Love Bird

I don’t remember when you called me that.

but it sticks.

Like ink under my skin.

A foreshadow of a tattoo to come.

Lovebird in script across my left hip.

On the backside, where I am inexplicably ticklish.

The only place on my body.

I expect the pain will be.

Excruciating.

Anything, I have learned, that brings such pleasure

Also brings.

Such pain.

Like the fire on my arms tonight.

I should not be typing.

I am healing.

Another kind of transformation.

This body of mine undergoes them it seems

All the time.

This, I sense, is a practice.

How can I say I miss you?

In some evocative way that will sing down, once again, into my arms

The moon.

A moon I no longer hunt for.

A moon I no longer sing to.

There is no moon without you.

There will be, a crow moon, a cherry blossom moon, a blue moon

But it will only be the moon tattooed on my back silhouetted

By the wings of a crow.

The one that carries my heart in its claws.

The sharp needle will poke my pain out again.

Again.

And.

Again.

And.

Again.

This moon I will never see, not with my own eyes, except

Perhaps in photographs.

Like the pictures I pulled from the drawer a few nights back.

Along with a scattering of blue boxes tied up in ribbons.

The tickets to the ferris wheel.

The room card to the hotel in D.C.

A paper wrapper that once held a bouquet of flowers.

Cards with butterflies and glitter.

You know how much I like things that sparkle.

A tag from a Christmas ornament–“New York is always ours.”

And letters.

All the letters.

I think I made it through two?

Before the grief swallowed me once more in its maw.

The pain it sings in my arms.

This time.

The bottoms.

Not the tops.

My dragons rest on top, one for each arm.

This pain has not healed yet.

But it will.

And the inky blue tattooed there will be the sky.

The same color of your eyes the day I fell into them.

Fell into you.

Fell for you.

Fell in love with you.

Soul sky eyes of blue.

There will be clouds that drift in that sky.

And my dragons will fly me through.

The pain will pass.

My heart will heal.

And every once in a while.

I may catch a glimpse of you in the echo of a song.

Or in the backward glance I throw at the mirror.

Where I will see just a glimpse of that word.

Lovebird.

Above my left hip.

Where you once so causally caressed me.

Undressed me.

And left me.

I will brush my hand over the calligraphy, wistful and soft,

Like unexpected snow in spring

And then I will fly,

Fly.

Fly.

Fly.

Away.

Free.

As the Crow Flies

Straight as an arrow.

The arrow of silver, Tiffany spun, you surprised me with, waking me from slumber–

Slipping into my room as I lay sleeping.

Never have I been so delighted.

Moved.

Shook.

I thought of that arrow today, it’s flight suspended between my clavicles, pointing to the stars that spangle my chest.

(Just added another one this past Friday)

Tempted to point out the fresh ink, the pink clementine orange of it, picture it, kiss it, and shoot you a photo of it with a wry smile.

Yet.

I did not.

I blocked you out, off my heart, off my soul, oft without you I have walked so long, why would it be any different now?

The crow flew over Jefferson Square park, a short walk from my house, dogs frolic in the late afternoon sun, and the murder gathered in the eucalyptus trees to spring full into the air twirling against the February sky.

Plum blossoms, pale pink and lavish purple, like bruises against the sky, tears of petals hanging from dark tree limbs.

Like the limbs burning on my back.

More work on the tattoo.

The one you inspired.

Two crows.

One cherry tree.

One heart.

Sometimes I think the pain is like the ghost of your hands on the backs of my shoulders.

Where you would hold me, whilst atop me, pushed in, face buried in my neck, arms under my shoulders, holding me as we became one and inseparable.

Yet.

Separate.

We are.

The crow reminded me of you, I said hello, carry my wishes forward to you upon the wind, but not my calls, my love letters or cards.

I am not sending them anymore.

I deleted you.

I blocked you.

I let you go.

Off into the high sky, like pastel balloons escaping a flower shop on Valentines Day.

Sigh.

Valentines Day.

Last year.

When I reached out to you once more.

That’s why, dearest, sweetest, dreamiest you, I deleted, blocked, and erased you, so I would not set the motion in momentum forward again.

No more.

No more calls.

No more poems.

No more kisses on your sweet face.

No more staring into your eyes.

No more falling in love with you.

Not that I believe I will fall out of love with you.

The love, I sense, does not die.

But it goes, it flings itself in a blue box in a drawer, like the blue sky against the wing of the crow as it flies away from me.

