Fog.
A bride's white veil
Gray as marriage
Blinding like love.
Smoke from a fire
A fire in heaven
While our eyes were closed.
Kissing trees
Obscuring illusion
Keeping us from one another.
On the other side
A storm brews
Cut with time.
Earth becomes a dream
Water turns ethereal
I stay home.
"Hints of Heaven" by Lucy Miller Robinson
The sun breaks over the horizon Lighting up the billows The candy-colored sky, A strip of pale sunshine in water Quivers and reflects and glows Boundless like me. We are gradients of ice into light Blue becoming red, While the clouds grant us hints of heaven Always leaving Always coming.
Written for Trifecta. She looks between her legs, white paper stained crimson. It wasn't supposed to happen this way.
Her body, round as Mother Earth, heaves, like the ship against the waves. She tries holding her breath, drowning herself in the murky density of the mind.
"I want to die!" she shouts when the pain subsides. But her voice comes out of the wrong end. It travels inward rather than out. She doesn't have much time until the next attack. Thought falls into the shadow of suffering. The core of her cramps.
"You're going to survive," a man says. The tightening squeezes the life out of her. She climbs into his words.
You... Will... Survive...
She lives inside of the words. Intellect dissolves and their essence cradles her in an Elysian cocoon. She knows she is dying.
"Let me go," she says. "Throw me to the sea." But the interlude doesn't last. Force demands freedom. The big boom, the beginning of the universe, travels through her body, splitting open her pelvis. She bares down, until she realizes she is about to break in two like a seashell.
"Push your hardest, then let it go. Push, let go. Push, let go."
Push... Let go...
The first time she opens up, she does not break, she widens. Heaven passes through the hole in her body.
Faceless arms hand her a tiny child, naked and disoriented. Blankets, a hat descends, gloved fingers point her nipple between miniature lips. She holds his squirming body against her own. She looks at the suckling chin, a chin she already knows well. She thinks of nothing, not of love or of pain, but of what she has learned about mothering.
The hardest part is letting go.
Written for Trifecta. She soaked in a bath tub topped off with a bottle of champagne too flat to drink. She held a book in one hand and a hand-rolled cigarette in the other. She burned candles, their flames balanced on all four corners like controlled suicide threats.
Still holding the accoutrements, she submerged her head, allowing alcoholic bath water into her nose, ears and mouth; while locking her eyes shut like windows. She decided to count the seconds.
At the same moment she hit ten, the ten-second countdown began. Her drunken neighbors shouted from the apartment below, echoing through the walls, through the water, invading the perverted hideaway of her thoughts.
Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two! One!
She broke the surface, squeezing air into the very bottom of her lungs, and it was not unlike being born. She heard, though she wished she didn't, bells and explosions and the silence of a far-away kiss. Exhaling every last drop, she completed her first breath of the year.
On her second breath, she dragged on the cigarette and resumed the novel where she'd left off. She was free of anticipation as she lived in the shadow of expectation. Everything that mattered was behind her, or so she believed.
Written for Trifecta. I tell him before the curtains open. He doesn't flinch.
During intermission, he turns his head as if this limited range of motion requires infinite strength. He looks at me through tinted eyeglasses, and he says, “so you’re rich. You’ve been rich for two years, and you thought it best not to tell me. You let me waste away my life driving that truck until I went near-blind. Is that correct?”
I return his gaze, black glass reflecting black iris. Resentment pressed against aversion like lovers meeting in a kiss, or a blow.
“I’m telling you now.”
He rises, knocking his glass onto the floor with a rogue piece of fleshy hip, my relief as intense as a choir of angels. The lights dim, and I grasp my own wine glass, hollow yet whole, transfixed by the performance and the unfettered existence unfolding at my feet.
Relief relaxes into a giddy, heady, blurry evening. I crush the shards of Leroy’s wine glass with the heel of my boot, and then I introduce myself to the piano player. He lives alone in an apartment downtown, in the top half of a high rise. Before he succumbs to sleep, we share a cigarette and he says I should make myself at home.
I sit, pressed against the cold window, gray plumes curling from my mouth and memories sailing through my head, everything dissolving into the invisible wind that blows on the other side of the thick glass. I memorize the panoramic view, balls of lights piercing the absence of light; I suppose this is all our universe is.
