Grief Written

And any I love yous offered   Have become as empty as his apologies As the doorway   The space in the bed beside me The lines in my notebook  As I search for an inkling  Of his sincerity but find only myself lingering. In my mind I practice slamming doors closed, Instead of throwing open bed sheets Shroud every mirror. Reaching for my anger beneath the floorboards of a home that has a resemblance in both our wavering childhoods, But only finding his. It’s cold in my hands —  Like the tin cans we’ve tied to another, stretching across all this time. I cannot tell if the whispers in the dark a re between the boy who used ride his bike to school afraid it would one day vanish — And the girl who pretended she had a magic wand to make the nightmares disappear. Or if it’s the poltergeists, Drug in with the antiques of our adolescence .

In between all my thoughts  I can feel myself trying to justify even rationalize  all the anger, resentment and pain  you cast onto me. I didn’t deserve it, To pay a price for a debt I didn’t incur. A pound of flesh, Or two or three, The sum of my heart.

I told him one night when we were both drunk in my kitchen, That when I was a little girl and I would have a particularly bad nightmare —  I wouldn’t yell out for my mom or leave my bed to find her. Gathering myself up the best I could I would imagine in my mind a wand, that I would wave around my bedposts. I knew that it wasn’t real but in those moments I believed in my own magic just enough to wrap it around me. When my little brother would have a nightmare and he would come into my room with his pillow and blanket, I would let him sleep on the floor — even though he snored. The night before he was married I thought of this, How not even a year before he had knocked on my door and slept in the twin bed across from mine after a nightmare — despite being well into our 20s.  In the kitchen — when I told him about my magic wand, his brow furrowed and he looked lost for a moment. I thought of how his mother would trail her finger from his hairline, down the bridge of his nose, ov...

 I have sympathy for the devil.  I think anyone who has loved me isn’t surprised by the sentiment.  It’s been said that Lucifer was God’s favorite angel, seated at the right hand of the father. Lucifer means “morning star” or “light bearer.” God created an angel, whom he loved. It is written that God created the world in seven days, On the first — he created light. Then as it follows is the sky, the earth and all its glory, the sun and moon, animals of the air and sea, land animals and human kind and then on the seventh day — God rested.  God created Lucifer, whom he loved, and subsequently created light itself of which Lucifer was to bear. I imagine as God rested, Lucifer eagerly pinpointed the sky with stars so as the sun went down — there was no total darkness.  But then there was the Great War in Heaven And Lucifer was cast down. He didn’t fall —  His father, whose first act of creation bore resemblance to his favorite son, cast him out. God does love t...

 The tarot card readers say “It’s an eclipse, it’s the time to let things go.” So for the first time In all my sentimental history I attempt to burn the letters But as I drive up the canyon I cannot find a place to burn them  And return home After so long Leaving the letters in the front seat I won’t bring them across the threshold  It means nothing I assure myself, nothing at all

 Does it feel alright to not know me? Can you feel the time stretch between us, The pop of each stitch  As we pull apart the fabric of our souls I once carefully stitched, mended and repaired. Sometimes I reach for the comfort of us, Only to find The back of my empty closet.  If you manage to find it, Perhaps underneath your bed or thrown in the back of your car — please let me know: would it ever fit someone the same again? Or will it always fit just a little wrong? Overgrown and otherwise 

 And I resist the urge  Even as I lay on the bathroom floor I don’t reach for the idea of comfort  To say “something has happened and I need you.” Because it’s relief is temporary  In the way you have been  And what is need anyway?

 There’s a line by Shakespeare that I think about often, “Hell is empty. All the devils are here.” It’s from the Tempest. God has been evicted from the corners of my mind, His rent was long overdue —10 percent paid with no return  Called upon over over over again, Only to collect on my pleas but abandon me in my need. I knew he was gone long before I was 17-years-old in the backseat of a car. Maybe religion is a pyramid scheme. Even as he’s abandoned me, I still dial his number often — perhaps testing his inbox’s capacity. If the number still goes through, or if it’s just a dial tone. This is something I’d never admit to anyone who’d bother to ask. Holding up one of the devils with one arm and helping him smoke a cigarette with the other, Another told me “The only thing stopping you from crossing over into atheism is fear.” Fear has been bedfellow since my stepfather had moved into our home decades ago, But I do not tell him that — this is a party after all.  The cigarett...