You have flown away from me.

I do not expect your return.

I never knew a love like this.

My exquisite corpse.

The crow in the copse.

My heart in my mouth.

The sky.

The sky.

The sky.

Like your eyes I fell into once upon a time.

In a land far, far away, The Sunset.

The sky is the only blue I will look into anymore.

Good bye my love.

Good bye my crow laughing at a funeral.

Good bye.

When You Feel Heartbroken

And you don’t know what to do.

You write.

You cry a bit.

You put on Wooden Heart’s Listener album and sing along to torch songs.

About crows and whiskey and prayers that aren’t heard.

But God hears the prayers.

He just doesn’t always give you the answers you want to hear.

You think about dying.

But you don’t die.

You put on a brave face and tell yourself that the pain is alright.

That’s how you grow.

Isn’t it.

Pain.

And I don’t want to die.

I still have so much living to do.

Maybe I just want to crawl into bed and cry into my pillows.

Fall asleep with tears rolling down my face and stare at the dark ceiling.

And wonder about the next door neighbor and the piano jazz that sometimes seeps out the windows of the ramshackle house at odd hours.

And maybe while I’m crying I’ll think about integrity and honesty and pain.

Because maybe you forgot what the pain feels like.

Well.

Until you feel the pain again.

And the surprise of it.

As though the past haunting hurt was just a whisper of how it feels now.

And maybe I’m not supposed to remember how it hurts.

Because then maybe I wouldn’t dare to love again.

Or love now.

I know I’m alive.

I know because it hurts.

And every moment of silence sinks me deeper.

The deep blue of Halsman’s Marilyn Monroe.

The old faded blue Christmas tree lights.

The blue ribbon on the package under the boughs.

Sinking me down.

So I write.

To process it all.

To not sink and stay sunk.

And I cry, soft, wicked slow, tears melting and wet.

Crumpled up and bent over and crying.

And maybe that’s ok.

It’s not, not ok.

It’s just a feeling.

It will pass.

Right?

Every season of grief has a meaning.

I just wish it wasn’t at Christmas time.

The baffled cheeriness of my battered heart.

Listening to Charlie Brown Christmas during the afternoon.

Watching the high blue sky and thinking of you.

Driving in my car so alive, so bouyant, so happy, so grateful.

To end the day in tears and confused and forsook.

I forsake myself, haven’t I?

Haunted by the last kiss you placed on my mouth.

Did you really tell me to scotch guard my shoes?

Were those your last words?

Because there’s no more to say, nothing left to say?

We all have the same holes in our heart.

Maybe I’ll just walk down to the sea and watch the meteor shower.

The sea can wash away the pain.

The sea can have it.

I won’t die from a broken heart.

It just feels that way.

That’s all.

 

The Moon In The Avocado Tree

Reminds me of you.

I sit.

Reflect.

Stare.

Dream.

The sky.

I watch the stars and think of little cable cars.

A movie scene.

Holding your hand.

Climbing the hills of the city.

Trying to get closer to the sky.

Trying to be closer to you.

So.

I wait for you.

Here.

While you are there.

So far away.

My eyes prickle with tears that do not fall.

My heart aches with yearning, longing, wistful wanting.

To hear your voice in my ear on the phone.

My ear aches for your breath to be there against it.

Instead of pressed to the machine carrying your voice.

Through the airways I hear you and long to wrap myself around you.

I miss you.

Oh.

I do.

So much.

Very.

Very.

Very.

Listen, can you hear it, the music, we dance slowly to.

And the afterglow of your

Last kiss on my mouth.

Which flutters awake and brushes me tender.

I need your kisses.

I need them so.

Counting down the minutes and moments until I am in your embrace again.

My face flushed with unbearable heat when I was cold today.

Thinking of you.

Then hearing your voice, husky and warm filled with its own kind of longing.

I still shudder thinking of how we came together.

That we are still together.

That I get to be with you, just not as soon as I want to be, right now.

Soon  you say.

Though.

It.

Is.

Not.

Soon enough.

Never soon enough.

Until you are here and I am smashed with your love.

And when I think of us.

I am in awe.

That this all came about.

You and I.

Some divine design.

Sacred and profound.

Lustful and chemical.

Chimerical.

I could never have imagined this.

Us.

Together.

Though apart.

For the moment.

Thus.

I swear, with all the softness of a dreamy mouth, to keep you close.

Though you are afar.

You are right here.

Ensconced.