When the sun rises, I do not mourn the end of night, the pastel glow melting the rooftops into one continuous dream. I am ready to start again.
(Adapted from my current manuscript in process.)
Written for Trifecta. When he walked out that door, he closed it behind him like he was sneaking away f0r another midnight tryst with one of the girls, not realizing I awoke every time he cleared his throat.
I wished he would slam it with the same force he used when we were fighting and the fighting turned to fucking, eyes wild and wrists bound. I wanted to run after him and shout the insults I'd written in my head in as much detail as a sonnet. But he didn't disturb the neighbors with their sleeping babes, so I didn't, either. That's always how it was. I didn't do anything without his permission.
He packed his suitcase, which I'd given to him last Christmas, like he was preparing for another trip to New York City, counting socks and matching outfits. Black and black. Blue and brown. The same colors as the bruises on my arm. His dark eyebrows cinched together, calculating his most prized possessions, like a mother gathering family photos and ancient heirlooms before the fire swallows them whole. Except for he had a lot more time. He had everything in the world, including time. Including me.
Though he took with him only what fit in that single thrift store suitcase, once he'd left, the apartment was hollow. Like my mother's eyes after she'd died. Like the two year old baby down the hall who didn't walk or talk. Like the clouds that hovered but never washed our dirty alleys.
I clawed open the medicine cabinet to find it empty; the pills like marshmallow pebbles and the powders like pixie dust were as gone as my husband. I searched in every crack, every shadow, every pocket for redemption. For secret money, for a water-marked love note, for a sign that my life wasn't over.
The more I look, the more I see.
For the skies Though they cry
We are protected from their blows.
For the earth
Though she ails
Our food still grows from her.
For the trees
Though we cut them
They breathe out what we breathe in.
For the dandelions
Though we pull them
They multiply for the sake of our nourishment.
For the roses
Though we possess them
They infuse our homes with beauty.
For the water
Though we poison it
It flows to quench our thirst.
For the bumble bees
Though we fear them
They spread sweetness where it's needed.
For the spiders
Though we kill them
They catch flies because we cannot.
For the animals
Though we abuse them
They play with us, feed us, love us.
For the small farms
Though the government has failed them
They haven't failed the earth.
For the cities
Though war ravages them
They rise up, striving for change.
For the global economy
Though greed afflicts it
It will soon die and be reborn.
For technology
Though we lean heavily upon it
It has brought us together.
For old friends
Though we've drifted
They will always be a part of who we are.
For best friends
Though we never have enough time
The time we do have spreads across lifetimes.
For family
Though we leave so much unsaid
The hugs we share say everything.
For children
Though we tarnish you with expectation
You are the most perfect, fallible creatures.
For true loves
Though we take you for granted
You make us better.
For the dreamers
Though you see darkness
You look towards the light.
For love
Though you rip hearts
You fill them and mend them.
For Thanksgiving
Though we eat too much
We unbutton our pants and eat more.
My Thanksgiving table, though I did not host Thanksgiving at my home.
Written for Trifecta. "When you die, you will come back as a snake," said the strange new girl with strawberry hair and oriental eyes, as if she were casting a spell on my brother while we waited under crispy red trees for the school bus. Ramona had moved in with her grandmother in July and she wore only black, even on the stickiest summer days while the rest of us were up to our chins in the community swimming pool.
My brother, Chase, vexed Ramona by claiming that Mrs. Augustine was not her real grandma. Ramona spent the whole bus ride staring at Chase, giving him an eye so evil my mother would have covered his buzzed blonde head with a blanket. She was superstitious about things like that.
Ramona didn't have one friend. She stalked my brother at recess, watching him like a cat waiting to pounce. Sometimes I didn't notice it was my turn on the monkey bars because I was busy watching her watching him.
One morning, when my breath cut the fog, Chase asked Ramona to stop staring at him. She whispered, "never," and goosebumps prickled the back of my neck. I wanted to confess our troubles to mother, but Chase forbade me. He believed in courage over weakness, silence over scandal.