 It all was just a figment of my imagination  A translation of my childhood Cloaked by my best intentions 

 I wish  I could un-whisper all my childhood secrets  Entrusted to him in bed sheets that weren’t ours  Just his And I wish  I could rewind To the point where we didn’t know each other at all

 I am flipping pennies in my hotel room, Waiting on some sign or signal. I’m crying and can’t catch my breath — I did not anticipate this to be so painful. My childhood wounds are gnawing from the inside and I’m trying to settle myself. I’ve began collecting pennies both heads and tails from sidewalks, So when it lands I do not know what it means. I long for his voice on the phone, To bury my face deep in his chest. I remember sitting in his lap as he cried after he spoke on the phone with his father, The way I kissed his shoulder and hands while it was on speaker phone. Afterwards he told me, “you feel like home, you feel so safe to me.” But what does one say when home has been a word dissected and reconfigured over the years? I know there’s a lot I can say about someone reminiscent of my childhood, But I cannot stop crying after seeing her. I cannot stop. It is hard to create metaphors or motifs or even just meaning, I think I may drown.

We’re standing inside the airport near the check-in line and my father is retrieving something we forgot in the car, My grandparents are sitting while we wait and I’m distracted by a bird flitting between sky lights. I watch it with worry, without meaning, constructing a metaphor of sorts or a personification. I can hear it chirping and I wonder aloud whether there is a position of some kind within the airport to guide it back into the sky. My grandparents do not notice my question, I do not fault them with this because I can speak softly and as a middle child I have grown accustomed to dialogue with myself. Later, When we’ve settled for breakfast before the flight I notice a second bird and I wonder to myself how many are required for a motif. I cannot ascertain what species it may be so the further meaning alludes me. When my grandmother noticed this bird I express my worry once more, “It must be able to find its way out,” she reassures.  “I don’t think so, it must be so confused...

 In this version, The man I love brushes his teeth over the sink with me and we take turns spitting, laughing each time our eyes meet in the mirror. I am not worried about the longevity of my toothbrush on his bathroom counter, It’ll be replaced every six months after each dentist appointment —I do not cancel it because we are not arguing in the driveway. While I peel it out of the packaging I make him guess the color while simultaneously asking, “how often are we supposed to replace these actually?” He is not annoyed with my game and puts thought into the answer, listing off all the previous colors that have spotlighted on his bathroom counter. And before I can pause peeling the toothbrush out of the package, he has reached for his phone to google my question.  In this version, I  am not surprised that he has anticipated a need from me.  There are sticky notes stuck to the mirror with my handwriting from several days before, he does not take them down until they los...

 I find myself reaching  For hands  For hope For the words I’ve been meaning to convey  And all I find is widespread nothingness.

The tumbling of the dryer shakes the entire apartment The slap slap slap of my wet clothes hitting the metal drum  Mixed with the rattling of the apartment windows I can feel the vibrations move through the soles of my feet and it shakes any semblance of a thought forming  and I remind myself that the building is old. That the bones of the building are not used to such modern adjustments and that here the sun finds its way inside, And that the cat loves her perch beside the windowsill and beneath the air conditioning unit.  Sometimes I pace between the spaces, passing from the living room through the kitchen into the bedroom and then bathroom. Back, again. You said you need space — to move, to be. For you, the breadth of it was not enough. I remember sitting in the corner with my friend as she cried over a boy. The apartment was mostly empty besides some boxes. We drank wine from paper cups left over from my birthday the year before and I remember thinking, “I could fill ...

 Somewhere in a photography store are photos of the Oregon Coast The film had been bought years prior, cradled by coins collected and placed in a catch all jar  I remember watching a YouTube video three times, rewinding again again again  As I carefully enrolled the film between cupped hands to shield it from what little sunlight broke through  I could feel him watching me from the corner of his eye as he spoke on the phone but pushed his purview to side as the dial clicked. We walked to the beach barefoot and the rocks were sharp under my feet, the callouses of my childhood turned to softness I remember running through rivers and climbing trees as a girl The way my mother would watch me only slightly, assured in the toughness of my skin  And my ability to tread lightly on seashells, eggshells, cliff-sides and girlhood I brought her up that drive when hours had bleed through into the roadway and he told me, “Pass. I only want to talk about happy things.”  C...