From the Feet Up

Written 8/3 and 8/8

It's times like these I think of your feet
(the most beautiful feet in the world).
I never told you about the vulnerability
and safety I would feel
Seeing the bare feet of the man I
loved quietly trodding along in
the spaces we occupied together;
feet that could walk up to me and
stand inside mine, on tiptoe, or
stretch across my lap as you fell asleep
on the couch, betraying your sense of comfort
as I massaged out the day's wear and tear.

I never told you how I watched you
from behind, those days we'd trek
to the local market for food to feed ourselves,
you traveling unadorned, simply dressed,
basketball shorts and baseball cap turned backwards,
your familiar brown flip-flops
smacking the ground as you shuffled
in your own quiet, elegant way beside me.

That watching you, in that one moment
etched now forever in my mind, 
I looked at your feet, sidling up your porch steps,
and I smiled to myself in quiet contemplation,
transported to other porch steps, our porch steps,
in some remote and undisturbed, unmentioned future,
where we would be equally yet more
comfortable and unadorned together
in a quieter love, a majestic stillness.
A stillness whose secret I kept,
just in case I would betray it, and somehow
mar that perfect image.

I never told you that watching you, then,
In that now-frozen moment where you are
forever poised to ascend those steps,
I saw the feet of the father of my children.
And taking you all in, all at once, from the feet up,
was what I did then, and what I wanted to do,
in that moment, and secretly 
in each quiet moment since,
in which your feet and mine would walk
up some porch steps, somewhere,
and through whatever doors would open for us,
into the certain vulnerable spaces
we would occupy together.

Just-After

8/5

We crashed into each other like waves
And, submerged in you, I came up for air,
Only to take you inside me, in turn, to twist
Beneath the surface like snakes
Wrapped over and over again in the sheets of your bed.

And the waves broke, crested and white,
In that just-before, just-before, just-before moment,
When the electric horizon hushes before
The intake of wind before the first peal of thunder.

And, on the sand, we lie broken together,
The salt blinding my eyes, my fingers dislocated,
Located somewhere else, digging into the sand
And finding nothing but clumps of air.

And as we lost our grips, and lost each other,
I remember, holding you in my lap,
Still twisted in the sheets of your bed,
And that just-before, just-before, just-before moment
Becomes the just-after, just-after, just-after leaving,

When I tell you I love you, but the words are lost
To the wind, and the waves drown out the noise;
As our own waterworks start flowing, and we
Cling to wet sand and driftwood and each other;

As my heart keeps time, even still now,
With the violent, aching beat of thunder,
When the storm broke over our heads and swept
Our time and memories back into the restless waves.

What is This Thing Called Love?*

8/1

*a conversation with Kim Addonizio's book of Poetry, What is This Thing Called Love?

So what, what is this thing called love?
It's a subtle ache that begins in your chest,
beginning with the heart, making its journey through
the avenues and highways of your inner cracks
and crevices,

Up through the aorta, up, down, and out, spilling
everywhere, creeping slowly, crawling along
the arteries, along the walls of every vessel,
warring with blood cells and plasma and blocking them
from reaching your limbs and extremities,

the prickling sensations beginning to spread toward
the shoulders and down the arms,
succeeded by shortness of breath as you feel the heart
pound harder through your ribs, trying to
outrace the painful encroachment of what may
very well be an enemy invasion,
as it reaches the tips of your fingers

and all you can do is move, reaching for
something, anything, whatever's within reach, but only
that one person will do, the person whose magnets
of the body have called to yours, whose stamp is on
your wrist and forehead, consigned to a fate akin
to death as you can't get away except through the
ripping of bones and skin to get it out of you.

It is this ache that clutches the lonely, holding themselves,
holding pillows, holding bottles, holding vices,
and it is this pain, this ache, that grips me now,
as I reach for you in your absence, and the
air I grab is set on fire by the memory of your presence,
and only your body, your small frame that
fit so neatly into mine
can calm or quell this burning,

and only the coolness of your lips that wouldn't leave my side
all those nights is the antidote for the crazed cleaving
of this tired, tired soul.

Wine Talks

8/1

"Do you want him back?" The question put to me, late last night,
staring up at me from the pages of my book of Kim Addonizio's poetry,
The same question put to me some previous night, riding back from
who knows where, the wine still sloshing in my stomach,

but instead of saying something belittling, like, "No shit, Sherlock,
Where the hell have you been all while I was crying into my glass,
watching that movie that reminded me so much of him"
(... hell, it could be any movie and I would still see his face).

I just sit there and stare straight ahead and think of something
else to say - though thinking, thank god, is less of an accomplishment
right now than it is an achievement or unhappy accident.