On Halloween, Chase dressed up as death and I turned into a black cat, whiskers and all. We begged mother to let us go trick-or-treating on our own. She walked and we needed to run. We wanted more candy than houses in our neighborhood. We wanted to hedge our childhood with sugar. Even then, we sensed it would be over soon.
The first thing the driver saw was a black cat in the road. Not me, but a real black cat. She swerved to avoid it, like pulling your hand out of boiling water. The last thing she saw was a skeleton flying through her windshield. A little boy, wearing all black and white bones.
Written for Trifecta. He squints because he is nervous, examining the silk sweater, which is finer than white sand. Usually, he judges silk only by touch. The eyes of a saleswoman rest on his back with intention. God made him a thief, but at least he can trust his intuition. He sets down the shopping bag and glides to a rack of silk dresses, rubbing the slippery fabric between his thumb and middle finger. Underneath his designer jeans, he wears three pairs of silk boxers.
The first time he discovered silk, his parents were on a cruise in the Bahamas. He'd woken up minutes before sunrise and padded into their room while the nanny slept. At five years old, his mother's dresser held treasures more precious than the doctor's trove of lollipops, comic books and plastic horses. He rifled through her top drawer, inspecting each item as if looking for flaws.
At first, his favorite was a thick, shapely bra, red and lacy. He wanted to take it into bed and cuddle with it, he didn't know why. Then he found the silk underwear, which he did take back to bed, rubbing the material between his thumb and middle finger until he fell asleep. When the nanny found him in bed with his mother's lingerie, he didn't know to feel uneasy. But after she scolded him, he did.
At age eleven, he stole an eggplant-colored silk robe for his mother. She thanked him, but never wore it, so he took it from the hook in her bathroom and threw it under his bed. He would never give her another gift. At 17, he opened a shop on eBay selling silk items. He got $75 for the eggplant-colored robe. At 20, he is richer than all of his friends, including the ones who work in construction.
The saleswoman continues to watch him, so he catches her eye and asks for a fitting room. When she turns her back, he disappears.
Written for Trifecta. She scratches her cheek, wondering if this is a psychological or a physiological response. She's no longer sure of what's real and what's imagined, or if the line even exists. Something real can be imagined and something imagined can be real.
Does she hear spirits because she doesn't want to be alone, or because they're there? Whispering in her ear, tickling her face, playing with her hair.
Is she sick because she wants to be? Are the ghosts here to lead her to the other side? Or is she dead already?
All she knows is that she knows nothing. Which is why she makes no decisions for herself.
She learned during her life as a foster child that the only way to live is by blind chance. She would do whatever they told her to do. If she disobeyed, they would hate her. Since she had no love, she was petrified of hate.
When her foster mother told her to finish her dinner, she did. When her foster brother told her to take off her clothes, she did. When the social worker told her to keep her mouth shut, she did. When they told her to leave, she moved out. When a rich man offered to take her off of the park bench and into his bed, she followed him. When she got sick, she told no one because there was no one to tell..
She is ready to die.
I see the bullies. Two boys. Their victim is a little girl whose chromosomes are all mixed up. “What are you doing?” I bark in the exact tone my father uses with me when he’s disappointed, the voice that taught me how to fear. I recoil at the coldness in my heart, and everyone, including the pig-tailed girl, freezes as if paralyzed by an icy wind blowing across the tropics.
Without a glance in my direction, the perpetrators drop the girl's ratted blankie and disperse. I shake my head until my world becomes a blurry mess, mourning the death of innocence and the birth of evil.
Back in the classroom, the boys behave well for the rest of the day, returning to their usual disruptive selves by the next. If they had seen my stare, the sorrow they spawned, the good behavior may have lasted a week, but you cannot force someone to look you in the eye.
Written for Trifecta.
Adapted from the manuscript of my first novel.
image via
VenomSlithers and slices Shoots and fights.
Nature Nurtures and suckles Shackles and kills.
The living Desperate to matter Thirsty for more.
The dead Are gone to us But where did they go?
Other dimensions Far and near As real as this one.
The unknown One step ahead We'll never catch up.
Fear Feeds on the unknown Festers in the faithless.
