Punctuation

Sometimes the silence is too much to bear.

A moment stolen
from intolerable rigmarole,
embodied in my smile:
relief, anticipation, creation
the neurotransmitter floods the synapse like
the dot of the exclamation point the sparkle in my eye
(!)

I could share
this with anyone.
I could.
But breath arrests action
and the mere act of inhaling
is a reminder that life is about accepting
being alone.

Smiling alone is sometimes too strange.

So:
turn on the radio,
listen to that pop song,
envision movement,
suppress the pining for the wish that
loneliness
could be put to rest earlier than
my death.

the streets of my old neighborhood

Tonight I took myself out
and had a vegan mocha cupcake
for dinner.

And then I walked myself home in the dark.
It was a perfect evening
in many ways.

I walked the streets of my old neighborhood
and passed that old house with the cluttered porch.
There are still more chairs
than inhabitants.
It makes me smile.

There is something healing
in putting one foot
in front
of the other.

But I must say
there is a deep ache within me
for that sacred space
where I can exhale
and know I belong.

For now
I will keep walking.

To Remember

To remember is to imagine at a particular moment,
a particular place,
and perhaps
nothing more.

My longitude and latitude may predict hypercognition of grief, anger, betrayal,
the bottomless pit in my left ventricle draining my blood
when my mind conjures up his face,
or his,
or his.

Slovenliness and the historical record join hands to make me into
an archaeologist.
Unearth from a messy drawer
a picture frame with pressed dried flowers
collected from the mountains of Colorado
labeled with genus and species

My nose recalls with ease what my mind does not.
The teasing scent of blue detergent
the comfort of a warm burial in a pile of freshly laundered white shirts
next to someone who adored me

Those milliseconds challenge the veracity of my narratives
that prioritize their vile ways.
How much easier it is when the truth of your disregard for me
does not confront the Truth
of the complexity of human interactions.
The Truth we shall never know.

That I too am remembered
am imagined
am measured by moods
by meaning
by a need to make sense of this life
cannot stop my imperfect memories

so maybe it is better to have none.


--Anita
inspired by Julian Barnes "The Sense of an Ending"

stranger

You are a stranger, even though
I am sleeping at your side, your arm resting on my hip
pulling me closer.
We are breathing in step, hearts aligned, fingers crossed
but even now, I feel so far away.
I am a girl at the bottom of a well, staring up at the sky.
I want you to know that I’m here
trapped in the darkness
but my voice is quiet. It does not carry so well.
I feel like I’m screaming, but I know it's just in my head,
in the way I look at you and hope to see you looking back,
in those ambiguous comments that pass by you like signs to places you have no intention on going.
I need you to ask--
to look down into the well--
to see me.
I don’t want you to join me,
to save me.
No.
Just to recognize that I’m down here
and not just the warm body at your side.

appetite

Inspired by Sarah's latest Wislawa Szymborska post and life.

--

appetite

How easy to love the ones who love us back!
To crawl through the eons that separate face from face,
to fight with such intensity that your wounded
hearts only grow closer on reconciling.

How hard it is to love the ones
who do not love us back,
whose battles become permanent wedges and tight smiles.
How many of them life hands us
until to love becomes
a duty
an obligation
a responsibility.

A weary hand feeding its body
purely out of necessity
with food that lost its taste
long ago.

How this heart craves the flavor
this palate is denied.
How this mind longs for meanings
this throat wishes it could choke down.

Instead,
this shell lives in seas
of cold oatmeal and spoons clinked with haste.
The machine requires sustenance
to keep loving
without receiving
(with a secret hope
that one day
the clouds will thunder into existence
machines who love back).

-Anita
--

thank you note

I owe so much
to those I don’t love.

The relief as I agree
that someone else needs them more.

The happiness that I’m not
the wolf to their sheep.

The peace I feel with them,
the freedom –
love can neither give
nor take that.

I don’t wait for them,
as in window-to-door-and-back.
Almost as patient
as a sundial,
I understand
what love can’t.
and forgive
as love never would.

From a rendezvous to a letter
is just a few days or weeks,
not an eternity.

Trips with them always go smoothly,
concerts are heard,
cathedrals visited,
scenery is seen.

And when seven hills and rivers
come between us,
the hills and rivers
can be found on any map.

They deserve the credit
if I live in three dimensions,
in nonlyrical and nonrhetorical space
with a genuine, shifting horizon.

They themselves don’t realize
how much they hold in their empty hands.

“I don’t owe them a thing,”
would be love’s answer
to this open question.

-Wislawa Szymborska

pretty sure

I'm pretty sure you exist out there, somewhere. I refuse to believe that a heart would be made to long for someone who does not exist.

I wish you'd introduce yourself soon. I'm getting tired of waiting for you, hoping I'll find you in the eyes of everyone I meet. There's little bits of you in all I see, in all the beauty of the world, in the stories I hear and the stories I tell to my own heart.

I'm looking forward to that moment when I look in your eyes and know that you see me, and that you've been looking for me too.

Until then, I guess I'll just keep my feet on the ground and my eyes to the stars, letting the bits of beauty in each moment overwhelm me.