Little frightened bodhisattva

quaking on its fragile threads

of “poor me, poor,

poor me”, tucking its chin

against the wind –

.

small sunburst –

darling magic gumdrop –

you are many more colors

than this. Un-bow your head.

Spin stronger stuff,

a way out without one back.

I am naming the neighborhood cats after my demons.

Compulsive Guilt tracks my path with light green gaze,

refusing to leave its patio post, a steady sentinel.

Don’t Leave Me has a crooked knob of a tail

and a strangled greeting when I stop

to scratch behind its silver ears. I once sat

in the middle of the sidewalk square

with Self-Chosen Melancholy in my lap,

watching the cars disturb the peaceful street

for at least half an hour. They are soft, aloof,

prim. They ask me rhetorical questions before

losing interest. They rub their bellies against

my calves. They do not follow me home.

There is a strange synchronicity in the wounds from breakups.

In grieving the absence of your shoulders, I miss his flannel.

I write a song and don’t know who it’s about,

only that it is true.

The emptiness in my belly whispers secrets

to the knot in my throat, its best friend.

Each tiny sadness awakens another,

a chorus of estuaries just under the skin,

flooding in unison.

.

Solitude is a room full of the going and gone.

All music comes from emptiness and resonance.

Tonight there are no names or memories,

just the harmonies of discord.

I lie still and let the wind sing through every hole in me.

To the Father Who Told Us No, His Daughter Is “A Healthy Kid”

.

I don’t blame you for being scared of us.

I am sorry that Cancer is written on our clothes,

our big purple cart, our ukuleles.

As you speak, I imagine you walking these halls

with your gaze magneted to the carpet,

trying not to see the other families

in rooms like yours.

As if you could carry the images of nose tubes

and round, smooth heads

like bacteria stuck to your sleeve,

back into the room where your daughter breathes.

She has a cast on her arm, black corkscrew curls,

the brightness of a future in her eyes.

We are a reminder of every parent’s nightmare,

the sentinels of the sick and sad.

To you, we do not belong here.

.

I want to tell you it’s ok.

I imagine how the world must have halted

to see her blood burst from her –

so brash, a shock of violent fragility.

How tightly fear must have cocooned your lungs.

.

But to you, our songs,

our smiles, are poisoned –

because we share them every day

with families who live for months, years,

within those seconds that stopped your heart.

I wonder if you realize the power

of your connection to others

who have felt death sitting at their child’s bedside,

the horror of each held-breath moment.

.

I want to tell you,

though (because)

you don’t want to hear,

that these children are iron-hearted. Their parents,

the humblest saints.

I want to tell you

that before all this,

they were healthy kids, too.

You are not what they told me you’d be.

The name they gave you

fits like a funeral around a sunshower,

a feeble attempt at containment.

Widow is a word with stooped shoulders,

a conch shell spine,

a grey husk of waiting.

 .

You are a million moments of sunlit water

reborn as comets.

Your limbs are rivers.

You grow colors in the backyard

and spill them like secrets in conversation

with stories of a man so bright

I feel his sun on my face.

 .

There is no word for what you are,

and certainly not one that is born from death.

I want to cry when you dance at my shows,

as if I am singing cherry blossoms awake.

 .

When you called me

“one of the beautiful reasons I was left behind”

– only then, I saw a shadow,

a brief glimpse into the canyon

those years carved in you,

savage and slow,

A memory of smallness tucked inside.

.

I wonder

at how gently it holds me.