Fireflies

The lake was beautiful, astonishing that you made it.  A man that made a lake! It sounded like a Paul Bunyan sized tale to a small child, but you did it, magic was real!

Every precious perch and trout made a journey with you there. Placed in new fresh water, they would thrive in this carefully made home.

I remember pulling your whiskers while I sat on your lap before bedtime. You smelled of Ivory soap and aftershave, your T-shirts were always soft and brilliantly white.

"Ow! Why you wanna do that?!"  We would giggle that silly bad giggle, a little girl with her best friend, making trouble and squeezing into your safety with all my tiny might.

The simple things about my life with you are captured, they are a scene of love like Polaroids kept bound in a secret folio, my memories a priceless treasure.

Seeing you in your bed that day was pain that shattered my gentle heart. The study of you, my ideas of man, my patriarch was leaving, traveling small and frail into the dark.

Fireflies were lighting your way, while you talked about the universe and being far away. Traversing all that frightened you, finding a reconciled final view, they led you with their glow of soft respite.

I have a family now that you never knew,  I'd love for them to sit on the lake with you.  To be at peace on the mountainside all of us quiet taking in painterly skies.  Listening to the streams together, pulling your whiskers tenderly, imagining all these things I can see your fireflies sparkling.

One more

One more batch of cookies with sugar lemon icing

One more Christmas making every ornament by the fire

One more call telling me your love of blackberry brandy

One more time hearing granddad shout "That's my French talking lady!" after you've been cursing down the hall

One more I love you is not enough, I want to say them all.

Indian Summer

The smell of late Summer is in the air.  Juice runs down my chin from a perfectly ripe pear.

Barefoot in the grass shucking peas.  Surrounded by rustling sweet-scented leaves and diligent hovering bumblebees. 

You'll tell the story about the frog and the lily pad.  You'll take me down dirt roads and remove everything that's sad.

The end of summer means I'm going home soon.  No more sleeping covered by scratchy line-dried Aztec sheets under a watchful moon.

You'll make me an RC float to wash this Indian Summer down.  Singing Country Roads in the Ranchero, your love tied up in the sound.

Dead End

Dynamic, I saw you getting better

Problematic, my heart became untethered

Dramatic, our paths won't align 

A road never finished with a Dead End sign

Wasting

She mainlines herself until she is dry.  A brilliant mind that becomes addled and will be ruined over time.

Pushing an elixir of ego spikes deep into her veins.  A beautiful warm liquid floating into heaven, delicious and delirious, she is lulled by the singing of worms in her brain.

Lacking logic or judgment she does this over and over again.  Each time melting herself in her heated spoon's bend. The bubbling and burning excite her to no end.

She's happy when she's sprawling, eyes-rolling, stretched out along the floor.  Running her hands over her body, itching her soul, still craving more.