Twining twisting vines of loss

Ah, the landmark moment of
a year
So incredibly long when you look at each
moment:
     there were birthdays without him
     there was an anniversary without him
     there was potty training without him
     there were so many tears without him, about him
     there were so many cups of bitter fear and anger because I am without him
     there were books and shows without him, Jimmy Fallon without him
     there was a P!nk concert without him- and he liked her first
So much nothing, so much speed when you don't look
life like a freight train
and each month long moment blurs
past the windows
while the smoke fills your lungs, a dragon breathing into your soul
a burning longing
creating ashes full of dancing confusion
as circular as leaves singeing along the corners
of a camp fire

How is it I sit here
a passenger on a freight train
an empty seat beside me
and too much luggage to carry
while my fingers fumble for other fingers
to twine
into.

can love? rambling Thursday night thoughts

ugh.  I am wandering in the realm of overwhelmed.  I feel like I have been wandering there long enough that I should start to pay rent soon.  And if possession is .9 of the law, I wonder if that means I might own part of that land.

I find that I want desperately to focus on the things I am grateful for, but how can I find ways to be grateful for things when every time I focus there, I feel guilty because he is gone?  He wanted to live forever.  He hated thinking or talking about dying.  I wonder how someone who was so afraid of death could have faced it so simply, so bravely.  My thought is that it had to do with his stubborn nature, his determination, and the fact that GBM patients just, well, shut down...they get more and more tired and they fall asleep and are gone.  And I guess that is how he went.  I also guess that this is a more or less decent way to go, insofar as it is painless and could be so much worse, with cancer.

I find that I am deeply afraid.  People on the outside tell me how much courage I have, which is quite a comfort and compliment.  Because I don't see it.  I don't feel it.  I feel lost and small and foolish and lonely.  I kissed a neighbor of mine.  He is the same age that John was when he died.  It was very very nice.  I didn't expect it.  And then he ended it, before it began.  And now, I feel like he opened the door to a whole lot of angry inside me.  I am angry that the universe took John....I'm angry that I keep hoping for stupid shit that won't work.  I am angry that I live in a country where I can have so much and feel like I still have so little...I have a home, I have a bed and I have a computer, a cell phone, more than one television, a blueray, an ipad...when I met John, I don't think I had very many of those things.  He wanted to move me into the 21st Century.  I had been renting a room  in one farm house, with no heat and horrible wood stoves.  Our toilet water actually froze during winter break.  Then I rented a room in another farm house with a pool and heat and cable, but still...a farm house.  He teased me.  Both the flat screens we have were presents I bought for him for different Christmases.  The blueray player was a Christmas gift from me to him as well.

I don't think that means anything.  It's just an observation.  I don't care about stuff very much.  A year is not that much time.  I think of him every day.  I feel the lonely every day.

I think that there are not really good or bad people.  I think there are lots and lots of mixed up people.  I have no amazing quotes.  I have no advice or insight.  I find my mind wandering to the loss of breath the day his diagnosis came through.  I think of Aiden diving and wish like hell that I could get him diving more.  I want Cilly to dive.

Basically, it terrifies the HELL out of me that all of it and everything is all about me.  I am intensely overwhelmed by all I have to hold up, and I do my best to pray deeply that love mixed with fear and confusion can carry us through.  Because, well, I DO have a lot of love...so.

time movement

Channeling my babies
I watch a fat yellow black
buzzing ball fly
repeatedly
beneath the bottom beams
of their home.

--I remember:
kissing his cold dead feet
cleaning his, forgive me, fading drying lips
translating his thick mumble-tongue
    to friends with planes coming just a little
    too late

--I remember, too, things
   that hadn't happened yet:
graying hairs framing wrinkled, silly faces in front of
the pyramids
Handstands
beside the Sphinx

--And also, somehow, I remember things
   that are about to be:
Too many to choose from roads
paths
turns
needs
choices and again more

choices

When, at this point really
the only choice
should be
you.

that ever was...

