I finally have some women around me
some hold me in peace and love when I'm breaking
some tell me how it is

and how it is
right now
may be that I am asking every man
who crosses my path
to be the
one

my next
one

One:  I don't want a next one
because that is a new one
and I want my old one
my first one

Two: my first one is DEAD.  Like a stone

Three: I want to try

Four: I don't know what the hell I'm doing. 

Sometimes eyes can bind you
and build a small garden wall of hope
but you
you are an experienced builder
You know not to go too far
without verification

But the hands are soft
the moment sweet

and still
I am too much

I want too much

And that,
all together
is just

too much

for even the best man

So maybe I need to admit what I am most
afraid of...

embrace what I made him allow me
in a way that closes it all down

I can, but cannot
I would, but the world will not
allow me
and within each hope, each fear
each everything
my world still spins

full of

large hallows

and my ineptitude

I keep thinking about writing, but I never seem to get to my computer.  Our kids started back at school today.  Our oldest is in 6th grade, then 4th, and finally 2nd.  The oldest two are latch key kids.  That is something that never would have happened, if John had lived.  I felt him with me today...two butterflies landed on me at our fire drills, and a friend randomly mentioned January 13, which is his birthday.

What does it matter?  You clean up as much of the shit as you can, and YOU GO ON. You fail.  And you fail again.  More than anything else, that IS what life is about.  I am a tiny bit ashamed that, after four years, I am still saying this, but I whisper wish that John could try again.  And really, I'm not ashamed, but proud as hell because that wish is my way to honor the imperfect love we had for each other.  When I miss him, when I feel his energy, when I think of him, laugh about him, cry for missing him...all those moments are ways to keep him with me

I've spent a lot of time over the last several years thinking about how I will need to move forward WITHOUT a lot of things.

And yet, some connections I made this summer helped me to see that, along side those "without" people and things, I have some amazing "together" moments and people too.

Still, the nights are mine.  They are long, lonely, lovely.

always forward, always back.

It’s been over 4 years that I’ve been a widow

I connected with a man.  And he is smart and kind and a UU and

I just don’t know that I can do it.

I don’t know that I can ever try again

It’s too hard to get beyond my defenses.  I am

Terrified

That everyone I love

Will leave…even if they do not want to

And I am over whelmed by the weight of every day life

As much as I love my kids

I want to give them away

It’s not a poem.  It’s a confession.  It’s my ripped up tattered heart

And it needs to be bagged and trashed

Except that kindness comes my way

And I want to honor love

And hope

And forward motion

Every moment of every day

Is a gift and burden

A chance to try for mindfulness

A slip into the oblivious oblivion

Of a 7 year old’s screams

Louder than the light of the sun

A swaying waltz of missteps melted to

Perfect moments

Where the cool breeze careeses my belly

And fish play a bubble song

Just below my line of sight

Where finger trails of symbiotic

Scintillating, circuitous trails

Draw invisible patterns on barely reluctant flesh

But the sun sets

The sun rises

The silence still screams its stabbing

Whispers

And when I surface long enough to look around

Shattered windowpanes still surround us

So we define what we can

We break...which way

We choose for it to be open and not

Apart

But some days

Distance

Silence

Expulsion

THEY are the screams

Without words

That we must (CAN?)

learn

To dance

To...

For Trace

May 22nd, 2013.
July 17th, 2017

4 years, 56 days apart.

His mother died.  She hated her name, Theresa.
So we called her Trace
She was tiny
fierce
fairly brilliant
distant
a voracious reader
an amazing mother.

she told me that, when she was young
she would garden
in spiky high heels
and climb out the window
of driving cars on the highway
like the preachers daughter
in Footloose

Setting up the Christmas tree
was an adventure in getting stabbed
a thousand tiny times
since the lights MUST
be wrapped
and wrapped again.
I will say it made for a stunning show
though I let that tradition go

She told me how she did some of the magic things
he never knew:

She was terrified
when he went on biking trips.
A secret whispered in the upstairs library
watching a delicate, slowly spinning
music box, unpeopled bicycles
riding an endless loop

She was terrified
of water and, as far as I know,
never learned to swim
His job was setting himself on fire
traveling to England, Japan, New Mexico
and diving from 10 meters into a 10 foot deep
swimming pool

If he thinks he can, he probably can.

