Rudys

I don't think she told us her name but she had bright hopeful eyes even at the age of 43. They fluttered here and there with excitement as our eyes landed on the caramel creAm with brittle skin, over to the pasteries, the quiche, their freshly made spread. 

 The thick French accent was included in every word and every now and then she would stop, touching her temples or cheeks, apologizing for the brokenness of her English. We waved her concern away and kept pressing in for answers, enthralled with their bravery, their voyage away from home to this place. 

It was evident how excited she was to share her background, how the taxes were so high there, the government so corrupt, the tragedy that happened recently, it all brought them here. She mentioned her son in law with her hand and at the same time and motioned to her daughter, who fluttered around preparing plates, washing her hands, her husband letting the caramel sauce ooze out near the pastery on the clear plate. Her and her husband both, shoulder to shoulder were giddy with excitement to take our order, his blue eyes exposed just as my joy in the blue of his eyes. I wondered what people saw in me while I spoke,  I hoped it was just as full of light.

"This place," she said, lifting her eyes as if to show how overcome she was by it, "it's my dream." 

His name was Jim, actually.

"I just came from there actually," he told me as I explained how this weather wasn't very cold at all, because I'm from Michigan. 

His voice felt curled on the end of each sentence, like a tiny lisp or insecurity was attached on the end of each sentence like at one time he had to learn to force himself to interact, to speak.  "I'm from Fennville." 

The pool sparkled under the dark night sky, and the hot tub rumbled behind us, angry at its heat. 

I started writing this portion in my head and so I felt more friendly then I normally would, digging for a little bit of morsels to interject here and there, hoping I could make him interesting. I thought of things to ask as he straddled the roll of plastic that would soon be a skin for the surface of the pool. His legs curled around it and he road it like a bull on wheels along the edge of the pool to the correct location. The jean jacket was a little long at the wrists like he'd bought it at a thrift store with flannel lining, and the jeans, baggy around his knees and ankles. 

Normally, I wouldn't feel very comfortable or interested talking to a man my fathers age (who I had assumed was creeping around the pool collecting images of me as I exercise, until he told me his girlfriend and him both close the pool when it's necessary. The temperature had dropped tonight and so closing the pool was necessary.) In my story I named him Jerry, it seemed to fit him. 

He reminded me of my father, short in stature and squeaky in the way he walked, like on his toe not his heel. Apparently his mother has dementia, she is 92. He cares for her, and the pool, and his girlfriend is usually here, but she's a little sick tonight. 

 I asked him a couple normal terrifying questions like who he was and what he does. "I just retired actually, it's pretty scary... you gotta stay busy." I mentioned how taking care of his mother must keep him busy, and how good that was of him. "Well, sort of," he answered leaving the comment seem unended, like there was more there. I told him how my dad just retired too, and how he gardened and took care of the chickens and he seemed quite surprised about Dad's activity level. 

  Amongst all this, he mentioned in passing how he came here, later than usual, has a daughter in Fennville, how he drove down to Florida this time, and with a satisfied look on his face he told me "i had to, because i had to bring the motorcycle." 

Somehow, the way he said it with his head tilted slightly and said it over top of whatever max was mumbling was just enough information to know that this was some of the most essential information he had unpacked for me. 

Portion

I am a portion 

Of your trouble 

Of your anger 

But also your morning 

I am also where the sun rises 

And the warm body to which you belong

To which you stride with

Do not forget the portion of me

That helps you stand tall when you want to wrinkle 

California

He talked about California for a year before her. The skating, the palms, the sun.

Now those plans have changed and you are not disheartened. 

She's your California. 

Bustle

The chair never had time to warm 

Over and over again she was up and down 

Delivering coffee, making hashbrowns 

Filling the belly of the dishwasher 

Folding a towel in case he wants a shower 

Taking a shower, dressing, sweeping off the couch from last nights crumbs 

She bustles around me 

Every part of my blood anxious from the moving 

While the tv plays and while I wait for the pastor to awake 

Carefully 

From dreams 

They say that you marry a woman like your

Mother 

I'm trying to find the

Commonality in our blood 

- How to take the bustling out of a woman

Friendship

It was during my war that I found friendship 

& not the plastic kind, you know what I mean 

It was between the bomb shelters and the explosions

You were the quiet part 

The safe part 

And that is why I made I through. 

.

I found God 

He was in the branches of winter 

____

I think he knows we are better with our eyes and fingers and this is why he has no voice

He gave breathing and all this space in our lungs to sift through 

And it's a wonder why we wonder 

Where he is 

testimony

my story and my voice broke all over the room and all over your heads
whichever parts you could pick up anyway

I hope I did not speak for nothing about everything that broke me and made me stronger and all the knowledge I have about  how to get back on your feet again when you cannot

I know what it is like to not be able to put one foot in front of the other for fear of using all of the energy

I know what it is like to feel like you must remake all of what you know over again and to turn away honey over and over again because you thought the stickiness would affect the taste

listening

I remember when I was most alone
most empty of all I had been made to do
you came to byron center to find a bench with me

we were on a trail, the sun was cutting its knife through the trees and you were telling me everything like you do, how afraid you were.

how you didn't know what it would be like. how you were trying not to be afraid, how you kept thinking about him and his way out, and how parenting felt like your knowledge of Pelicans, something you had seen from a distance but had never been yourself. I watched you put your long dark piano fingers across your growing womb as you spoke about knowing him as he grew larger and  I remember you telling me how you had already named him and what you thought about the name and where it had come from. you tell me everything, and I like that.

I don't remember, did I give you advice I didn't have?
I hope I absorbed you there, all your words.
I hope I left the topic unresolved and just shook my head and said things like "yes, yes" and "oh I cannot imagine" instead of trying to fix it, or cure it, or ease it like butter eases bread

I think that would be the best way I could have befriended you that day, and I thought of it just now, as I thought of listening. how it has nothing to do with the mouth, and more to do with the eyes and the shoulders.

T.K. 1986-2016

I drank in the photographs of his life, feeling like an imposter

thumbing through a book he made when he was 8, the construction paper feels rusty and expired like his life  

he had wanted to be a professional football player

someday

They had chosen a blue button up collared shirt that was tightened all the way to the top, every button was carefully attached, even snug around his wrists. that way no one would know. I wondering if they had told son the way they found him, hanging there.

 his wrists were crisscrossed like branches at his waste, casket hung with its mouth open, the white roses crowding the space. 

everyone is fumbling with their eyes, their words, their handshakes.

