thrilling

today i saw a small silver hatchback rear-end a black SUV.

three little kids danced on the street corner, cheering for the miniature wreckage. the smallest one's face was so dirty, and he wore two crusted fleece jackets, the kind with the three-quarter zipper.

they were both on backwards.

a tribute to thievery

she told me about how she slipped and fell down fifteen marble stairs. windshield wipers, she said. she can't look at windshield wipers. its been sixteen years and she knows she's brain damaged. her jaw dislocates on planes.

she said, pain is pain, if you feel it, its real. but you can't live believing your pain is worse than everybody else's, because it's not.

this made me think about a month before that, when i met a man by the carts in the parking lot. he was struggling with two fingers to get a loonie out of a plastic change purse he kept in his breast pocket. i said, here, just take my cart. but he looked at me very seriously and said no, no ma'am. i don't leave any debt unpaid.

and then just the other night, when my lover kissed my face in the dark, and said he loved me and goodnight, i swear i saw at least four-plus-two years floating away from me.

they just drifted away in boredom, like those strange particle lights you sometimes see in the night.

revisited III

roommates

we are all just supplements, landmarks
along the way to wherever it is
we’re going again.
i think somewhere between
the smell of burnt hair
and garbage fights, we became
family;  maybe not in the unconditional sense
but in that tolerable way. we came
together as temporary
solutions to the bigger question,
stuck together while we trained
for the marathon, and now
come spring, we will
disband, scattered among
stories of beds in elevators and
not “keeping in touch.” we are all just
space-fillers, and time-fillers, happening
to love in a way that grows long after
we’ve forgotten where influence
sewed its beans.

revisited II

The Widower’s Portrait

We should have learned to skate, then,
I think. Her eyes seem tired, but still she looks at me and says
she feels okay despite her pain. And
though I know the photo made her sad,
seeing us so young had made her face brighten.
We are too young for where we are now,
looking at photos in which
our bodies were still filled with life and she was
untouched by the weakening of
age. We were two kids once, before we were
lovers, spouses, parents.
Why hadn’t we learned to skate, as
the winter turned the dam to ice so
all the other kids would play?
We were too serious, serious with
all that hadn’t happened yet.
Now we’re waiting for a cancer to come and take everything,
forgetting all we haven’t had yet. She says
“We’ve had so much,” but, We
 are so close to losing it all, I think.
illness has come to claim her, and we—
she has been my whole life.
She has been my whole life.
Illness has come to claim her and we
are so close to losing it all. I think,
We’ve had so much. “But we’re
forgetting all we haven’t had yet,” she says
now. “We’re waiting for a cancer to come and take everything
that hasn’t happened yet.”
We were too serious, serious when
all the other kids would play.
The winter turned the dam to ice, so
why hadn’t we learned to skate, as
 lovers, spouses, parents?
Age? We were two kids once. Before, we were
untouched by the weakening of
our bodies. We were still filled with life and she was
looking at photos in which
we were too young for where we are now.
Seeing us so young had made her face brighten,
though I know the photo made her sad.
She feels okay, despite her pain, and
I think her eyes seem tired, but still she looks at me and says,
“We should have learned to skate, then.”

revisited I

pont de l’alma

there was something disquieting about the way
my mother placed her three middle fingers—
ring, middle and index— in between her

teeth, clamped, but not biting. like she was
starting to eat her hand and then
forgot. one arm tense against her side, bent

at the elbow up into her mouth; the other,
folded across her middle. she sat
for hours, watching footage

from princess diana’s car accident
in paris. over and over, the mangled
car in the tunnel, depleted airbags. reporters

talking of paparazzi, a high-speed
chase. broken arms and concussions became
trapped feet, bloody ears, then severed

veins and tissue let her heart jerk
left to right. it wasn’t until
the funeral that my mother

took her fingers out from between her teeth. she closed
her eyes each time the camera focused
on william or harry, cried when elton john sang

“candle in the wind.”  the monday after the funeral, my mother
bought a bouquet of english cream roses,
and put them in a vase on the kitchen table.

selfishly

my eyes bleed inward, mostly,
starting at either outside edge and trailing inward
in no particular pattern, creating a soft
red plain, soft because
it doesn't quite connect.

its that product-encrusted curl relaxing about 90
degrees too little. its the monotony
of backlighting, or not enough hours between now
and the morning alarm. its because
mississippi is the only state that you can drag
the river any time and find bodies is too small to read.

its measureable, like the time the nurse pulled blood
straight out of me. when i woke up, i was afraid of her
because i didn't think she was real. i put my hand up
to keep her away.

its the list you give me, the rules that exist
in space without order, the ones that have left holes
in my mind for seeds to be planted. you don't understand
what isn't real, either, so maybe someday
i'll write it all down.

its irrationality, really, the handsome
boy from 307 raking the place between
my brain and my heart. they can live off
the land, there, harvesting indecisiveness
and all her friends.