The circle closes
on eyes and dreams, truth
and lies
like it does on every living thing

I miss what never was
and what I hoped for
what she gave the world
and created with her strength
the beauty she spread
with every unshed tear
and each determined step toward the future.

We are here
in time and space
and whether or not we see them
We are not alone.
Our fibers
were spun by them
and every inch of our souls
sing their songs
in tears, sighs, dreams, and giggles.

And the fireflies
will light our way.

The fireflies
will light
our
way.

Reslience

Resilience:  the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness

A most desired quality
One, quite frankly, for the ages
A child of long ago, awaiting her father's ship and hoping it comes in soon
A young boy of not quite seven stating his appreciation that his dog is only one,
    because that means he has many years before he dies
The core of Odysseus,
surviving his battles and, even more
surviving his return

The rhythm pulsing below your favorite songs
and the leaping loops of alliteration
that lap at the toes of every poem
that has cracked open
your heart

It's my life
so
it's my poem

A soldier's life
and a widow's lot
are not
so different
after all

the world does not operate on rules defining what is right
it spins and turns
topples and twists
unbalanced in the magical night

and we do not get what we deserve
we get
what comes
and what we see, what we choose to see
it's about what we believe
and
like the demigoddess
I believe
in love

For John and Jacqueline I can

Four years
and my veil is lifted
gently

It seems like I haven't
been able to really
breathe

till now

and now that I can,
the colors are coming back
the pain pricks sharper,
shorter

and oh!
but I shake my head
at the foolish things
I have done

I notice the crowd
surrounding me
and see
how few of them
can even pretend
to understand

and I can hear
hear her
hear her reaching from my heart
down my throat into my soul

some mystical version
of vine like self
I hear her
whispering my need
to be
kind, brave

and the wind taps my shoulder
so I turn my head

oh, yes.  Yes, that honors them too

I must also be kind and brave
for Me

brave enough

This grief thing is an emotion with the energy source belonging to a super villain in some show like Flash.  It really feels like it never ends.

It feels like I have a cord
and that cord is
unplugged

or perhaps, if not unplugged,
someone attempted to make a type 1 plug fit

into a type 2 socket

So close.  But it hurts
and bends
and people
they start to judge you
for not fitting in
they point out every single time
you don't work right

And there's nothing to ground you
no where to recharge

Except it is my heart
my soul
the tips of tired, sacred parts of me
that are disconnected

so much so
I don't know
that I even remember
how to see me.

People search for purpose
make goals
strive for success
and ladder climbing
trophies
and wins

The only thing that makes sense
to me
is a purpose contained
in connections

the light
and the dark
loving each other
loving me

wrapping us all in swirling majestic
dichromatic rainbows
twisting themselves out of half hidden prisms

There is no win or lose
no ladder that does not
eventually
break down
to mulch

I'm trying to open my windows
to let the light AND
the dark in
learn to swim in the seas of  saturated
luminosity
without twisting
so fast in the winds of change
that I choke.


*Note:  I'm striving for a "happy ending"...although our ends are all the same.  I keep asking myself if I can just give up on love...if I can accept a life of just my kids, both blood and classroom.  Because of everything, THEY are my purpose, my blessing, my gratitude.  However, I know that living only for the children sets a bad example.  You can drown and come to hate yourself, which is not a thing to model for growing humans.  They learn SO very much from what and how we do, that what we say is close to irrelevant.  So...how do I DO this right?  I do not know.  I thought I was finding my way.  I went from barely being able to breathe, to thinking I had found a path, to being sucker punched and all of a sudden hurting more than ever.  I realized then, I was breathing fine...so I hadn't slid far backwards.  It's just that now that I can breathe, I can also see all the things that surround me.  I see loving and distant friends...and I see clearly how much I want a partner and a lover...and how I accept that as okay and healthy.  And I see, too clearly, how difficult that path will be to find...I'm keeping the directions for everything now...my kids, my pets, myself, my household, my job...and in the juggling I am dropping.  In the dropping, I am tripping.  And it is hard, so hard, to get up for the 6,124th time.  But, after laying in the dirt for a while, there is nowhere to go, but up.

So...

I ask for help.  There is no lesson more valuable to model for my children than basic humility.