I watch G, he shakes his head over and over again, talking to himself, talking to T, reliving a few memories with his hollow body lying there. 

G looks empty himself, and every part of this trauma reminds him of a funeral he attended three years ago, except then it was his wife he stood over.

 T's sisters are grieving in two.

 One: in a dimlit room, sunglasses tight at her temples, the walls around her have no doors and she sits in silence next to a man whose skin is tight and thirsty. 

 Two: her cheeks are full and swollen, pink with kissing and embracing the flood of people, smiling, weeping, shaking hands, though her handshake has the life of a rag. 

   I don't know who we are telling, but,

  T learned how to kill himself from his mother. 

  I see my husband above the crowd, his eyes following T's son. He discerns the state of the boy, and hovers from room to room with him, wondering if he should, if he would have a chance to say something, what would he say? what could he say? 

T's ex-wife, full with child, a black dress closely pressed around her womb, her face is dry, but she is here to grieve as well in the quiet of this room, with one cell phone bleating into the silence.

  I exit the flooded space and find a quiet row that is soon cluttered with people muttering as they stare at his pictures, " oh what a cute kid he was, " " oh what nice nice pictures these are," 

   a girl behind me is weeping through the entire funeral, and the one in front rubs her own shoulders for comfort, then her neck, her body doubled over, filling the sleeves of her sweater with her tears. 

  Max fills the chapel with words he's  mulled over, to give just enough lifting, just enough encouragement with a space to grieve. Ive never seen him a suit, but there he is, desperate to make this a respected space, tight and straight and ironed carefully, the tie as tight as a rope.

there are ten sides to this story and you only know one of them

I don't think I have found out yet how to take the rattle out of the rattle snake of family
the words cast about like tiny fires lighting the people we adore into flame
sizzling down the good we know of each other so that we can take one good bite of spite

-conflict

Prayer

I have found it hard to pray 

Unless it is written like I write and why should it be any different really 

_______

I don't care if he doesn't have the words or the strength anymore I will have the words and the strength for him and so father I ask that you close this gap let me be a sacrifice standing in the center of this darkness let your light from the throne room peek in as I put one foot in his room and one in yours and ask that they join

Isn't this the purpose of prayer and so God i wrestle and ask again and beg and wonder why you never healed him yet even though I've been begging for years 

Heck it doesn't matter I'm going to pray anyway and believe that you've heard it all 

Despite the lack of movement 

And then you remind me where he was last year you ask me to ponder to wonder to see the way his hands couldn't stop shaking being of the intake of alcohol and then I'm reminded that soon there after he was sent in a lunatic to a place he called prison while we waited for him to be made well 

And then I remember that he's asking begging pleading for help even though a year ago he had disappeared thinking he was well 

And so these questions he's asking this is grace 

He's still here able to have a conversation 

Sober from the boos 

Sober from the death of a close friend and so I ask God 

Continue to heal the brother I so dearly love 

Family

Chin on shoulder 

They both sit lanky

Shoulder to shoulder 

Next to each other 

Two houses with joined rooves 

We set this up, Elise and I, her washing things in my sink filling it with soapy water and scrubbing down the walls of the stainless steel taking about being a widow about charity taatjes about dinner and how to caramelize walnuts on top of French toast as she dips into it scraping it onto the bread hats with her finger 

We become family. 

All of us. 

The parents file in like Pelicans 

Through the doors and over the icy steps and with hands full of sweet fruit

They

Life givers 

Spooning out their youth to make us the trees we are now and we collect as one around a prayer a table over bread and eggs and hazelnut coffee and thank God 

The Jesus I hear some of you might be unsure of 

Skeptical of 

Before we begin 

I allow questions 

Afterwards, after the adults have gone 

We sit on the floor

The dog between our knees and our laps and in fingers and how did this happen that so quickly and like wearing a sweater 

So easily 

Did

We

Become family 

J 3

I hammered up the stairs and peeked in 

The Blanket stretched over him carefully tucked in all the right places to cover his feet, his shoulders like skin 

He opened his eyes and whispered my name 

"I'm trying to take a nap," he said then, smiling 

I reached down, took in the scent of bonfire

The morning was spent brush in hand carrying all of the tree to the fire 

My mother complained of cramped feet, 

My father ladeled tomatoe soup into two bowls 

My little brother is still a child trying to climb out 

Somewhere it became stunted

Someone put him back down 

He is still small yet the skin wrapped around his organs is almost 28 years old. 

How did this happen? 

I kissed him on the cheek and whispered "I just wanted to say hi" and I left just as quickly 

Just enough that he knows I'm still here 

Not too much to smother him 

... 

This is the way to press through things 

This is research and art and 

The bookends to all the events 

This is a collection of tears 

They are shoved 

With salt sprinkled delicacy into this space 

Can you feel what I feel? 

Slow down

Walk shoulder to shoulder with me as if this is the only way you know how to walk 

We can carry it all this way 

We can carry each other this way 

Memories

We were in front of the mirror 

Hannah was in the dressing room with lace at her ankles and dresses hanging on ever surface 

"Benny says that..." 

she caught herself just like that, mid swing and sharply changed her sentence 

"Benny used to say..." pause  "that I say all kinds of words wrong like "strawl" instead of straw 

It was a memory, tiny nugget of gold that we all sort of recognized 

She sat there 

Satisfied with this memory as if somehow 

It brought him into this room 

Husband

Sometimes you need legs 

That are not your own 

To hold you up 

J2

He lay there 

Crooked like a fetus 

The blankets attached with nail and hammer to cover the windows 

So he could sleep

And so he could think 

His eyes were always large like mine and today they were large and afraid 

Everyone always told him wow what a pretty child you are and so when we were young I told him we were the same him and I 

Bonded in a way 

And It was true 

There was something about his mind that I always understood 

I counseled him for hours when he was six or seven sitting in the crook of the armchair next to me 

Unable to process my words because he couldn't process his thoughts 

... 

You forget sometimes 

That you're needed 

You plug your calendar full of things 

When he is alone 

In his bedroom 

Every single morning 

With no one to talk to

Alone with his thoughts 

He told me once 

That when I leave

It is depressing 

And so now 

I've whittled the list down even more 

(It keeps getting smaller) 

For fear of missing him.

