late luminescence

11/8/21: "I know you don't want to hear from me, but I am selfish"

Perhaps a little lonely, too.

There is nothing quite like ping pong,
a kid made of mischief and wayward grins clicking the flashlight:

on. and off. and on and off and on.

And then staring into an abyss,
falling into the habit of trusting there will always be
another lighthouse flashing back.

Kismet. There is a witty romance in the word,
a feather light kiss and a "well met" that's stuck in your cheek.
I wish, I wish, I wish I could have my pick
of grapes on the trellis, or fruit from the orchard.

And yet, a part of me knows not to waste my Angel numbers
and lucky dimes on things that could bring me to my knees.

See, that's for selfish prayers at night. Wondering what love is,
what God is, what I am. No matter how far I go, home is the heart
in this breast, the breath in this chest.

My mom says I best well not forget it,
even as I will feel sorry for it, most days.

I will wonder if people love the moon more than the sun,
even if I know I do not.

Because the suns in the sky, the stars, even they must
want to be heard, to travel so far.

I am not bold enough to say they are envious,
but wouldn't it be something if everyone realized
even the stars get lonely too.

The fires all go cold, and all feel It creeping in
sometimes. Still they burn.

As I sit on this stump and read
from these pages of your cousin's pulped flesh,
I burst with the excitement of next year seeing you draped in color,

You. master of graceful loss.

You, vessels of wasted breaths,
remind me of aching regret
and how we live despite it all.

The adults wonder while I write,
"would you rather learn to love
from a tree, or a goldfish?",

and I ask the question all week long.

Perhaps too many people say tree,
not for what you are, but for what you give.

Is it love if it is also exploitation,
the story of the taker and the fool?

My father says a child's love can never rival
that of a mother's on days when she yells
and I slam my bedroom door shut.

He is probably right.

Some others choose you for your age,
and I wonder what my grandma would say
if I loved her for simply her wrinkled soft skin, sunspotted and all.

I know she would not say much.

But she might give me dog food for dinner, which would be a shame.
Or she might cry, which would be much, much worse.

And yet the irony is that you will likely die a premature death,
your promises to the coming years cut short by a swift axe to the side.

But perhaps the most ubiquitous answer is that they love you
for what you represent-- the Earth, the shady days, your poetry,
roots clinging to the Earth as your limbs that are constantly

 

 

photo: sunrise (late to zero period CS) in Arcadia, CA

I wonder how the houseplants feel about dust
Caked in skin like a teenage girl’s first face of make-up.

I wonder how much dust we collect when we sleep,
And if our eyelids crave it every night.

My sister is lying next to me and I don’t kick her out,
And in the morning they will look at me with confused faces at the miracle.

She’s still small, yet so much bigger than she was before.
Growing is an odd thing, so easily mourned.

We have written thousands of poems, not too many of which said “we”.

But we love like children do, tiny hands grasping one another’s hands because even at a young age, we knew people slip faster than sand.

We wonder about our memories then. When we loved more people than the memories we had of them. We can’t remember them now, with our palms unfurled. But the water can,

And we are bodies of water, love recycled in convection currents and dropped somewhere else.

You cry, and I realize my arms are not enough to bail all the no-good, very bad, days you will ever have. I cling to you from two bedrooms down the hall as I pretend I can siphon your sorrows away and make the going not so tough.

We proffer sorry’s, and it is the way we say “I love you”. We grow bouquets of peonies, instant ramen, and sad eyes by the lost windowsills, because roses have thorns and we hurt one another enough.