Bubble (Rewrite)

Bubble (Rewrite)

Birth.
A first look at this world.
A fish-eye view from the sky;
the innocence of bewilderment reflected in spectrums.

Freedom.
Earned through creation
after confinement in the womb
relinquishes hold and liberates for the world.

          Life, movement

                                                                                  Life, transition

                                          Life, discovery

                                                                                                                                     Life, tragedy

                                                                    Life, triumph

                       Life, wisdom
Life, experienced
Death.
Metamorphosis into soul;
the beauty of it all appears
in a single flash of a dappled apparition.

Repeat indefinitely.

Untitled

I am caramelized.
My body oozes down yours;
the Italian of your skin
melding with the cream-satin of mine.

I whisper, so the wind may carry
all that cannot be said.
When I dance,
I only dance for you.
All other eyes, for there will be others,
can wash over me.

You are the only bath I wish to take.

And when I finally make that fateful
decision, you will look at me in awe.
My patience for you wears
but thing is not the word.
Although you are not truly mine
the smell of you still lingers
in the recesses of my memory.

Do you smell me to?

Your dog cuddles in between us in bed.
She is small and shivers violently.
You draw her close to you,
quieting the shaking and the loving grunts.
Will you pull me to your body as you do her?
“I love you so much –insert my name-“
as you nuzzle my cheek affectionately.
Wow. Priceless.

I just compared myself to a dog.

That Sunday when I left you standing
in front of your house, your parents watched.
The too-short hug, the meeting of eyes,
my longing for your mouth to brush mine,
saying goodbye with one simple motion;
they saw and they watched my car
trail down the road away from you.

The witnessed more than they knew.

I have never written a love poem
and I know the word is powerful
but you told me you were falling.
My hand will trace down your back
and you will shudder as you always do;
come towards me instead of away,
conflicted by the past.

I am only you and you,
You are me.

The Defeat of Summer

The Defeat of Summer

The silver lining has fallen from

sullen clouds hanging

lazily

over the pond behind our house.

The snapping turtles sunning

in the open sky, mouths agape

and luring, ready to snap a leg

or stick in

two pieces.

Our canoe, whose hull has rotted,

rests gently on the bank,

muddy water lapping against it.

The quiet lick of wetness teasing

the faded red bodice, ever so slowly

drawing it back to the recesses of

home.

The seasoned chirp of the bullfrog

serenade, lulling the eco--

system

toward the slow-paced life

necessary for such a place. Sediment

drifts to the bottom and then

between children’s toes and through

the cracks.

Their bodies tinged brown by summer days

converge at the surface, wary of the

depths below. The lone catfish,

rumored to be thirty pounds,

lurking, waiting for tender morsels

the shape

of metatarsals.

Soon, the days will grow slow

and chariots the color of mustard will

appear

to shuttle their laughter

leaving our pond in silence. The

snapping turtles will nestle into the mud,

fabled catfish disappearing further

into darkness, whispering he

will return.

The croak of the bullfrog

throaty and deep, rumbling will signal

the departure of warm afternoons.

It is only when small bodies return,

goose-pimples clothing them

in a patterned flesh suite,

that it truly ends. Leaving

in its wake

autumn.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey

            Jeffrey had always loved to sing. When he had been born the doctors looked at the shriveled little baby, his crooked eyebrow’s giving him a permanent grimace. They spoke softly under their breath. “Poor thing…” they murmured, handing the baby from nurse to nurse, moving it quickly through hospital towards the nursery. They put him in the back of the room, tucking his little blue blanket directly under his chin to hide his grotesque face. He sat close to the nurses’ station where the older women would sit and knit, singing old gospels that would lull him into peaceful sleeps. They always said he was the most well behaved newborn.
            Years down the road he begged his parents to enroll him in the children’s choir, little hands clasped together. They loved the grimace he brought to them every day, caterpillar type eyebrows furrowing together in concentration. So when he asked, they gave in and enrolled him at their local church children’s choir. For the next six years he sang his little heart out although the music came out in high pitched squeals. The choir director would sit him in one of the fold out chairs beside the piano, hoping that the clang of the ivory’s to wire would drown out the nasal voice.
            High school was hard. Rejection was everywhere. He was always an extra in the school play or assigned props, stage crew. The only picture he ever found of himself in the yearbook was his yearbook photo, his crooked smile and glaring eyes scowling across the page. And when he tried out for chorus, his raspy voice drilling holes into the instructors ear drums, he was denied a spot. Girls? Don’t even ask him about girls. They walked past him, eyes seeing through him. He was invisible in high school. Just the ugly face in the crowd, wooly worm eyebrows permanently scrunched together in contortion. Sometimes he cried at home alone when his parents were working late. He grabbed the whiskey sometime drinking just enough to forget. To say he had a drinking problem in high school was an understatement.
            He was an understatement, but today, fifty five years after his birth he finally discovered karaoke. Jeffrey was going to sing. His family tried to convince him not to. “Don’t embarrass yourself Jeffrey. You’ll only get hurt.” He ignored them. Each wobbly step of nervousness up to the stage convinced him of certain failure but each time his feet held firm he gained momentum towards an uncertain but much awaited future. His song choice was not something that a grown man would not/should not normally choose but he felt right singing it. And when the music started Jeffrey smiled, opened his mouth, and belted out the lyrics to ‘Before He Cheats’ loud as he could, proving to the world that he was more than just never ending frown.
             Jeffrey lived his dream.

