Control formations in the sand. Dunes and dips meeting on an uneven line, drawn by a breath, a breeze. Sound at a distance carried by the crest, a flare for that second, a memory in the next. Nothing else but wonder.

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How to keep it in--
the wave of needing release,
a swell, being full.

Water stain on my wall
bloomed like two passing clouds over sunset
above my boxes of essays, drafts, and other anonymous important stuff.
The brown outline hangs over files not filed on time,
pushed through with backdates and anachronistic signatures.
It is so heavy, that stain.

Stretched out over a line where the drywall grew out,
impatient construction seeping denial over inevitability.

A broken air conditioner keeps guard.
An empty plastic container waits.

I can't think of how to scrub it away.

The city has separation anxiety over the sun.
A steady cadence of remembrance of long days,
stretched out over mountains, condos, sandy banks,
and tattered volleyball nets, and paths wrapping around
feet pounding from shade to shade.

Where did it go? What will we do
now that we live with water resistance all over?

We clean ourselves. It is time.
Back to watching trickles into gutters and drains,
waiting under awnings til it's safe to come out again.

It's okay to feel that way again, she said,
to close your eyes and think of his smile, and the dimple on the left side,
and his bright eyes looking at you in the way you like to be looked at,
to think of the way his finger touches your nose,
when the feeling is too big to contain--
it's okay to feel that flush of warmth, those pins and needles that come on
all of a sudden to make you think that fairies are dancing on your skin,
she said.

She asked me if I could remember when I was a little girl,
when I couldn't imagine a time when I would need to be rescued
but I imagined that a prince charming would be waiting for me
if the time would come. I told her I've never forgotten,
even after all this time.

So
when he looks at me and asks me to let him look at me that way
when he touches my nose and smiles and shakes his head in disbelief
when he takes me in his arms and holds me and there's nothing else in the world
when it's just us
I let the fairies dance
and I'm okay.

bathroom sounds: water running from faucets, being collected in two cupped hands,
sleep washed from faces, sighs and dream breath brushed away.
we clean ourselves in silence.
someone lets go of a sad laugh. we have that feeling already

of being missed, of missing, and of having missed out on each other this whole time.
but not anymore.

suitcases, backpacks, pillows and blankets pile up outside the door.
we're going home.
we're going back to people who don't know what we just did
and who might not think that anything has changed.

we check our rooms one last time. someone tightens the leaky faucet.
no more drips.

We beheld our own mandala in the the black sky:
full moon behind a rainbow cloud halo,
concentric puffs and ripples, a gentle veil covering
nine points reaching out toward the cold, wet air.

breath full of cedar
freshly split, splinters jagged and clean
we trudge on gravel, flanked by rows of trees and bushes with wisdom
older than us, times five

we think we're wise.
we think that because we lived through death
that we know about crucifixions, resurrections, and life thereafter.
we think we'll be better off this time around.
we think that because we can eat poison, lots of it, that we can swallow,
hard, anything else we're made to eat.

cedar is sharp and ripe
and dancing in dewy air
we come to the end of the path, we see the little house
where we stay, where we sit in a circle, listening to whistling wind

we think we hear songs the universe sings to us
because we used to hear nothing else beyond our whimpers
and pleas and prayers and sobs we choke back.
we think we hear the wind telling us
we'll be better off this time around.
we think we are.

Burrowing under layers of unshakable weight, cowering beneath the shadow of the day, I still hear peals of laughter, uninhibited giggles and whispers of my children now, and of what I used to be. Floating on the cusp of a breeze, a gasp of warm wind, a point where I can see a ray come thru a broken slat in the dusty plastic blinds--newness holds out an open palm, waits for the moment when I allow myself to be led out once again.

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Composition of a curve,
a spine arched for release. Sitting too long
tightens cords, strains them into
unrealized catharsis. Discovery in the bend,
exploration in each knot--taut,
then back to bend.