Faith The only way To be okay.
image via
(Some thoughts on the events that inspired the poem: Beyond the end of the world.) Although I marvel at the Blue Angels air shows, they leave me with some unsettling questions. How much money do these shows cost? How much pollution do they leave in the air? What is the true intention of the US Navy? Hint: the answer is just one word.
Recruitment. They do it to recruit more bodies because more bodies mean more power. More power means more separateness. More separateness means more war. And it's all because we still look for power on earth instead of setting our sights inward.
There will never be enough power to go around, but there will always be enough power to fight over, tempting man to allocate his resources to killing and controlling rather than growth and exploration.
Like I said, I love watching the jets fly over. After a particularly close call with an F/A-18 Hornet, I updated my Facebook status: Every time a Blue Angel flies right over my head, I squeal and my heart beats faster and for a moment, I am, all at once, high and humbled and awestruck. Now I remember how a toddler feels about EVERYTHING.
But what if we were watching space ships take off into the galaxy instead?
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." - Jimi Hendrix
via kwout.me
The end of the world happens every day
Babies forget to breathe, bombs dive.
I kissed a tree
And sat down to write one thousand words.
Armored mechanical angels swooped by in formation
Creating traffic in the air
A celebration of freedom, a spectacle of man's wit.
Here, we laugh at the angels.
There, we cry.
World peace remains hidden beneath ego's shroud
Because we look for power on earth
Instead of setting our sights on the moon.
Children.Your continuation, But not your selves.
Babies. Helpless But pure.
Little girls. Fanciful But exquisite.
Little boys. Unruly But courageous.
Teenagers. Cunning But brilliant.
Grandparents. Willful But wise.
Mothers. Birthers But not creators.
Fathers. Pollinators But not masters.
Parents. Controlling But combusting with love.
Families. Grow up But they never forget.
A faint knock wakes me from my slumber. It’s much too early for visitors, the sun has yet to rise. I snuggle deeper under the thick blanket, alone and naked. But the tapping is persistent, so I give in to curiosity. Emerging from my lair, I wrap my shivering body in a fuzzy blue bathrobe.
I peer through the peephole and I see Hope. I open the door. She stands erect, in all her glory, eyes glistening like the morning dew. She brought the sun with her and she is illuminated, her white-blonde hair creating a halo around her unblemished face.
“You’re here early today,” I say, rubbing my eyes. I forgot to grab my glasses and her edges are blurring into the light.
“I heard you calling for me in your sleep. You had a nightmare,” she says.
“I did?”
She smiles at me like a mother comforting a child who has fallen onto the unforgiving concrete.
“Rejection is coming for you, my dear.”
“He is?” My heart beats faster. “What should I do?”
“He’ll try to get in any way he can. His face will be covered.” Her smile has given way to a frown.
“Should I keep my windows closed always?”
“Leave them open during the day, allow the fresh air in. But after the sun sets, keep them locked. Rejection can only attack those in the dark. ”
“What about my dreams?”
“He cannot hurt your dreams, he can only bring fear. But don’t give up, my darling. No matter how many times he comes. Thank him for thinking of you and tell him you’re not interested.”
“What happens if he gets in?”
“There’s a chance he will slip in when you open the door to step outside. It won’t be your fault. He’s quicker than a thunder cloud and smaller than a rain drop. If he gets in, you call me. I’ll be there.”
Hope is fading into a cloud.
“Don’t forget about me, darling. I’m always here for you.”
The cloud lifts and the sun shines brighter now, so bright that I must close my eyes. When I open them, she is gone.
Adapted from my other blog.
Sleep. Tick tock
Tick tock.
One hour passes
And another.
I lie
Awake.
Memories
Walk across
My consciousness.
I entertain them.
Wicked shapes
Brilliant disclosure.
Awake.
Thoughts.
Spiraling tempest
Magnetic eyes
Grabbing my attention.
Kissing me
Kicking me
Awake.
Breathe.
In out
Deep long
My heart beats.
Within me
Is life
Awake.
Noise.
Subliminal cracks
Implicit whispers
I must hear.
Until everyone
Goes home
Awake.
Dreams.
Prolific intruders
Fortune seekers
Real like this.
Sleeping life
Keeps me
Awake.