Bubble

Bubble

birth
freedom
                                                                life…

                         life….



                                                                                                   life……



                                                life….



                life…
death
repeat

61 Miles

61 Miles

It was when I first realized
that it was over.
The road stretched out directly in front
of me. My pulse quickening as I read
the mile marker.
61 miles, it said.
To what? I replied.

To disappointment.
The most extreme feeling of anxiety
and sadness follows.
Cast down and out of the life
I yearned for so effortlessly
and lost much to soon.
Death of a bond
made clear by too much love,
by my hand of betrayel.

To resentment.
Not for him. Never for him.
But for myself, I'll make an exception.
The one time in life
when despite all the encouragement received
self loathing cannot disappear.
Knowing only of one assumption.
It's your fault.
Take it because you deserve it.

To depression.
Hot tears of sorrow trickle
in slow rivulets down my cheeks
hollowed from desperation.
Blinding as an attempt to drive goes immoral.
Don't cry, mother says, just persist.
Towards a looming mountain
of disgust.
Make him miss you, mother says,
but only if you want him too.

61 miles to go.
Dont cry, mother says.
It's hard to reflect and drive
when all there is
is thoughts of decay.

This Is What I Am Now


Death. Decay. Destroy. Mutilation. Relief. Recover. Shame. Hope. No. Not hope. There was too much pain for hope, too much agony for hope to be left. These words are embedded in what used be my left breast. A part of me is gone. It was taken when the doctor first told me I had breast cancer. “You have breast cancer,” he said, staring vacantly at my face. He wants you to say something my mind told me. But all I could think about was how hard my heart was beating against my cancerous breast. My witty reply, “Yeah?” He then went into the spiel of medication, chemo, ‘We’re gonna beat this’ blah, blah, blah. Bullshit. How many times in a day has he said this? How many times has he sat with a woman just like me and said ‘You have breast cancer’? Do they care? Do doctors really care? Do they feel the pain of waking up every day to a broken, scarred body?

Half of me is gone. My womanhood, part of what made me is gone. It’s just a breast my mother told me. It’s just a breast my friends told me. It’s just a breast my doctors told me. It’s my breast. The ripple of scars splayed across my bosom a warning to any who see, caution I am fragile, I am weak. The brand of cancer forever displayed on my body. Always marked as the survivor; as a woman who “overcame the odds”. I am not that woman. The will to be strong that should course through my veins as the last round of chemo ends is not there. All I can think of is that lone breast. Sometimes I want to scream, “Look at me! Look at what you have done to me.” To who I would tell these words to, I do not know. God? I am not the only woman praying to be healed. What would make me stand out from the others? My doctor? “He’s only doing his job,” they say. “He’s saving your life,” they say. Maybe, just maybe I didn’t want to be saved.

God, just thinking about it makes me sound so damn vain. Looking at myself in the mirror though, the dark brown of the scar as it stretches from my sternum across my rib cage, a sense of uncaring washes over me. Sometimes I run my hand over the breast that isn’t there, feeling out each line that was created, over the points where staples punctured my skin keeping the wound closed and recreate the night of my surgery. I can’t remember the pain as the blade of the knife slid across my skin, the sound as it sliced as silent as falling snow. All I can remember is the glistening utensils, each sterilized, eager instruments ready to maim new flesh. Plastic fumes tinge my nose as anesthesia rushes in and then in an instant: euphoria. Whether it was the drugs they pumped into my body or the storm before the calm, my body did not let me register to myself that my breast was gone. Even when shroud of haze lifted from my eyes, the realization of what I have lost does not set in. Only when the pain registers, which creeps slowly in on the edge of my consciousness, do I realize what has happened.

Death. Disfigurement. Depression. Fatigue. Listless. These are the words to my life now. I live, therefore, I am alive. A human shell of emptiness, misshapen and worn; an awkward shadow of minus one. This is what I am now.