Of missing out. 

Of not being there when someone with the same blood

Is asking. 

I shut them all up

It was thought through 

Intentional 

And also impulsive (if that's possible)

It's not that I wanted them to know. 

I just wanted them to believe 

He is not the youngest child 

Frivolous in his decision making. 

J

I think the devil has always been on the quest to crowd out his little mind 

I remember the OCD even at an early age

The tears

The mouth that would not speak for fear of saying the wrong line 

The devil

For some reason

Had his eye on you

 Deceptive and eager to

pack the cerebrum with lies

The pesky thief I hate you 

I watch J press his palm to his forehead 

"I just want to be free from these thoughts" his forehead bent and eyes filled with tears 

As he lay there 

Motionless

Hollow

And then he tells me every skeleton

The ones that hang wearing fear

The things he's kept trapped between his rob cage and lungs because he was afraid to put them into the air 

And I pray under my breath as I climb the stairs and lay down on the floor next to him 

"Give me words" 

... 

It is my mission to take some of the load 

To wear it

For him

So he doesn't have to bear it all 

In the same way Jesus took all of mine 

Let me have a little of your fear

Until you can see clear enough 

To let Jesus have yours too. 

Benny Boes

I found a thin place yesterday, the thin space between heaven and earth when it feels as if earth is just barely separate from that place. When God is in the room. When you can feel Him so present, like He is breathing right behind you onto your neck, and goosebumps traveling up and down your spine. Some spaces are like that, you know. 

I've been thinking a lot about death. I know, I know, morbid and dark... but I prefer to not think about it this way. I pray that I think of it more so that when I could choose to be sharp or pointed with my husband (& my God knows I'm good at being sharp and pointed with my husband... about the boxers on the floor or the salsas and dips left out all night).... I pray I think about death more so that when I want to be cross I can look at his face and instead see that this moment, this breath of air, this time frame with him is a gift... and I want to use it to love him because I won't have him forever. 

Every year Ive made it a habit to pray this verse "teach me to count my days." It's one of my favorite passages, and it's followed with "remind me that my days are numbered, how fleeting my life is... my entire lifetime is just a moment to you, at best, each of us is but a breath. We are merely moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing. We heap up wealth, not knowing how to spend it. And so Lord, where do I put my hope? My only hope is in you." (Psalm 39 NLT) 

Yesterday we celebrated a mans life. His name was Benny Boes. They carried his body (he is somewhere else, watching us? Dancing? His brain, tumorless) in a long cedar colored casket, and every one stood. There were hands laid on the wood of the frame. Ever face was wet. Cal was clinging to his mother as she stood bravely at the front watching her husband carried past her. 

"You don't know how much the music/band needs a drummer until the drummer isn't there"... it was something like that anyway. Words of Isaiah Kallman. 

What will this world be like without the drum of Benny Boes? 

It was a perfect day. The leaves were falling, the sun stretching his long arms through the church windows and across the aisles of Benny's loved ones. Coldplay filled every single crevice of the church with the words of "fix you," as they carried him in... the same song Elise walked down the aisle too, in this same space where she vowed "in sickness and in health." The last six months she fought for love just as he instructed us today. 

The place was full with Liverpool & tigers jerseys, and more people than I thought I'd know. I didn't know Benny, but the people he influenced, lived daily with, showed me the person that Benny was. 

"Be yourself. Live urgently, fight for love," Benny left us with these life instructions and Elise carried them into the room and into our hearts with an unwavering voice of confidence and strength. 

Elise encouraged everyone today to "come as they are" because Benny would want all of us to be ourselves, with bravery. Benny's mother in law wore jeans. Josiah and Hannah, full of water on their faces wore two shirts that still smelled like Benny. 

& Friends and family said goodbye to Benny, while the boys choir sang in Latin, while everyone raised Bennys favorite beer singing his favorite song, it felt like something electric was closing... the waving, the weeping, the chandeliers hanging, there were so much beauty in this goodbye that I don't think the impact Benny made on people's lives will ever wilt. 

It left me wondering what I'm doing here. This space, this tiny life I get to live "each of us is but a breath." I want Benny's life and testimony to change me. 

"Saints touch and transform people's lives wherever they are" the pastor said, wiping his nose from his own tears. And I could see that Benny had done this well, so well with his life.

Hospitals

I hate hospitals 

Their shiny floors

And intolerable beeping

The maze of drs and nurses who are in and out and around

The oil paintings strung up by nails that suggest this to be a happy place 

We walk to room 5022

I see his feet

Rubber gray socks

Lyle.

2.

Mom reaches over during lunch

(They have taken him away for more tests and ultrasounds, checking the messages of his heart and the size of his spleen) 

I tried to leave once 

With the excuse of all I had to get done 

My head spinning 

My eyes raw with holding everything in 

The message on my lips bright and positive 

Lies. 

Mom reaches over for me during lunch

The cafeteria is buzzing 

And wipes at my forehead

I ask her what she is wiping away 

She tells me lines

Worry lines

That have built their way into my skin

3.

Dr Brenner 

Was a quiet man with words that were solid and understandable 

He spoke slowly

It is so we can hear him through the bramble of long delicate words that mean illness and life or death

He gives us good news with some hesitancy 

Not too much good news 

Enough to keep us positive 

Not enough that we can call him a 

Liar.

Grandpa was in good spirits, 

His thigh exposed by the sheet, 

The white loose undies showing just barely on his hip

They hang loose in the buttocks

As they lead him here and there 

He doesn't even think of it

He thinks of how he plans to live longer 

And the French toast he ate this morning

And the pot roast on its way 

When he talks he puts both arms above his head

We can see the tubes and the IV and the oxygen machine

The bruises that suggested 

"Something is wrong in here" 

Our bodies are wonderful companions 

They are with us through all of this 

Life

4. 

Life is marked with so much pain

I see it in all of the halls

In the way the nurses carry Pelicans in their voices 

A large body of things they don't say 

Life is also marked with so much beauty

And I will find it during all of this. 

Death is in threes she says

When life is swollen with death and pregnant with hangnails and cancer of the brain 

We fight back 

Raise a glass to lives gone past 

The wrinkled hands and the unresponsive voices that used to pray loud and clear and lead like harvest leads winter

We war on with hospitality and bright hot bread 

Make song 

Move our feet to the rhythm left in the world 

Until the glad day 

When we are all home 

Sweet

Sweet

Home

-finding the thin places 

Benny.

