.  Desperate to be seen as a women.  So scared that being 40, widowed, with three kids, so much heavier than I have ever been...I worried that those things added up to me never being loved, never being touched, never being seen as a woman, a person...I saw nothing but work and fear and difficulties and I wanted desperately to be saved.

It seems that I have saved myself, or at least am working successfully on doing so.  Working.  A work in progress.  But I don't feel that clawing need anymore.

And for that, I am massively grateful.

Just not sure what the next, healthy steps are, nor am I sure how to create access to them.  Perhaps the answer is patience.  Patience and perseverance.

losing again

Ah... Life...
your gifts
are barbells
and hand weights

while in the forest
a fairy dies
stabbed in the back
by the human she tried to
hold

and in the town
the music rings
deep
into the soul of broken hope
 
while in reality, the woman too old for games
laughs
shakes her head
and remembers something solid

love

what it really is...

inside the bubble of real love
no one is allowed to run
and "broken" only opens you
because hearts that connect
do nothing
but open more

and she shakes her head with eyes downcast
because she also knows
that love pretend
does less than nothing

and, scientifically,
less than nothing is negative.
and negatives take away

therefore...
love pretend
takes
from your soul
your hope
your belief

the only gifts that remains
have small hands
more needs
less ability

invisible arms making
mist like embraces
creating aches
where solace should reside  

And, again, she has to manage
the desire to
scrape the skin
off her skeleton

fairy or human

loss

hurts
Perhaps more so
after loss.

slightly shared sorrows

What is broken

Is still broken

It will always be broken

It’s where the light comes in

It’s where the love flows

And today

I felt each crack

Without pounding hot knock-you-over tears

They oozed

Both in and out

Spinning green life tendrils

Into the world, a growing thing

To shade the sun searing sorrow

Of someone I’ve never met

And curling into my own dark crevices

Scratching over scarring spots

Rough rubbing the bits of remaining scabs

And my tears were for her tears

8 years old, so quiet, calm

Eyes like spring skies and hair a soft golden wheat blanket

Straight down her round, rosy cheeks

My tears were for the sudden screams

Even if they are still silent

Stabbing at her mother’s throat, eyes, skin, heart

My tears were for her little brother

Older than my youngest

Too young, still, to remember well.

But mostly, my tears were for the tears that are going to come

Knowing another woman will bend to her hands and knees

Clawing at the walls

Screeching louder than sound

Unable to stand, breathe, think

Head a pounding playground for the throws

Of sorrow

Life dreams and hopes banging against all sides

Of her skull

Simultaneously

I’d take them for her

If I could,

But the same way mine had to be worn

A thorny cloak to build up who I had to become

She must find out how

She will dress herself.

My tears

Were for myself

Because in my desire to help

I am helpless

With no gift to give but the desire to listen

To witness

To nod and offer no words and let my eyes soften

On her, attempting to be a silent willow tree witness

Standing guard

Until she is ready

To stand

Again.