Ask me when, later, I'll sit in bed and write these words,
(being extra careful not to censor myself - the wine still talking, surely)
lying next to the stuffed animal he bought me that I
couldn't even bring myself to take home until it was all of him I had,

When later I wake in the middle of the night to the sounds
of our hearts breaking, across frozen distances,
the violent sound of a tornado encapsulated in the
fragile tinkling of shattering crystal,

a sound familiar both to my ears and to my soul.
I'll remember, certainly, when, in the morning, I see these words
I've written, perhaps forgetting the writing, the process of tearing
apart my arm and pulling these sentiments

down onto the paper from the sinew that had trapped them far too long,
and I'll nod my head in agreement at the words, the sentences,
as I cast out even more lines to the upcoming day,
partly to drag myself into it, partly to catch hold

Of anything good for my heart to eat and feel full again.
"Do I want him back?" The wine is no longer answering
when I tell you, truthfully,
you have no idea. and please don't ask again.

Tonight I Took Two Sleeping Pills

8/1

Tonight, instead of one, I took two sleeping pills,
One for each of us, as if in swallowing this
Bitter pill I could send to you, through waves,

Through circuits, through the wind, through
Whatever goddamned avenue the air and ether
Could provide, this feeling of letting go

And the drop that precedes the thud of darkness
Behind eyelids who must be tricked into sleep,
Because they're not finished searching for

The missing puzzle pieces laid across the living room
Table of our repressed and tired psyches.
I drank bedtime tea, too, just for good measure,

So that the thoughts that cloud my day 
And creep up over the sides of my bed at night, 
Tugging at my pillow, my comforter,

At all the corners and the fabrics of my mind,
Could at least be pacified for a few hours
And leave me with my empty, empty sleep.

These Houses, These Words

7/31

These houses are mine.
These walls and turrets of sinew and ether.
I built them myself, many times before,
Conjuring them like fortresses from the
Reservoirs of my emotions.

I never knew these hands could craft
The shelter for all that my heart held -
You were the first to believe that strength,
And you showed me the firmness of the
Rafters, the grandeur of the gilded halls,

The halls I built with these very words,
But down which you were the first to guide me
With eyes wide open;
These walls are supple, they stretch,
They've attempted to cross borders, cross rivers,
Even cross oceans.

I allowed them to crumble, grow weary,
When I no longer believed I had control.
But with one look and a word you
Raised them up, stronger than they were,
Or, rather, you pulled the cords inside my chest
That caused these bones and heart to stir,

And would you could know the power of your glance
To set these towers singing
As once more I use them to send out
A ferocious call to you,
Wherever you lay,
Wherever you are,

That at least from a distance,
I can be a protector,
And that you might sense my arms there,
With these houses, with these words,
And think, for a moment, of me.

With a Veil and a Whisper

This compilation of drafts includes the original version of the poem, "Our Eyes," and each piece here can completely stand on its own. I don't really know how to separate them, as they're all so closely related. Perhaps they go together, or perhaps I can get suggestions on this front?

Written 1/24


I'm struck by the similarity of my granddad's eyes with those
of my late mother. I always knew I had inherited her sad eyes,
and that they came from her father. But now I'm more struck
by the vacant (not vacant - what's the word - searching?)
expression in his eyes that is reminiscent of her.  When I look into his eyes,
beneath the eyebrows,  I see my mother's eyes as she slowly retreated
into herself and expanded beyond herself as she slipped away.
Seeing through everything. But still that spark of silent joy
when recognition lights inside them.
He's sleeping now - and while I know he's not departing,
I can't help but feel the deja vu of sitting beside my mother as she slept.
My mother, who once spoke as he does now - not always coherent,
Often speaking to or from the past.
I often wonder if she's talking to him now.
Regardless of my feelings or beliefs of what follows death,
there is a veil and a conversation, or a veil and a whisper,
between what comes at the end, and what comes after.
Or, perhaps, the whisper only exists here, in these words,
where I connect the future and the past through the tentative, fragile present
- which is always slipping, slipping, slipping away.

*

Sometimes I imagine it's to me
She will speak, when everyone's left,
and I'm alone in the spaces she used to occupy.
As soon as silence falls, once everyone has left,
I'll hear her voice call softly from her room and
I'll find her, sitting in her chair, propped up
in bed, or standing by the window
gazing out - like some obscene hologram
I've conjured out of my memory, overlapping
the mental spaces she survives
with the physical spaces
in which I am still living.

*

There's a photo on my grandmother's wall.
My grandfather, triumphantly raising a deer
to be skinned and cleaned, stands to the side
wearing a bright orange knit cap pushed back
on his head. I can only stare,
as I see my mother there. The way she
wore her knit-cap as she was balding.
The sad eyes she inherited from her father.
The same lines on her face, the same droop in her cheeks.

I know that you inherited his face,
Those sad eyes, the droop in your cheeks, the lines
on your face, but even though you came later,
You left sooner, and now you are being
born again, coming after him once more,
As I see you now in the vacant,
searching expression,
And I realize how connected we all always were -
that even though you left, you were always
creeping back into him, day by day,
holding his hand as he weakens,
eventually, in days or months or years to come,
guiding him with you into the enfolding beyond.