when seen right

I read "The Fault In Our Stars"...and I have been reading short stories.  I like longer books better...I feel cheated and left behind with short stories.  This is a new development.

"I was left on the shore with waves washing over me, unable to drown." --John Green

I sit there, on the shore, with small sand stones making puckered imprints on my ass
the salt air drying my skin
loving the monotonous motion of the waves
they come back
as does the strange desire to move forward
and go nowhere

I am unable to answer the question
of what I want
so I continue to walk
and step and move forward
unless I'm moving back
a side effect of living, this back and forth motion
going everywhere and nowhere

and I feel like I am floating
flotsam and jetsum
floating wreckage
but also things cast overboard
as a way to save what floats
even after damage
grasping
for something to salvage

the rub is, the surviving ship
is a side effect
the wreckage
is side effect
I
am a side effect
of cancer
of life

of wanting the universe to see you
of wanting to see the universe

to be seen
to see

and yet
sight isn't
a side effect of anything

it's a touching
deep inside
where waves wash over
parts that are invisible
sight, of a sort, done with your heart
can save you

The little things

sometimes, I feel like I have to have the "right" words to post here.  I'm not liking that.  I think of the Momastery blog and I wish I could be as honestly silly and loving and true as Glennon.  Maybe it is just that I am in the middle of my mess, while she is on the outer rim?  I don't know.  I don't feel funny.  I feel angry and lost and frustrated and disappointed.

I tried my hand at the "dating" thing...with a very very nice gentleman.  We talked for weeks on text and on the phone and it was very nice.  We had one date.  I had one single night when I was a frustrated bitch...not even sure I really reached "bitch"ness.  But he severed ties.  I had told him that if nothing else, I thought we formed a friendship.  When he gave me his "fuck off" mail, he told me he had no interest in being my friend...he has enough close friends and had no interest in another.  Which tells me that all the sweet things he said were made up...and or that he was far weaker than I'd even worried. He told me he will no longer ever respond to any contact I may send out...wow.  How lovely and strong and...oops.  I mean, not.

It makes me feel sort of despondent...I say "sort of" on purpose...because the feeling isn't quite that large, but it's there.  And I think of John...and I think of how I felt about other guys when he was alive...and I find myself wondering if I am even interested in dating for real...as in, ever.  I loved him.  Through my toes, I loved him.  I had no interest in anyone else while he was well and with me...I have a strange, deep longing to connect with those he cared about...one close friend of his misunderstood this.  Understandably.  But he, too, cut ties.  The same with this dating attempt did...

I don't know what I am doing...I wonder about moving forward...do I try to be the person John would have wanted me to be?  I don't know how to do that...I imagine he would like for me to get into diving and trampoline enough to coach.  That is not my thing.  It never was...and I feel insanely guilty about that.  And then I think that he would just want me to be happy.  How.  The.  Hell. Do.  I.  Do.  That...without him??

I realize I know nothing.  I realize I feel more strength in my gut than I used to, but still not enough.  I realize that I am better at a couple little things...like cooking for the kids and keeping my temper way more even...trying to model patience inside anger and frustration for them...I am deeply proud of that because it is a huge battle for me...it has been a huge battle.

I grasp at the little things:  I walk the dogs and Neil takes Sammy's leash and we hold hands.  He saves worms.  Or he and Cilly both come, taking turns walking the little dog, deciding themselves when to share the tether.  I have Aiden and Cilly doing morning work to keep their brains keen on school.  It isn't much, but it is something.

I'm still lost.  Still not doing as well as I'd hoped, as well as it may seem on the outside.  But I guess I am doing far better than I could be, too...there is that, at least.  I'll try to focus on the little things.

different kinds of floating

there is floating
like flying
a freedom
an exhilarating sense of being
untouchable
beyond a need to be
powerful

here, I see a floating
like a boat whose tether
was severed
there is no storm swirling winds
to throw and toss your bits of varnished wood...
not any longer
there just
Is

...a quiet sense of non-movement
while drifting
a slow up
and

http://www.redbubble.com

down
a lack of compass points
a poor connection to others
that isn't like
that freedom
but like walking in the woods, turning around
and then,
being unsure
where you feet
had been pointed so
you just
go forward
inimitable steps, moments, motions
which sometimes fail to matter
because still
when you look up
the clouds are kissed with pink
and the bird song never stopped.

There is only so much you can do...

It is now almost 1 year and 1 month.  Today, I had a very good, special friend help me go through the stuff in my closet.  The amount of video tapes and photographs was beyond impressive.  He had a lovely collection of Olympic pins and other sundry items...I look forward to putting them in some sort of display.  I figure at least some will go in Aiden's room, others will go in the living room.  I donated clothes and tripods and various electric cords and such.  And the room now smells like John.  I found a couple hats.  A friend who lost her husband about a year or two before John left told me how she kept all his hats.  I didn't get that before.  I do now.  His hats smell so much like him!  It's rather astonishing.