"...may came home with a smooth round stone 
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) 
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea"

                          e.e. cummings, from "maggie, millie, molly, and may"

I shared this with my students today, and it made me think
of all the things that coexist

inside a moment

a drooping mouth, dry and trying to speak

a two year old's song "I wub it daddy"

feet crunching on glass-like lava

a breeze that blows your wedding veil

at the moment you invoke family lost 

allowing your tongue to  trace an ancient belly scar, learning his lines

laughing at how loud you said "I do!"

a live trampoline comedy show, paused, so he can take his knee in a crowded gym

and open the box that means forever

big, big fights about all the little things, wrapped in a screenless window room

in the Swan Hotel on the Thames River

holding hands while driving

rolling your eyes at yet another diving story

wondering why it is so hard for him to say you are "beautiful"

and trying hard to smile when he says "pretty" instead

and the soft, quiet, firm moments

with candles lit and the door locked, sweating and breathing heavy.

It's all there.  It's all gone.  It is empty, over-full, lost and seated deep inside you...

ebbing and flowing with every ocean tide

that ever was

and ever will be.

Wednesday night poem

I went out last night.  I was supposed to meet a friend, but she got tied up with crazy kid stuff.  So, I ate, had some good beer, chatted with some people, and wrote...and I thought I'd share the first one...I have to reread the others before posting them.  I felt okay...but deeply empty...so I wanted to write about that, about "empty"...

Sit With Trembling Lips

and empty bowl

cracked in lightning lines

not yet shined with

gold

still letting breezes through

slithering lines of snake air

    winding words, serpentine circular stories

replaying records worn beyond skips

       and repetition

to a place where sound           drops

drizzling dried tear rocks

onto unpainted dirty toes

Toes that danced in the rain

and curled around other toes

twining like vines

transcending lattice walls

Smoking-bubbles

strange and lovely

full of space

        and hollow homes to

minor-key moments

creating fractal lenses

in broken binoculars

should I look through

the right way

and see far away?

My eyes keep finding

the smaller circles

and tiny things, close up

sing me vision songs

from just 

too

far

away

and it makes me

tripping while dancing

I like this quote.
It makes me think, though,
that I should remember that embracing the misery and learning from it
examining it like a cell in a microscope
or wearing it, in moments, like a purple hat
that makes me strong.

I wonder, though, if perhaps that is not the case for everyone?

I don't know...my kids are feeling it this month.  I'm not sure I have a poem in me...I just feel like I'm DOING this.  I am not making myself anything...I'm putting one foot in front of the other.  Sometimes the steps go cockeyed and sometimes I step on my own toes.  Sometimes I am totally dancing.  Perhaps, like my oldest before he learned to crawl, I'm mostly rolling around on the floor, forward, left, backwards...just oval type motions across the floor.  But I'm moving...I'm swimming...I'm trying...

I am tired of listening to my own thoughts.  I hate it when I think of hospice.  I hate it when I think of how things were...the moment when I decided I needed to get significant help, more than could come to the house.

I just have this.  I carry it.  It won't go away.  I just feel so damn angry!  That is the hardest emotion for me to manage, I think.  I'm NOT angry at John.  He would have stayed if there was ANYTHING he could do about it...but I'm angry at Cancer for taking him, at life for making me start over.  Damnit, I had an effed up time starting in the first place, and continuing, and then I found such a loving guy.  But that is irrelevant.  Not insofar as really big things, like my kids or the reality of his love.  But because I have to try again.  I'm not crazy for loving you...I'm crazy for needing to try again.  But I do.  And that makes me angry.

Sigh

Is it?

a question rang
today:
Is that
the ONLY
version, perspective
of your story?

Can I switch my perspective?
of course I can.  Which is NOT
to say
it is an easy game

I feel myself trying
to do this--
I attempt to remember
embrace
the pain-stories I've worn
a series of
ripped Cinderella dresses, shredded
gowns

trying to learn
to sew
the granddaughter of an expert seamstress
who passed less than nothing on

in order to put together something
patchwork new

I see the pain and it is colors
it colors my gown
in fiery blasts of golden reds
I taste the tears and
sew every last one
onto
my train- a shimmering gauze of glitter, pearls, and sequins
my hair- crystals of frozen salt songs simmering in solid moments
my ears and neck- gems and solid dew drops made only to adorn and decorate

I WILL
remember
that these things happened
I WILL
see the underclothes
the simple things that cover the basics
the tale that Stars

Myself.  The One Who Made it Through.
Who came out the other side
like the Dragon Mother, Daenerys, Fire Princess
Alive inside the flames
and hatching creatures
fierce and magical
often unpredictable

No matter

I am adorned in shimmering
color strong as the sun, patchwork patterns
and messy moment pockets

I'll learn
to ride my dragons
and scream the songs
of the wind

Sewing the seeds of our future
inside the the nutrient rich death of days
gone by...