April 2020

Each of us has our grief, from canceled weddings and baby showers, canceled trips, missing our mothers, missing our sisters, missing our friends. For some there is death too. Sometimes death without goodbye. Sometimes death alone in a hospital bed. It’s all real, this sorrow we are swimming in. I am witness to the darkness, someone sobbing on the other line as I deliver some fresh devastation, with no face I can to match with their grief. 

Each of us alone, we are swimming in this sorrow together. 

Lion

Little lion

I carry you with me

You bring me light 

At midnight 

You bring me courage 

When I’m shaking in the wind

One foot in front of the next

I’m brave when they need me 

I’m blazing like the sun

for you 

my little lion 

Brave

He tells me I’m brave 

but I can do anything 

when I know I come home to these arms 

February

Something about the morning sun
on my tired face
on the front porch
in the cold air

I feel the stirrings
of something like hope

I sit in my warm memories
of papaya on the top deck
in the jungle
of the waves that tossed me
head over heels on the black sand

I close my eyes
the promise of springtime
it makes me ache
It feels something
like hope

7 weeks

In becoming a mother
I fear becoming my mother
losing myself
maybe on purpose
or by accident

A prisoner to the life I’ve created
my old self only seen
in whispers in the wind,
in the light that winks through
the crack in the door.
The deep murmurs in dreams,
a glimpse beneath dark waters.

I cannot lose her,
the wild woman.

She is life itself.

Nightmare

I walked into the room 

And it was my sister 

on the breathing machine 

I couldn’t fix her

I tried everything. 

It was my sister in my dream 

Balloon

Fear is a balloon

Inflating inside my chest 

Pressing on the inside of my ribs 

It’s hard to take a breath 

It’s hard to think of missing you