And then there is the fact that I will have my first "date" in years on Saturday.  I think this fella understands what it means to love someone who will always have special parts of her heart assigned and connected to another person.  John is gone.  But I will never let him go all the way.  He is the father of my babies.  He taught me to believe in many many good things.

I spoke with a Korean neighbor last night.  (Made me think of my little sister).  She said a couple things, the first of which was about Karma.  She asked me if I believed in it...I told her I used to, but with John's death, I don't know.  I feel like he was amazing...imperfect, annoying, and amazing.  He did his best in every way with everyone he interacted with.  For some people, that looked, well, rather lumpy.  With others, it was a family type connection.  With me, it was everything.  But he didn't drink ,didn't smoke, never did drugs...and got brain cancer.  He would joke about how, if he HAD been a drinker, perhaps he would have killed the brain cells that decided to go rogue.  She said that Karma didn't work that way...she told me that Karma was the force that brought bad energy back to bite you...and it sent good energy into the universe.  She also said that if I ever doubt myself, to think about how Karma brought me to John.  And if I believe he was good, then I must then accept and acknowledge the love I brought John.  She said that he had me.  And that this was a good Karma sort of blessing.  It made me think of all the things I did for him when he was, well, dying.  I loved that man.

I am thinking about what it means to move forward.  I am feeling a different brand of sadness...something slightly more dull, but not less full.  I need to rediscover my own way.  While still holding him, but also letting him go...how awkward a job is that??

But I keep swimming.  And I keep smiling.  And I never fight the tears...I can do those things.  So I will.

strength inside broken chains

there's a song that asks
where do the children play

and it rings in my ears as I travel
because what I had
is like a swing
with a broken chain
dangling crooked
on a lovely summer day

such a sweet, supportive
playful thing
imperfect in its ability to pinch your fingers
while sending you skyward
upward to a magical mysterious
magistracy, almost...

I would love
to get on again
and the wind sings
to the end tendrils of my hair
spinning them in circles
carrying dreams out of my eyes
that never left
my lips

till my children come to play
and sit upon my ankles

they remind me

the way "nothing gold can stay" by Robert Frost
reminds me

"easy"
is a word for chairs
and filing your taxes

Life well lived
does not fit that word
a Cinderella slipper
and I won't cut off my toes
to fit that slice of glass

So every possibility
however far fetched
is played out
every broken heart string is
strummed on
to send vibrations down spinal chords
instead of music chords
till I remember

quite clearly

it is not just a journey
about me

we are in this together
which is how it should be.

sometime wishes

I don't often write a title first
But tonight
the wishes are in control

I feel things burning in me
a fire crushing thick wood
sloughing away layers
as snakes shed their skins
old and dead and small giving way to another one
to burn that away, too, in time...

I'd like a crow bar
to wrench open my chest
to show the world
the way that pain and strength
mingle on the dance floor of my soul

I am broken and lonely and lost
and a voice, tinier than I would like
whispers that I can get through

Mostly I remember that once upon a time
I was outside
and someone reached out to me
someone offered me a hug
someone listened to me
someone touched me and melted things
too long frozen

If only our raw and beating hearts
could search out each other
leaving behind hollow bodies
to find ways to crawl out of the lumbering
muck, inch our way to something
brighter, drier, cooler, soothing

And like homing pigeons
crimson and dripping
the hearts would return
to tell us that our secret
silent sometime wishes
have been answered.

snapping steel in silence and hope: breaking chains

I want the sounds to come through my fingers

The motions to move my sadness in a sweeping motion

 Across an unseen sea

An intangible, unreachable, almost-stranger touches parts of me

That have more need than baseball has peanuts

And hard parts soften

I see edges of things that have been covered

In painted pictures of magazine pretend perfection

What I had used to hold me just right

And I didn’t even realize it

I wish I could stand on a virtual mountaintop and

Sing for everyone to hear

Remember how sweet imperfection is in its reality

How real comfort is

When it has hands to hold yours

Callused and dry or soft and warm is irrelevant:

A hand is a hand

Inside here, moments collide with months

Need and longing and desire are poured into a blender

And crushed to pieces

So small they are indistinguishable

One from the other

One inside the other

Each beside each other

Instead, give me rainbow patterns

Of tie dyed magic

Misted into melted moments of

Real, rigid pain

Of trying so hard that parts of you, metallic and thick,

That were never meant to, bend

Twist into circuitous curls

And so you wear the strange decorations

Trying to sort out need from want from longing from hope

Knowing they are all too closely related

To break apart cleanly

Perhaps the lesson here, as I keep looking for one

Is that nothing real

Breaks off clean.