I am a mother. Ailed by my children. Deserted by my husband. Abandoned by the angels.
But mother, you are perfect.
I am a little girl. Kicked by my mother. Ignored by my father. Raped by my teacher.
But little girl, you are perfect.
I am an old woman. Forsaken by love. Alone by death. Hopeless by life.
But old woman, you are perfect.
How can I go on?
Drink your tears Let sorrow metastasize into joy. Heed the lesson Turn your face towards the sun.
Abandonment makes room for love, Abuse undresses the ugly. Without a valley There's no view from the mountain.
You were born perfect Steeped in a cup of grace. Painted by the devas Kissed by the breath of life.
Written for Trifecta. When he told me the truth, I had the obscene urge to hurt him. At first I wanted to bite his ear off, then I thought about kicking him between the legs, and finally I yearned to wrap my little hands around his thick neck and squeeze hard enough to pop his head off like a Barbie doll.
I paused like an animal mesmerized by two bright orbs drawing closer, aware that death is imminent but unaware that it is avoidable. When he blinked, the spell was broken and I sprinted away from him, towards the impact instead of towards safety, scrambling up the stairs, falling and scraping my knees on the rough carpet and climbing the rest of the way on my hands and feet.
If I couldn't hurt my dad, I would hurt myself. I swung open the door to his closet and almost fell backwards from the smell that invaded my nostrils without warning. The scent of vanilla lotion, leather, and something else. The scent of my mother.
Her clothes still hung on the left side in a perfect line like inmates patiently awaiting their sentencing. Although the skin cells clinging to the inside of her boots and a few unwashed jackets were as dead as she was, they still carried some of her essence. And in this way, she lived on. But only inside of the windowless, crowded cell.
I’d been spending as much time as possible in the closet since my mom decided to go to heaven two months and one week earlier. When I got bored snuggling her boots and burying my nose into her blazers, I began to search for the unseen, surveying deep corners and reaching for the highest shelves.
That's when I found the gun. I thought it was a jewelry box at first, and I was beside myself, seduced by the brief fantasy that I would find a magical necklace to turn back time.
But the box, wedged behind a thick curtain of my father's suits, wasn't a forgotten treasure chest. Inside, wrapped in shiny soft fabric, rested a small handgun with a mother of pearl handle and the distinct impression of belonging to a lady.
I turned it over in my hand as I heard my father's heavy footsteps climb the stairs.
"Allegra, sweetheart?" he called.
"Stop!" I screamed wildly.
By the time he got to the closet, I had the gun pressed against my head.
“Allegra,” he sighed. “Put the gun down.”
“What do you care! You’re not my real dad anyways.”
“Yes, I am your real dad. Just not your biological dad.”
“No, you’re not! You’re a fake! A liar!”
“You’re right,” he said. “I wanted to tell you from the beginning. Your mother, may she rest in peace, wouldn’t let me.”
I threw the gun at him and it went off. I must have fainted as the world caved in around me. There was nothing left but ghosts. My mother didn’t love me enough to keep living, and my real dad didn’t love me at all. And then I’d killed the only person left. I was retched and rotten like a dying tree. The maggots would come feast upon me soon enough, and even they would chew me up and spit me out.
Emptiness flooded my heart until I exploded like a tire filled with too much air. I was sure that my blood had stopped flowing, I only needed to wait for the wheels in my brain to stop turning, and then it would be over. In those final moments, the sadness that had permeated every thread of life dissolved for the first time in 68 days.
My father rose from the dead like Jesus, shaking me from my sleep, folding me into his big arms, and depositing me into the shower. He turned on the cold water and my waist-length hair turned into a sheet of ice. The long sleeves of my pink nightgown matted against my skinny arms. I shivered, and he made the water warm.
Drawing my raw, bloody knees up to my chin, I looked at him through wet eyelashes and asked, “am I dead?”
“No, sweetheart.”
My eyes widened. “Are you?”
“The gun wasn’t loaded.”
I knew, at 13 years old, that most guns don’t give second chances, but I had gotten one. I spread my limbs until I was lying prostrate in the bathtub, allowing the water to pierce my wide open eyes as I tried not to think about my mother.