There is a silence in the statement. 

"He just died." 

What can we make of it, and what is there to do now? Our lives are crusts of eternity. 

River rats

"Are you the new neighbors?" 

I watch them approach 

Both pink in the face 

The color of embarrassment or flamingos

People tell me never to assume 

But I assume that alcohol has lived in their veins

The way blood does 

It has a habit of changing the face and the eyes 

Glazed

I've seen this many times before 

I saw it in the face of my man that sold us our home, his voice was rusty with addictions 

and protective of the home as he handed over a key. 

They both reach for my hand 

An extention of friendship 

"I'm Steve 

This is my wife Patty

We are the old neighbors" 

He gestures with a lazy hand toward the house 

"You may be new here, but you might be here awhile...the river has a way of getting to you" 

When he says this I feel something in the wind 

I wonder how does it get to you?

Is it like a mold? Or a demon or a kind of food that you love? 

Does it have a habit of changing the face and the eyes?

"I've been here a good 38 years..." he says as he passes, repeating our names, assuring us, he will remember them. 

what will be come of us. 

Exodus

I watched the geese 

Wild 

Fly south 

I left 

Clair next to me clambering about reassuring me that everyone will like me there 

She is always chatty and I've always loved that about her. 

Jim 

Looked like a school boy

Unsure of how to hug me

Where to put his arms 

But he walked me to my car 

His arms empty

Lucas took Rosalie 

Promising to water her 

To repot her 

I felt a lack of confidence in his green thumb

(It's usually shoved in a baseball kit) 

But this was good bye 

And he was my last Genesis client

And he's been my client for years

And I watched him gro into a teenager 

Only you know how to deal with his collic

Mom said 

Mourning this great loss 

Writing

In good writing 

You can feel the sandpaper on your fingertips 

Or wilting in your knees 

Good writers can house 

monsters 

birdsnests, violins, scandal

And feasting 

In between two hardcovered edges 

...

What I want to learn

Jeannie Garlets

I was in bed when I read it 

Jeannie wrapped herself up in a quilt square and sent herself in athletic tape on a little piece of rectangular paper with tiny flowers on it and a few of Ruby's scribble marks and it felt just like Jeannie feels when you're sitting in a room with her 

She isn't too focused on you that she forgets her children and she isn't too overconcerned about whatever she's doing that she won't allowed her child to enter in 

And everything feels like it's stamped with wild flowers and quilt squares and yes if you've met her you'd understand 

...

Happy birthday to me 

Change

You know what I mean 

When your tongue feels like salmon 

And your hands have Alzheimer's 

All your habits are rusty with 

... 

change

River house

This place I'm moving is a 

Hummingbird 

Delicate 

Silent 

But wait for it

Somewhere in the fabric of silence you'll find 

The click of the river 

Maybe it can rescue me from the chatter 

And give my writing 

The dust I need 

To make it feel real

As if we don't have enough on our minds

You give us the news

The sleeve of your sweatshirt soaked with snot and tears

It's clinging to everything this month

And there were a thousand crickets in the room they plagued him all night long

2. 

I felt his body stiffen next to mine 

This was the last thing

The very last thing 

We expected her to say

Sentimental post

His skin is warm 

A gift 

I hear his heart still beating 

A gift 

To lay next to a person

To call him yours 

A gift 

To breathe in and out the same breath

The same life 

A gift 

To watch him like a tree 

Grow

A gift 

To have his hand wrapped around my wrist 

A gift 

All of this

we celebrate with rings and wine and social media 

The two long haired blondes who have just decided that forever 

No matter what may come 

They will get through it 

2. 

We cry

As your monitor beeps 

Your chin quivers 

You pull up the white sheet around your chest 

Nurses and drs in and out in and out collecting your time collecting your blood collecting your data so they can give you your news 

I don't want to know how long you will still be here 

And I do not want to remember you sick

I want to remember the grandpa who set up the train around the tree at Christmas 

Who rubs grandmas feet and legs when they hurt 

Who helps her put on her shoes and opens every door

The one who refuses to let someone else pay for our meal

The hidden cistern you must have in your belly for the jokes you create 

Not afraid to say how you feel 

My birthday present 

3. 

Life is marked by beauty and death

Both linger together as lovers 

Making the beauty more beautiful 

4. 

I'll become better through this 

Not bitter 

5. 

And this week and the next we will put our entire life on Davis in boxes and carry them to a new home 

Next to the river 

On willow dr. 

6. 

Through all of this I think of you

And how you must be hurting 

And I'm sorry. 

7. 

All of this

Is part of this life we call short 

What can we make of it

I wish I was not the only one who cried in this family

They find results 

Deep in his spleen 

In the tick of his heart 

They drive some sort of devise into his hip bone and tell him he will barely feel anything

We are simply getting some bone marrow

It was over a text that we find out because we are not all there huddled around the hospital bed

The results are not good. 

The Dr., in is confidence 

His hope

He lied to us after all. 

Hospitals

1.

I hate hospitals 

Their shiny floors

And intolerable beeping

The disease that is on the loose in the halls

The weak ankles and dull skin of the walkers

The oil paintings strung up by nails that suggest this to be a happy place 

I keep my voice high and positive like I always have for everyone 

When the insides of me are water

My eyes raw from holding it all back 

His room is 5022

I see those silly rubberish socks sticking out of the sheet and his bruised arms are up around his head wrapped in oxygen cords and assorted tubes

I see my Grandpa lying there 

Loose and helpless 

(His chin quivers while they retell the story of his body over again) 

They take him soon 

For more testing 

More ultrasounds of his heart and

To check the size of his spleen and none of us know really what that has to do with his blood anyway 

2. 

It takes hours. 

We sit, the four of us. 

I tried to leave 

Claiming I had so much to do

I cried the entire walk down the elevators into the parking garage 

I made it all the way to my car and knew that this is me hiding

I let all of it out in those walls 

And I went all the way back inside 

To find my family 

To live in the today

And asked God to take care of the rest of it 

3.

