the sun beats its way into summer
and simmers along the shore.
all i see are sparkles
brighter than diamonds
lighting up my lake,
my little girls piling
watery sand on my
abandoned-nail-polish feet,
hazy mountains in the distance
popping under bright blue sky,
my Colorado begging me to stay
but i know, i know,
their sand-castle grins
captured in my shitty lens,
that i will be home,
we will be home,
as long as we’re together
it’s not pizza
it’s Beau Jo’s
and we pile on honey
drive across grid-lined neighborhoods
and pray our van won’t die
between Denver and the suburbs
the kids are free tonight
we are free tonight
though strapped down by
a mortgage
two semi-functioning vehicles
endless governmental fees
and a dream that breaks my heart
every time the sun rises
Pandora nor my Mac
will play my music loud enough
i still love them anyway
and though we go to Spain
though we put our lives on the line
to go to Spain
i will love you anyway
this is my life dream
and our Fathers’ Day bike ride
love how you come with
they stand with cherries
too sour to eat alone
pitted for sweet pie
i pull apart the pack-n-play–
one of my closest friend’s baby
will sleep here again tonight
it still fits him
(my girls are way outgrown)
and it still fits
in this ten by ten room
the room carpeted green
painted (nine months pregnant) white
that we built with sweat and tears
eleven years in the making
the room in our basement
now stacked with our lives–
books we cannot part from,
handmade quilts, knick-knacks,
art from my mother’s
most delicate brush and pencil,
all our family photos
he will sleep here tonight
(he still fits)
all our closets and walls are empty
(they all fit)
and i just wonder
as i see our life
in perfectly neat stacks–
how can we fit anywhere else?
they play our music
piano bar tunes to last
longer than this will
a bee stung me today
right above my ear on mile 148
my seven-year-old might
start third grade in Spain
my former colleagues
discussed my job opening
the devils of divorce
and the two-faced
behavior of administrators
this is a list poem
i had two beers
and watched my Spaniards
pack up twenty bags
for the journey i will
soon take my family on
this is the beginning of the end
and the end of the beginning
how circular life can be
when in words we cannot express
all the emotions that draw
the endless lines together
i pedal into the sunset,
his dinner in my belly,
blue mountains backed by
a golden western sky
gold shines upon the path,
the endless evening walkers,
melts into cotton candy clouds
turning twilight into night
the circular connection of trails
brings me in and out of cities,
a world all my own, filled with
cottonwoods, creeks, canals
i imagine the townhome
hidden somewhere along the way
where we will retire, bring
our grandchildren home to
i could pick it out along the trail–
a tiny yard, garage, swimming pool,
shaded by the trees along the creek,
protected from city splendor
it would be as perfect as these moments
along the path, my pedals spinning
behind blue mountains, the golden twilight
that we will one day call our own
just like the cactus flower
so rare and beautiful
that pops up yellow and pink
in the early part of summer
you dart in and out of seasons
shyly sneaking soft petals
up into the sunlit sky
amongst a world of thorns
If you would like a Spanish visa, begin here.
This is my living room floor. And one member of my family’s paperwork for a visa application. One.
There are five of us.
This is only ninety percent complete. We are still waiting for the two most important papers of all. The one that says I have a job in Spain. And the one that says we’re not criminals.
We are not criminals. We are five people connected by a thought I had when I was a heartbroken nineteen-year-old freshman in college. The thought? I will teach ESL. I will marry someone. And I will take my family to a Spanish-speaking country so that my children will learn Spanish.
What you don’t think of when you are nineteen: your husband who doesn’t speak Spanish (but will go anywhere in the world with you). Your third child who becomes mute in any discomforting situation. The job you have had for seven years and the colleagues you love so dearly, many of whom you may never see again. The friendships that (head out of shell) you took years to develop, which will deteriorate rapidly upon your absence. The Girl Scout troop that may not exist while you are gone. The grandmother whose hands you can still picture grasping her husband’s back, who may die while you are overseas. The children who will be unlike their peers when they return.
All the praise and forced gratitude and jealousy and pain that you must face every time you speak the word SPAIN.
The financial tally. Life savings placed upon the floor of the home you purchased so proudly at the age of twenty-three, fresh out of college, the floor your husband took out and replaced with his bare and beautiful hands.
When you are nineteen and heartbroken and set your heart and educational future and every belief within your soul on an impossible dream that somehow you have made into a reality, the last thing.
The last thing.
That you want to hear, at age thirty-four, once the paperwork is laid out on the floor, is that you have CHOSEN this. So you must deal with all the pain, the unbearableness, the consequence.
So this? This semi-occupied floor which could never fit the file folder filled with paperwork? It is an image worth a thousand words that will remain unspoken. Because I will never know if my loss will be greater than my gain, or if a giant gush of a wind will blow it all away, just after I have laid out my family’s life for all to see, for all to never forgive me for.
Step Write Up 