How is it I feel lighter in the city
Walking everywhere
The rain tells me to buy a longer coat
One below the knees like those draping the ladies breezing past me
Exchanging afternoon gossip
Dipping while dripping into the thrift shop along the way to ogle curiosities
Warming hands with coffee still steaming
I take a page from their book of living
She’s old now, a half a century buried in her book.
It’s been so long since she’s been out and this is a new town.
Older than her, by centuries, and tonight had been a long time coming.
Picking out a black dress, pulling on opaque matching tights, she hangs skulls from her ears and zips up black leather boots.
Her husband surprised her with a gift, one that promised to send her back in time. It comes in a box built of black, the contents require fire to ignite.
Dancing is the reason for this evening, to old songs that make her feel young again. Some of those out with her are young enough to be her children, though she never had any.
Vodka on the rocks will provide the courage needed to move freely among those swaying to a soundtrack that her life was built on.
And pulling out her black box, with her black cigarettes, she smells fall and clove, and memories waiting to be emblazoned.
Inhaling it brings vivid movies, crackling into focus, a night on a bridge over black water, laughing and feeling like everything at daybreak was possible.
She shares them with her old heads, and the circle closes completely. Each of them traveling through the smoke sucked into their lungs and exhaled into this night.
It broke her out of slumber, each half of her living in two worlds, the one she is realizing, and the one she remembers.
It colors my hair
Builds crystals underneath my teeth
Permeates the brick under my feet
It fires the walls around me
Keeps me from traveling
Shut my eyes and the sun is still setting
Cross my legs and hope the pigment isn’t a hallucination
It dyed you from a soft white transition
Feel the change as energy turns frantic against this palette
Promise I won’t try kissing you
Regret that we’re now colorblind
Leaves me longing for something that lives simply in black and white
Not ready to open the door to see what other hues are fighting to bleed through
We were supposed to be the color of eternity
Expecting you to give me any details
Leaping to the conclusion I’m a weaver of answers that could be pulled like a slip of paper tucked inside an eat-while-you-pay-your-bill afterthought treat
Feverishly leaning into me for insights shared only as confetti from punch-holed vintage magazines
Left to sift through blank pages stacked the breadth and width of canyons
Bouncing us back and forth in their echoing
Floating above the horoscopes
Swimming around the therapy
Still, you give me nothing
So my answers sound like forged portents
Fortune cookie offerings
Both of us know your defiant stubbornness
was never going to offer clarity
I was in Asia staying with newfound friends
It was the future – soft light warmed
everything
Sounds and sites of vegetables simmering in pots were everywhere
I shaved part of my head making it easier to wear wigs and put on disguises
Wearing this bizarre 1970s motorcycle helmet, white with red racing stripes
The stress of being in these new surroundings was so exciting it made me vomit
A cute calico befriended me, always looking like they were going to speak – they never did of course, just kept purring, following me, or were they guiding me?
I found you in a scrapped-out airstream -- told you I loved you being my best friend
We cried a little, it wasn't sad
Just being there with each other was good – for the first time in a long while I felt like myself
It took a dream, waking from sleep on the
couch in pain, being transported to feel like me, if even for a moment
again.
Sitting on the balcony of our hotel room,
A still morning greets us, looking out over the water
Drinking French press Kona,
The oils from the freshly plunged coffee mingling with the smell of morning dew
Surrounded by sailboats and the view of Tijuana
You discovering the bliss of lox on an everything bagel
The day was crisp
Wrapped in cozy sweaters
Watching the gulls catch air, floating effortlessly by
One of my favorite memories
Captured in the amber of my mind
Stretch, feel skin cracking from beneath Winter’s permafrost.
Ache at the bones snapping into place after the
yawn of cold morning shrinks in the Spring sun.
Pull off scratching socks that heated you through the night,
cold toes be gone.
Smooth oil over this organ, this canvas that’s been painted black
with the loudness of heartbreak and righteous discontent.
Robbed of the season’s stolen time.
Not a single bit of goodness fits through the strainer you’ve
ripped gaping holes in.
There were things to celebrate.
Yet they shared the same room as the shattered pieces of
heart.
Feeling like an awkward lanky teen yearning to burst from
anxiety into their prime.
Selfish in these feelings.
In this push through, in the same house fighting through the awful and
the sublime.
Spring arrived lacking anything that sniffs of newness.
Pull the curtains shut, put a sweater on, pull the hood over
your head.
Lay down in the unmade bed.
Sheets needing to be washed that still smell like her.
Refuse, just one more day to rot in the love of stolen
kisses.
Stuck in the ordeal of perpetual eventide.
Every single memory tied up in her hair, in her ashes.
A smooth red wooden box embellished with her name.
The urn, the lingering frankincense clinging to the drawstring
silver bag.
Her hand pressed into clay for remembrance.
Plant the rosemary, plant the wildflowers.
Hang the chime.
Place a sleeping statue in her favorite napping sun.
Mourn her.
Celebrate her.
Move tomorrow, embrace Spring slowly with fresh legs.