Mom reaches over during lunch

The cafeteria is buzzing with Drs. & nurses and patients

We are lost in this building 

Unsure of how to order a hamburger in our grief 

Or what direction to pay in

Grandma tells a story of yesterday

" while Grandpa put on his shoes to come here he looked up at me and told me that these last 67 years of his life married to me have been the best 67 years of his life" 

She doesn't cry, but I do, because I'm a Gentry she says, they're emotional, she says, the rest of us keep it inside, she says

and my Dad tries not to look at me for fear of not knowing what to do with me (he must be a Grimm)

Mom reaches over and wipes at my forehead 

I ask her what she is wiping away 

She tells me lines

Worry lines

That have built their way into my skin

2.

Dr Brenner 

Is a quiet man with words that were solid and understandable 

He spoke slowly so as to try to help us understand what he's saying through his bramble of long words and definitions and capital letters that stand for things having to do with leukemia (the bitch) and bone marrow

But through it all 

He gives us good news 

But just enough

And not too much 

So that we cannot call him a liar later when the actual test results come 

4.

Grandpa was in good spirits then

And finished his pot roast and ice cream carefully with

His thigh exposed by the sheet, 

The white loose undies showing just barely on his hip

And under his buttocks as they move him here and there 

He thanks me for coming 

Twice

Tells me how nice it was, really 

5. 

Life is marked by so many things

Death

Disease 

You can hear it in the nurses voices 

The strain of hope that you find buried there 

But it is also marked by life and beauty 

And I know you aren't supposed to use words like life and beauty and hope in poetry

But I am going to be looking for beauty through it all 

And so it felt like a respectable place 

To put the word 

Hospital

Today I saw a man with only one leg and thought of how very lucky I am and how little I think of it 

Today I saw a man laying flat on his back with his mouth open wide and I thought how very lucky I am and how little I think of it 

Today a dr touched my grandpas bruising arms while she talked about his diagnosis she and told him what normal platelets look like and how they'll treat his leukemia and I thought how very helpless I feel like I have lost a limb or like all can do to help is lay here with my tongue exposed

2. 

I was all the way to my car

The doors closed 

Key in the ignition when I went back to Grandpas hospital room 

All of it can wait 

The paintings 

The editing 

Those people 

But if I were Grandpa 

It would mean something if I put all that aside 

And waited 

Gramps

I wonder what 

You said to me the first time you saw me 

You were twice my age when they put me in your arms 

And ever since you've told the world I'm your birthday gift 

Was your hair still red then at all? 

Over and over and over you ask me when

When am I going to make you a great grandchild 

And over and over and over again I tell you you have many years left that I don't have to yet 

Over and over and over again you ask me to simply stop over unannounced and I don't do it 

I always call

I always plan

It took Henry dying for me to change my schedule so that twice a month I can see you 

Twice a month I plan it 

Because otherwise I don't see how it'll

Happen and I just hope for more time someday in the future to play that game of cards we've been taking about since December 

2. 

And now they find that somewhere in you cancer has placed itself 

And even though I've know for years this day would come 

How can I explain to you how sad it makes me that I've never been what I wish I could be for you

That I'm sorry I never have the time for what I want 

That I wish over and over that you know how much I love you and That I'm worried my grief is more about what I can't give you and all this guilt then for what you must be going through inside 

Winter 2016

Winter 2016

Is pushing his sleeves up

Starting to sweat as he chips away at the iceblock preparing our snow 

I can feel it as I wake up in the morning 

The shadows are heavier 

It is harder to peel myself from the sheets 

Or beg energy to carry me into the day

Everything in winter makes me cry

As if a net of gray has been cast over everything 

Summer, sleep well

Spring, come soon

Chapter 1. Hutchmoot

And here 

during the litergies 

the responses

among the introverts

I found a stone in my throat

that was there for weeping

Chapter 1. Hutchmoot:On opening

I felt all the flowers

In me

Come open. 

Carrots

I like food.

I mean I guess who doesn't. 

I used to like the process of it too, before I had hobbies. 

I liked the sound of potatoes being ripped out of their skin and the sauce apples made when they bled in the oven, the taste of cinnamon in the corner of your nails. 

I think more than the preparation, I liked being in the kitchen with another human, the music loud, the feet all lined up next to mine. If it was Christmas those feet would have socks on and the toes would bounce to music, in the summer the toes would be exposed and hairy, and still clicking to the music. The water would be running mostly, humming over top of vegetables or cherries in wire baskets. 

But then I got hobbies. I learned I love my hands soaked in oil paint (which will probably be the death of me, what with their toxic chemicals) & I also found writing along the way.  I think if I cook it's so I can write about it. 

Once in awhile after a heavy and lengthy trip to the groceries store, when my arms are steaming with a variety of flavors and cheeses and when there is a bottle of wine I will choose to cook.

 I will lay all the bags out on the floor, open the mouth of my refrigerator and start putting it all away. This process fascinates me. I make lists of all the different meals I will make and i start to feel very domestic and in charge of my adult life and think about how very very proud my husband will be of my accomplishments and how restful he will feel with a nice hardy homecooked meal. 

You know how I feel a few weeks later? when the spinach is cremating itself leaf by leaf and the apples are bruising themselves all jostled up against each other like buttcheeks? I think, what has become of you and how have you declined so far in these two short weeks? 

Some perspective: The other day someone gave me a lasagna after we had a church function and it wasn't eaten. It fed us for a few days. Listen, I cooked this thing. That counts? Right? I turned on the oven, i set it,  I cooked it but left the lid on and the cheese stuck to the top of it. I cut up some potatoes into small squares (and my dog scratched at my pant leg until I gave them to her, she loves vegetables. Yes potatoes are vegetables.) I looked at my multi-colored carrots thinking about how much work theyd be to peel. They were all hairy and their skin was kinda cracked like Grandpas knuckles and I had so many paintings to do that I just cooked them that way. Hairy. My husband told me they were delicious. 

We might die early, but at least they were organic. 

