Absolute values and inequalities

Math

Is a language all its own

A simple, majestic thing

That I wish I could speak better

Like learning the underside

Of everything your heart says

But

There are languages I do not speak

I’m good

At catching phrases

Gleaning meaning

I fake my way

Toward a fictional path

Where I can walk with eyes closed

Into the arms

Of nothing

Hold your breath

While the tears start to stab

And your head rolls back

Squeeze the muscles in every part of you

Till your calves seize

Pirouette

To face behind you

A Fibonacci spiral bending arcs

Of seashells and flower petals

And if I could count cards

I’d bet

Those poetic numbers

Might guide…

Follow?

My tumbles toward you

There are visions

And they have no form

A shadow soul

That wraps its deadened words around me

Black lines on a white page

Full of invisible zeros and ones

An electric set of patterns

There isn’t an end.  There is a passing on

One to the next

And a step again

Stalled out

A step forward

A step backward

Tip toeing twice to the side

Three moments holding my breath

For five beats I close my eyes and break

Eight thousand times

Even dizzy and dreaming of a language

I can only pretend to know

I will hold onto the way

That he told me

“I love you”

the size of baby steps

I would close my fist, so gently
around you
squeezing a lilac petal
to protect it from the breeze

A breeze that blows too damn hard

In grief, as in life, we learn about baby steps
We learn that YEARS, not days or weeks
fit in that shadow shape

We learn to disco with our shadow side
to place our feet down in precise ways
so that the ripping and tearing dials down

But recipes and meal plans
don't work for everyone

So as silence screams inside my solitary skull
and my country crumbles and crystallizes around me
I continue to crawl

I am tiny
inside all this
but I am everything

And at least I have practice
being afraid

In grief I've found my dance steps
inside an enormous prison
But how can I be found...ever?

Regardless...I am not the first
Nor am I the last
Nor is my journey or pain a thing that affords me
more than anyone
else

I have no mouth
yet I am screaming

my eyes are dry
yet streaming with all
the tears

I have spoken, softly begged
for him to be well
for a safe unbroken space

and there are streams of bitter lies
where dreams of peace
have died...melting into something

everything

Have you ever put your arms out and spun?
In your living room, on the playground, your bedroom?
Spun until the spinning became a part of you?

And nothing was visibe
But everything was there
to be felt
tilting

And you tried to walk
or you lay down on the cold concrete
 and closed you eyes

I have no answers
to anything
not one

I'm dizzy spinning inside my head
just trying to carefully place a foot
forward

I am alone
I accept this

But I don't want to accept it

I'm dizzy and spinning

But the murmurs melt it all together
The pain
The hope
The fear
The strength

Till there is nothing
good or bad
strong or weak

There is only

one

step

forward.

The birth of a new mantra

Think:  who am I BEING with my life?

And make a list

There are things that no one puts on that list…we don’t say “I want to be…”

1.       A widow

2.       A single parent

3.       A welfare recipient

4.       A drug addict

5.       An abuser

And yet, here we are

So we have to make another list

And put on it the better things.  Can we find a step up?

Think about

How you want to be remembered.

Where, on that list, can I put down

That I want to be the woman who was wanted?

Does “other woman” work somehow, if I care about him

And accept that he loves his wife

And don’t actually see him in real life?

Where should I list “desperate for love and connection”?

If I’m being honest, in that frightful way that I have, that is a large part of who I am

How I have spent my life

And I know that others remember me that way

Through a lens of disgust and disappointed judgement.

When my husband died, I went insane for a while

Functionally insane, for the most part.  I could still do stuff.  Most stuff.

But still

I went down paths that I’d never have dreamed of walking

And I danced there.  I sat down a while.  I probably took my clothes off.

So.  Who am I BEING with my life?

I’m a mother.  A teacher.  A widow.  A slut.  A friend.  A talker.

A singer.  A reader.  A writer.  A dog lover.  A cat lover.  A comic book movie and tv show fan.

I’m a woman afraid of trying and afraid of giving up.  I’m a walking hunk of cognitive dissonance

Too jaded to be foolish, too naïve to be safe

I’m certainly being me.  ME.  Not trying to be anyone else.

I often say that I want to be different people when I grow up, when I see

Someone acting in a way I admire…but I am not so good at emulation.

Antithesis I can manage…watch what is done and do not what you see

Do, in fact, the farthest thing from observed behavior.  Check.

Other than that, my ME hat has been worn forever…all guises left along the road side

But I find myself, as a widow,

Spinning in infinity

Willing to lay my love down

Soft

Sweet

Sliding in sideways

Till I noticed…there is no one there

To offer it to…

And really, I need to stop trying that.  So now I say to myself

“I am alone, and I accept that”

And it is terrifying.

Because it’s my only choice:  I must accept the things I cannot change

And find a way to filter the sunlight through the rest.