grief

Life. Love. Loss.

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before dawn message
asks permission for my love
i’m awake, ready

my soul sister breaks
before the sun emerges
i’d give her my life

sleep is a present
unpresent in this week’s life
seven days of hell

he flies tomorrow
what if he doesn’t make it
in time for her death?

my girls play the wii
squealing with best friend’s pained joy
parents’ illness wins

and yet they smile
dress up in formal attire
perfect for their game

living life scares me
as i list all my boyfriends
kindergarten up

ask him to recall
if he searched for love like me
or found it at home

he cannot answer
too consumed by coming grief
losing his mother

they will play all night
and go vacation their dreams
never knowing loss

that is what i want
no search for school boyfriends
just love at home. LOVE.

Cheers and Tears

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longest week ever
ending with happy hour
tears still in ducts

Memorialize Him

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because he came in
and wrote with us a class poem
when we were thirteen

because he’s your dad
forget the swallowed disease
because he made you

for twenty-eight years
your mom gave her life to him
because she loved him

because demons live
even if we wished they’d die
that is why, that’s why

because he deserves
what a father, husband should
he’s not forgotten

because you found him
in your heart, you always knew
that you would find him

the mother of three
raised at home with two parents
he was one of them

because of our youth
the car, recording our voice
and all the journals

he’s in every one
saw through demons to love you
because he loved you

you are my best friend
and he made you, he made you
that is why, that’s why

Road, River, Range

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It is probably best that you dissented. That Wii and dinner preparation were more important than this Sunday afternoon ride.

We all have our releases. Yours is cutting onions and spinning tires in an imaginary resort. Mine is spinning tires in the real world, on concrete paved just for my bicycle.

I was first out of the gate, ready to win. For one hour, I was not anybody’s mother. Anybody’s teacher. Anybody’s wife. Anybody’s (even the one who lost her baby) friend. I was just a cyclist, three words to my name: “On your left!!” shouted to the tops of the peaks. Ringing out over my music. Move out of my way because there are not enough miles, not enough breaths in my lungs, not enough songs on this playlist to pedal through this pain.

Only: Road, River, Range. That is all I wanted to see. That is all I wanted to pull into my soul this Sunday. Those blue Colorado skies, the perfectly paved path, the river that feeds us all, and the mountains that divide our continent. There is nothing in this world more beautiful than sweat trickling down a back, tight thigh muscles, clicking gears, and That View. I could live my whole life in that one hour, the numbness of nightmares disappearing with each and every mile.

Forget what she said on Friday. Or the horrible news that I might carry like a burden for three weeks and she will carry for a lifetime. Forget that I came home to discover my husband’s mother rests on her death bed and my little girls can’t quite wrap their minds around anything deeper than the five-house alley-walk to their friend’s house.

Forget it all for this one breath-stealing shout-out: Road, River, Range. Placed here for me, for all of us, to tackle with this perfect body someone gave me to live on this Earth.

The three R’s. Only a different lesson.

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Crush

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You know that when a grown man has to step into the restroom to wipe away his tears, it is that bad.

There is no measurement for this. There is no set standard of tears or years. It is only you and the devastation, the loss that will forever consume your life.

And I gather up my girls. My sixth-grader grabs my hand to walk past my First Denver Apartment (age eleven–how life spins in circles) and I take her fingers between mine like it’s my first crush. Because she is my first crush. My first crush of motherhood.

I think about the time after she was born and I had nightmare after nightmare of going places with her and leaving her somewhere… In the car seat on top of the car. In the stroller at the mall. In the back seat. At school. How my mind couldn’t fully adjust to being one hundred percent responsible for myself and a Whole Other Human.

And I hate that your life for the next four months means that you won’t be coming to work. That you have his room all set in perfect Pooh beauty, and that he will not be sleeping in that crib, and you will not be sleeping at all. And that you won’t have the joy of first-mother nightmares, of eleven-year-old arguments, of nine-year-old know-it-all truths, of eight-year-old cuddlings on the couch.

I hate that you would have to endure this before even fully becoming a mother.

Because you were a mother the moment he was inside of you, and your mindset changed from teacher + wife to wife + mother. And I hate how fate has changed all of that, and that you will wallow in loss and count birthdays and wish and wish and wish until there are no more wishes to wish.

And I hate how I cannot say anything to you, because I cannot possibly begin to understand the loss. The recovery. The absence of recovery. The first-mother crush that is crushed…

I hate that you won’t have first-child nightmares. Or that you will, only… they will be so much worse than anything I can imagine. I hate that you have this on your plate to face for the rest of your life. That you have Tragedy to bear for the rest of your life. Because you don’t deserve it. Because you wanted to be something so many people take for granted. Because you were meant to be a mother.

Because you were a mother. You ARE a mother. From the moment he was inside of you, you had that crush. That first-child crush.

Love is love. And it will find its way back into your life. Love lives beyond that life-changing moment. It grows inside of you just as easily as that beautiful baby boy. And it never ends. It never disappears, no matter how many birthdays pass, how many sad regrets.

Love is love. Love… is love.

Step

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with these feet
you will pound it out
you will remember your childhood
your hand in his
you will run
run past the wind
as the moment
you last saw him
slides into your subconscious
and he becomes a part
of every step you take.

Icicles

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fog creeps in
beckoning spring
with an absent snowfall
frost on the branches
we wait
i wait
new bicycle shining
under the flash
never yet on pavement
one thousand
rooftops mimic mountains
i cannot see
he tells me by 2050
too many people will live here
to sustain life
and why am i having another child
vanilla caramel cream porter
mixed with dates that match up exactly
eleven
twenty-two
eighty-nine years
my grandmother enters
and leaves this life.

it is monday
only monday
the week is fresh
new like the snow
that will creep in on cats’ paws
as we sleep
and i wonder
if my girls
who met her once
will brave the cold
the cold, the cold
and bury the seed
that brought them into this world
the seed from last century
the person who they will never know
whose words ring
like icicles on snow
we wait for all night.

Delete

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just when i think my heart has moved on
you haunt me with messages in my dreams
forcing me to sever this one last tie that
has kept me connected to you (your life
without me) for more than a year.

it is just a click of one button (delete)
that eliminates all the hope held somewhere
within me, the hope that hovers inside my
dreams, sticking around like a bee in a
field of non-native clover.

it is just a click of one button (delete)
that i hope will rid the constant imagery,
the begging for forgiveness, the desire
that i have (that i have always had) for
you to love me as much as i have loved you.

it is just a click of one button (delete)
that i hadn’t the strength to push until today,
one year later, closing the screen (closing
my heart) to the amazing person that you (I)
have missed because of too many button clicks.

Heart

/ lovizmytrio / 4 Comments

out on her sleeve,
plain as day on her face
she wears her heart
torn into bits
that spatter him with
the love she craves

but oblivion blinds him
from what he can’t understand
(she can’t understand)
and the salty droplets
mix with the blood
(the love?)
so that she can’t wash it away

his obsession preoccupies
the heart that he should hand over
and though she tries
to bait her hook
with the right words,
he doesn’t bite
(oh but he bites)

and she pines,
pieces sliding down her cheeks,
sleeve shredded,
for him to
spread open his lids,
catch her wounded words,
and restore her heart.