All is not lost 

What with my legs mixed with yours

And my hands a part of your waste

Your hips are my hips

And then 

How can we be lost 

They all watch us untangle 

And yet they call us all tangled up 

Like two wires

That you can't bend back straight

You have bent me 

And I used to want this

I am afraid of your hands for years

And yet how I want them Desperately 

there is both

And though we are untangled 

Feel more tangled up than ever before 

Softness

I like softness because 

It plays so well with others 

Some people

Hate me for that

_________________

The hardest part of softness 

Is letting the long war of life 

Break you down

Into it 

_________________

I've seen it go the other way before 

Writer, musician, predator

He is a stiff man

Like my brother, really

With the controlled emotion of a cement wall

The bark on his face is carved purposely almost like an Amish man & was the color of the ocean 

deep and gray like a gloomy day

The kind of day my friend likes 

Where it is gray on gray on gray and it seems it would never go away 

But she would not like this kind of man

I would imagine him to be the sort that is a writer 

Or a musician

Alone in his house 

Mad with ideas and notes flying off his desk so many piles of them taped to walls and collecting on the floor like snow that he can not even finish one chapter or one line in a song 

Or it could be that he is 

A predator 

Someone who had a skeleton of sorts hanging between a wall somewhere

 but nobody knows about it except for himself   and he hates himself for it 

(in fact)

I can't even write about it it's so secret and everyday that he hates himself for it he 

Starves himself 

Lonely in his house 

But there is a chance this man just lost his wife twenty years ago and desperate with love for her had chosen to stay lonely 

She was a very good cook i imagine and so now without her he eats ravioli out of a can (but sometimes adds Parmesan cheese) 

I'm only guessing of course 

He stands behind me in the line at mejier with today's newspaper and one single yellow banana 

This tells me a lot of things 

1. He has more time on his hands than he wishes he had. He should join a chess club or get a dog with a small bladder so he can take her out to pee. He has so much time on his hands that he goes to the store to buy each meal, separately because he wants to fill the day or 

2. He is a writer like I am and takes brief and purposeful trips out to collect characters for his book & this entire time I am sizing him up he is sizing me up in my baggy shirt and my two clumsy hands full of pizza 

These are the hands of every person who helped me through it

Everyone has a color 

I know you know that

Soldier

With no ulterior motive

I wish I could apologize for

Cutting your legs off over & over again all those years 

She has found needle and thread I see 

Sewn them back on 

Sturdier then before

You both stand together now 

trees full of wind

(I'm so glad)

Lately there seems to be 

Not 

One

Free

Moment 

We have bagged the entire contents of our home and removed it

Drywall

Dust

Literal walls

Wood

Wood

Wood

Closets

And put it outside to be taken away. 

We took a perfectly good house and destroyed it to make it exactly what we want 

_what repentance feels like

You 

Are not a bad person. 

You

Have done bad things. 

Take them all. Write them down. And walk the opposite direction so that maybe you have a chance. Maybe he will no longer hurt you if he decides to do the right thing. Maybe you will be able to cry about letting another man have you. 

Then maybe the two of you can walk arm in arm again. Broken. Dirty. 

Flawless.

Not about your sister

Like a piece of leather 

Sharp and tight

Like your body 

Everything on you is in the right place and I am wearing a wrinkled jacket that i was excited about, a TShirt and boots that I've had for far too long but they're pointed and so I felt fashionable enough 

What.

Will I fit in here? 

Can I bring some sense of normalcy here? Authenticity? 

Am I judging you by even asking these questions somehow putting myself above you

When really how I feel is 

Not good enough 

Ugly

Frumpy

Like a cozy sweater 

And hair that just saw sand on a beach 

An introduction of sorts

Mostly it was the scones. 

You may think I'm joking but I'm serious. That and the way the sun bounced off everything on the kitchen table, the way the flowers leaned in lightly toward the window with their waists in water... The rummaging of children beneath our feet and babies on knees and morning breath and the steam of coffee. The way Jeannies homemade granola tasted with yogurt and the light color blue that had licked the entire kitchen. 

But mostly, once our hearts became deeply connected, once we had each learned to practice this rythmn of meeting, we discovered  we weren't lonely & we found, with time, a deep satisfaction. 

You can be married and still lonely we discovered. And lonely is a strong word, as each of us were surrounded with people and family who loved and cared but there was something we all yearned for. Maybe it was just the scones. 

We were careful to admit it: that there was something at this table that felt necessary, something that we had been missing. The words came out slowly like dripping and we said them with caution so as not to say we weren't happy or that our husbands weren't amazing or that God wasn't enough. They are recklessly enough. & we were passionately happy. but I think we all found, the four of us, at that table, that

Women need women. 

Katie and Andrew

With this love may you say 

I want you

When the grass is tall and untamable 

I want you still 

When the red takes leaves with its paint and pulls them slowly to the ground 

When you are winter Over and Over and You look at him and say I'm glad you are my home 

When the flowers are such vulnerable seeds with no color

children in the soil 

This is when I want you

And no more 

And all the time 

Katie and Andrew may your love be always and incredibly full of patches as your love will cover ever hole that could devistate until you are mosaics and the patches are remarkable 

Ron

He is a plum with legs 

If I were to describe how to treat him when I leave I'd ask you please never raise his price, he will only be in your chair for fifteen minutes 

He will never ask for a shampoo

And he will tell you about the wood he chops, the lawn work his wife has for him or the trip to Florida where he watches baseball with his son

He will change his schedule during golf season

Take the length carefully up in the back, just along the edge of his scar (you'll see where there were stitches) 

When your on the right side of him talk loudly, he has lost hearing in that ear 

And do not forget to trim the braidable strands of eyebrow hair whose texture is that of Asian noodles 

And never tell him i said he is like a plum because I mean it in the most endearing way but he may take offense

It's a funny thing 

I thought I was in charge but 

I am not in charge of the blush tone in my cheeks just now 

I thought I left that color years ago 

There she was 

In my home 

Anxious 

Small

But made him feel like everything except 

The taxidermy version of himself 

He wanted to be with you in every room 

And every hour 

Of the house 

Homer, Alaska

All of it reminded me of Michigan 

Besides the taste of salt in the water 

The smooth rocks that lay in place of sand 

The cheekbones and hips of mountains napping along the horizon, 

And the ever so often moose

Grazing without caution

Outside my window pane 

Sometimes it hurts how blessed I am 

Like an incision

Or a fever 

I'm afraid that someday it will harm me 

And remind me of how good I had it

How ungrateful I was 

I feel like I'm missing the suffering I always imagine is right around the corner 

Last night though

He reminded me of his name 

"I am Comforter" 

I heard 

And all of this goodness seems to equate with a good good Father 

But I'm just afraid if it's ever bad I will forget how to trust his goodness

Painting is therapy

I propped them up 

All of them the color of a garden 

Hung them tightly on nails and screws along brick

And left 

They each are gardens of my hours 

Countries of my sadness

Embarrassment 

Anxiety wound up carefully in linseed oil and pigment 

Brushed ever so lightly onto a canvas made of cotton 

Duck fabric 

Gesso

You may think you're looking at a buffalo 

Really you are looking at the color of the house by our river

The arm of the water stretched beside it

An argument I resolved with the color coral 

And prayer on prayer on prayer

Forgiveness

If I could find words for you theyd feel stretched thin like skin over a pregnant torso

Maybe I am afraid of your silence back. 