In my heart.

At least this is what I tell myself.

While I watch the moon.

Drifting through the avocado tree.

 

 

 

What To Do?

I mean.

I have poetry surging through me right now.

But.

I also just need to process the fuck out of my day.

It was a day.

And though I was chased by poetry all day long.

ALL DAY LONG.

I feel as though I just need to write it out for a while.

It’s how I work things out.

Oh.

The poetry is that too.

But I have had a long day and I want to shake it out of my brain so that I can sleep.

I have much to do tomorrow and many places to go and be and do and see and feel.

Oh.

All the feels.

Hello feels.

So nice to see you again.

I don’t find it at all ironic that the field I am training in is therapy.

Hello.

Let ‘s get down to the feelings you have around that.

I had three clients tonight.

However, I only saw two of them.

One of my clients confused when we were supposed to meet and as the client was new and had not done an assessment yet I rescheduled her, I wasn’t going to be able to do an assessment in the ten minutes before my first session.

It took some time to explain what she needed to do and I had to own my part, there had been some miscommunication.

A little like playing telephone the old-fashioned way with cardboard tubes and strings.

It was worked out, but it ended with me having an hour in between my two clients that I did see.

I was fine with that, it actually let me take an important phone call and watch the sky while the sunset.

It was a nice sunset.

I found myself looking at the sky a lot today.

At work earlier in the day, it was a long day people 9a.m.-9:30p.m., the baby had fallen asleep on me.

Not once but twice.

The first time was fairly short and I handed him off to the mom who was heading out the door and taking him with her on her journey through the day.

I got to hang out with the other two monkeys and do lots of cooking a meal prep.

Then when the mom got back I got the baby and he passed out on me.

I had him on my chest, in a carrier, for at least two, probably two and a half hours.

Oh sure.

I looked at my phone a bit.

I read some texts.

I looked at some photographs.

Then I just got dreamy and looked out the window.

I watched the sky.

I watched the trees.

I closed my eyes and drifted.

I was seated on the couch and a few times the little guy would startle hearing his siblings or his mom and he would wake up and cry a bit and I had to get up and walk around and jostle him and bounce and hum.

I have this little thing I hum.

I have been doing it all the years I have been a nanny.

Sometimes I catch myself humming to myself.

It settles me, it soothes me, I don’t know how it exactly came about, but I pair that hum with a lullaby and sometimes I will just hum, three or four notes and repeat them again and again and breathe, in and out, deep and slow, and the baby always settles.

He left a pool of drool on my chest, a ring of moisture that the mom was aghast to see when I finally took him out of the carrier five minutes before I had to hop on my scooter and head to my internship to see my first client.

She pointed it out and I shrugged it off.

“My clients will love that, subconsciously, I’ll be a maternal and warming experience,” I told her, noting to myself that it wasn’t spit up and I didn’t smell like mothers milk, it was just baby drool and I know that baby drool is actually an amazing moisturizer.

I credit that and my grandmothers genetics on my father’s side for my youthful good looks.

Hahahahahaha.

Sorry.

I digress.

I told the mom it would dry before I got to work and I wasn’t worried about my clothes.

Although my fucking clothes have been much on my mind this past week.

The washer in the garage has been out of commission, it was supposed to be repaired this Wednesday but when I tried to do a load of wash last night, no go.

And I got a text from my landlady today while I was at work saying that it was beyond repair and that it would be getting replaced.

IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS.

Fuck my life.

I can’t tell you how much I was relying on doing laundry when I got home tonight.

God laughs when I make plans.

I guess I”m going to have to go to the laundry mat on Saturday.

Grr.

Annoying as fuck.

But at least the dryer works.

It’s more that it’s a time suck.

I don’t know how early or how late the laundry mat is open, it’s just down the block by the 7-11 on Judah and 46th, it’s just out of my fucking way and I don’t want to waste time dealing with it and I need to wash my yoga gear if I hit a class on Saturday.

Anyway.

Fucking luxury problems.

I have more than enough clean clothes to get me through the rest of the week.

Shit.

Tomorrow is Friday.

FRIDAY.

So ready for you.

So ready to see you.

Yes.

Yes I am.

Ah.

And there.

See

I did it.

I processed all my shit.

And maybe.

Well.

Maybe there will be poetry too.

There’s been so much.

Why not a little more.

It is the end of the week after.

Sweet dreams.

Gentle awakenings.

Happy end of the week.

I’ll see you on the flip.