Black and white comfort, the mystery of forgotten colors filling in the past, wondering what things used to look like before light captured this angle of pause. How to remember that breath held still, the effort to not blur present with future into a past, that misses now.

pray for skulls unanswered by other prayers,
anonymous or otherwise. deep down in the ground
in the shadow of the valley, they move
once in a while
when the earth moves and you can feel it too.
skulls that used to have eyes, teeth, and a means
to make those things work so someone would care
and maybe pray.

you know when you hang up the phone
it could be the last time
you think
of how green the leaves were
how blue the sky was
how all these things endure as signs
as guideposts
along some trail of fear and hope
of how this moment came to be
revealed in the next footfall
in these lines
of how these lines unravel
and tangle up again
in breaths
for uncertainty
as it lies
or lays
us down

It started with a wave,
a pull to the moon with quiet urgency,
to bear.

The witching hour scratched on cold linoleum, a slow
tck-tck crawling toward the walls.

The smell—metallic and ripe.
The colours—red, black, white.



Fear is bred on the swell of the unknown.



Waiting. Feeling. Waiting. Pushing.



My eyes closed in one final moment
before she opened hers.

(It's been almost a year since I've posted on this blog, which also means it's been about that long since I've written any poetry. But hey, time to return to my daily meditation.)


***

If I said I love you
in a different language,
would it not mean as much, or
would you love me more?

Words strung together like beads
on a Buddhist bracelet--
like rituals
like prayers--
a strange, perfect circle.

Je t'aime, te amo, ti amo, mahal kita,
em yêu anh, and all these other
bamboo sounds and rhythms
clacking against my roof, on my wrist,
throughout my now,

putting in me
something
to fill this space.


Then I see
wind blowing shadows
on white sheets hanging
on an open door, light filtered
through movement, constancy,

and I bend to that offering,
stretch and arch into your now,
with you,
finding you.

He plucked a raspberry and perched the open end
on his pinky tip, a drop of juice-blood caught on his tongue.

It was the sexiest movement I’d seen in years—
this language I couldn’t speak.

I felt at home in my mixed metaphor
that he might read years later, when I’m far, far away.

For those who drink day-old coffee, microwaved and gone cold again,
and still think it tastes good, and for those in the neighbourhood who get used
to the crazy guy who pounds the punching bag on the porch everyday after lunch,
and for those who appreciate the fine subtleties of a run-on sentence while
being sticklers to good grammar when the time is right, and for those who let people
talk at them while smiling while thinking about the consequences of premeditated
murder or if it would even be considered that or rather a crime of passion
or even temporary insanity (though that usually doesn’t fly unless you cannibalize
the “victim), and for those who read every single page of People and so yes
it does take more than an hour to get through it maybe even almost two,

For those pick up a phone, put down the phone, walk aw...pick up the phone, dial three numbers, hang it up, pick it up, put it back, pick it up, throw it on the bed (who wants to break a perfectly good phone?), hide in the deepest darkest tiniest piece of wall
in the closet, stay there for a while hoping someone will come find you but no one ever
will, so you come out and then go down to eat with the rest of them,

here’s a comma, parenthesis, period, and a poem for you.

taken by a single petal fallen and swooshed under
the clawed foot of a heat machine from yesterday,
before any of us were born,
at first, we stooped to look for some doll head gone astray,
out from our palms, kept rolling and rolling,
but then to feel the crackle of something that used to live,
something small but scary because we didn't know
what it could be or how it might bite us,
but there,
it was,
brown with a little spit of pink,
curled stiff, like when people die and their eyes stay open,
and so it was
the doll head stayed gone.

They got little stomachs,
but I think they can stomach more.
Especially the one and lonely slug.
They eat and hide and poop and sleep,
and when they think to do it, they have babies—
Mom said, pretty much just like us. And they have just one lung.

So they have to be “fishent,” that’s what Mom said,
but I don’t get what fish have to do with snails.
Except some snails live in the ocean,
and some snails eat fish,
cuz I saw it in a book
and thought how come the man taking the picture
didn’t save the fish and just let it be eaten
by the snail.

But Mom said that’s the thing about life that’s not ours—
we can watch and take pictures but not mess with it,
or at least, not hurt anyone if we do.

Today, I stole a glance down into an imagined blackness
delivered by the grace of god. When I see the weight—
only feel it carry to an end I can’t know—
my palms moisten and tingle,
like when I was the magic age of 8 and the doctor waited
on the other side. To not know if the ink still flows is one thing.
To not know what the lines make is another.