I am pregnant with things to say 

But everything is scrambled 

And I can't seem to find needle and thread to put words in a row like soldiers 

Something I'm usually so good at doing. 

I hope you do know

I forgive you 

I love you

I am sorry it turned out this way. 

Yellow

It is the hardest color to get off of people

To get off of me 

Jesus taught us how 

When he came on a donkey instead of the horse

Usually your name has shucked itself across my mouth as if it is a curse 

Uncomfortable in nature 

Like a piece of bark rubbed across my tongue 

I'm sorry for this I don't quite know how to change it I'm trying 

He reminded us that it should become like cursive 

No matter what the situation

His disappointment does not call for name change

And so you are still family 

Though I still do not know how to be in the same room with you 

_Lord teach me

When you are pressed tightly up against something for so many years 

Yes, it is true

The color rubs off onto you

But it doesn't change your organs

__not an excuse 

But you were wrong

Sometimes grief takes all of your air 

Like a man with hands that fit perfectly around your neck and only releases right at the end when you are almost gone 

You think to yourself 

He had me once 

He won't come again

I had my turn 

Anniversary

You are not my first draft 

You are my last and my first 

You must be the one to extract the teeth of my fear and read on and on about where I best grow and experiment with These roots 

The sun the shade the amount of water that will help me grow firm and strong and proud and colorful 

For this I am both glad and sorry 

Sorry that it will be hard 

That I have not had the time yet to take out the kinks of my fabric

That life has not been a hot enough iron to smooth me

That the water has not run over my edges enough times 

But 

I am glad that we will be a parade of messy years by the end 

And I am sure your hand will still be in mine

I believe everything she says

He showed up in a flurry

His arm hair was even on end

And his shadow tore the child from her arms 

While pushing her here and there

I imagine on the front lawn where everyone heard 

Someone

Some Saint

Found the ruckus to be enough to put the situation into a phone 

His fourth charge

She says 

 battered and bruised and taken over and over again without consent and this night will be the last 

_her side of the story

I have been many different things in my life 

Today I have seven shirts on 

And it is very uncomfortable 

Jana

I was working through my own softness she said

There are things about the beach 

Seagulls shitting on our towels and pecking at our sun chips 

The color palette of janas dark smooth bark next to Floridas teal kool aid

An ocean of soft paint collecting over and on and around all of us the sea salt getting into the crevices of our eyes and belly buttons 

Why do they call it sea salt I thought it was ocean salt

In this sun we have a need for water and propped up umbrellas for shade the coughing of Pelicans as they glide like paper airplanes almost in reach above us

I lay here, more bare then usual more content with my body my life my aspirations 

Every good and perfect gift is from above 

Perfectly hand delivered to me is this day and the day we were supposed to arrive when I spent it with my dog in my lap and red paint climbing up my forearm 

Judging by all this goodness I bask in I would say his love is deep and wide and I pray for the same conviction and ability to see even when a day is hard and it feels my gifts are smaller 

But they aren't 

Thomas, 

He was not a beautiful man 

In fact his hair looked more like a woman's layered bob than a mans haircut and this is why is surprised me when he told me he owned a salon

"Well my wife is a hair stylist, I am not" 

His hair was a gold color and I don't trust old men with gold colored hair

You could tell his neck had seen the sun, there were pockets where the sun had collected and clamped down making it leathery and speckled 

His car (Uber) was clean and quiet 

Full of air and not many words 

Jana and I filled them a few times while propping the phone up so we could see where we were on the map because we were both sure he was about to kidnap us, instead there was 

Casual conversation about England and his want to move to Ireland where the police don't carry guns and the pubs are lush with kindness 

Earlier in the day we had met a kind man while waiting for our plane, with a pocket full of pictures of alligators and the ocean in front of his home. He had that eyes were still five years old, eager with life despite the age of his skin 

Michelle, a woman with sturdy legs and a lovely soul made our aquaintance had firmly planted herself next to us, sure this kind man was up to no good no good at all, and layered the air with stories of her kayaking adventures in the rivers of Florida, and how she'd been adopted at 6 months, and how she cared for her elderly parents 4-5 times a year 

This place reminds of me South Carolina with its sticky sap for air and the way it lays on you carefully collecting as sweat in all your pores 

Everything is green and sandy and the paint colors are colorful 

We walked to find food and ice cream and chicken and our legs took us everywhere even under our load of groceries 

& God looked down and saw how very cute we were and gave us the most beautiful sunset he put in some pink paint and orange paint and baby blue paint over in the corner 

I have never made friends with a deer

I have wanted to 

Once I yelled to one 

She was eating and when she heard my voice she would stop and watch me 

I think it is their grace 

Their soft soft surface

The still water of their eyes 

But deer are always running 

Cocking their heads 

Alert for danger 

They are rarely still

I am too much like a deer

Such curious clusters 

Bodies the texture of mint leaves

Always nipping at moms gold rings with their beaks 

Untying grandpas shoelaces 

Looking left and right as if there were hurricanes tornados burglars on the loose 

__chickens 

There are many parts of her that are untapped 

I want to know why there are scars across her arm and how she came into eyeliner with passion 

And Gods reason for putting her like a shadow behind me 

6 months

The river 

We took

And above the doorway in our minds 

We wrote the word 

home 

The teeth of a Queen Anne's lace 

The way she strains her neck in the most obnoxious ways 

_the way he pursued me 

She is soft 

Like a pillar 

Or a cave I can run into 

__the way I want him to see me

I remember their bodies were so large & clumsy pressed against one another like clouds 

Their knees were like mine 

Knobby 

Toothpick in appearance

It's a wonder how they held up their own bodies 

She took me directly into the cluster of them mooing and coughing and bundling against each other like lovers 

Belly to belly

It would have been the safest place to watch them from the fence post 

But then i never would have been able to write these words 

2. It was her father, the violent yet silent farmer

Who taught us to bail hay and to wear long sleeves when doing it

The machine clucked its way all the way up to the vagina of the barn taking each square  bail of hay to its resting place for winter 

It was also him who invited us down to the field to watch a chocolate colored cow slip from the womb, slimy and unstable with four knees

Home is 

The acre of raw 

Here grass was built 

Like my bones 

My body

My soul 

Home is a collection of all my memories

Ladled into an acre of land 

And the many strides it took 

As a child 

To cross the street

Into the wood 

Across the field 

Next to the Queen Anne's lace 

Where I named the bark of specific trees

That I looked on as fond friends 

I can still find a few of them 

I had crooked teeth then

And bangs like swings 

Rusty at the hinges 

And a voice as high and untamed 

As a mule 

I was an acre then

Raw 

Children & 

Their circus of hands 

How do we turn into men

I am a native of my mother 

She was my first home

When I forget who I am 

I look at her 

The way she lives

Her accent and the way she buckles her ankles as she sits 

How she stirs salad 

The gardener

I wish you could make my hands make like you 

You were the first door I pushed through 

The first fight I won 

The womb pushed me from you after I grew into myself 

But even though I am now woman

I still want my hands to be like yours 

They have changed lately

The skin is softer 

I noticed right away and the way your arms changed shape while your hair grew in pale 

like a flu 

At your temple 

But your eyes have become more and more brilliant 

The way you talk about the soil

And the gifts it gives you after you soften in like meat 

Tapping at its skin 

Together I think the soil and you have an understanding 

You both birth color 

This is where the fields come from 

The flowers inside me 

The want to create like you do

To pull something from the earth 

Like you pulled me from yourself

I want to be beautiful after all this work you gave me with your hands 

__the least I could do

You

Along with the rest of this place

Is like a corsette laced up

__too tightly

Occupying the two chairs 

The wall of deck below us

We imagined this river as ours 

My chin started to quiver & his voice went quiet 

He made it a sheep 

"I know you don't like change"

She has a strong jaw 

His is the face of a rosebud

_balance

Feel the hardship 

As if it were a basket you could pick up

Let all of it hurt or harm you

Until you are ready

Until can carry the rest of life 

Let it give you all it has to offer you

And become gentle 

She is a dark warm cedar

stain of wood 

The shape of

the sliver of a moon

the voice of a quilt
the fireplace is in her voice

the waiting

it was in the sand that it came to me, Jackson Browns voice went over us and into us and taught us.
the breeze was small like candy and the sun was like a mountain over us.

sometimes there are specific things that settle in us, and it is then that we hear the Lord
that we know the Lord. there is so much that could settle in us that we ignore.

this time, it was his exhortation to wait. wait on the Lord.

I remember Joe Oakes and how he ran from the boiler room in a drunken rage and I remember when I prayed and God did not bring him back and I remember my anger towards God for that.

I remember years of praying for my little brothers, and watching them
up and down
grow and fall.
I was angry the gospel wasn't injected in them. That God hadn't completely changed them. yet.

but wait.
wait Chelsea.
wait on the Lord.
wrestle.

I had never understood that I could be angry with God. it felt like sin. it felt like it was wrong.

I remember when Missy taught me I could be angry. She said he was a Father and that a Father can handle his daughters emotions. I remember after that for the first time I told him how mad I was. I wept.

I grew thinking anger was wrong in fact I had trained it out of me and it had turned into cold hard rocks deep inside of me and dragged me down and made me angry bitter depressed.

this is what anger does if it is not expressed, recognized, delivered. you cannot learn if you cannot express anger. sometimes anger is healthy if it is delivered correctly. anger can protect us. anger can give us the energy to express. and then it can fall off of us.

it can also make us bankrupt if we hold onto anger. anger isnt meant to remain, it is supposed to be like a small island
a meal
a season
a moment
so we can grow past it and learn from it.

so I learned to wait
to wrestle
to ask questions and again
wait for answers.

there is a stirring in my soul, a waiting, a yearning to know what is next
an impatience

wait, wait on the Lord.
what do you have for me Lord?
tell me?
show me?
and his gentle response
to me
to you

wait on me.
I know what is best for you.
I'm your Father.
I know all of this.
I know you.
I see you.
wait on me.

Youth is so wet with summer 

And so close to teaching the earth to weep like it was meant to

_hope

"I see you've been painting a lot lately 

Is that becoming your idol?"

He whispered in my ear 

The warm of his voice was almost fire

Dank breath and crusty words 

"It is true"

I say

" I have been painting a lot lately

Color has taught me to breathe again"

"But shouldn't Jesus be the one that helps your breath? Shouldn't you rely on him more than your paint?"

I considered this, sitting shoulder to shoulder with the shadow 

Uncomfortable

Trying to weigh if this was conviction or guilt

His breath curling around me like a lip on a lip 

"Well, I see your point 

Dark Shadow,

But just now I remembered that 

He was the one who gave me all of this color

And told me everytime I use it 

He smiles 

And so I'll continue I think His words 

And not these new ones you've thrust on me" 

I had to collect myself 

My lung was in the front yard 

And my heart was on the staircase 

I had secured them to the wrong place on my body 

Because my eyes were torn from tears

It took a month to start feeling normal 

People said things like 

"Everything happens for a reason" 

And 

"All is well" 

I wondered if there was a God 

I shook my fist at him for all the years I hadn't saw repair 

I talked to a God and asked him questions because I knew that he was there 

He just kept looking at me 

Slowly drying my tears day and night while I couldn't breathe 

He didn't have to fix it 

I just had to realize 

He's doing all of it with me 

Leftovers

Mostly there was sugar 

Just a spoon of resentment 

_i found it in my chest

It is because of the frost 

That I learned to take the flower

By the stem 

When they bloom 

And not hold out too long 

Or for better color

_change 

This is when I remember that if I am dark it doesn't mean you are 

If I am sea 

You might not be

We are separate seeds 

I could grow without you

To put all of your skin onto a canvas 

The color of your blood

The lion of your lung 

Fawn of your pupil

__vulnerability

You 

Soft like lace 

With the spirit of electricity 

They say that yellow first attracts the eye

When people leave your house 

You have painted all of their skin with it

It is the loudest 

Most unsettling noise 

_to be too busy

To be an artist 

Without rest 

In your own home 

_your body

Father's Day

"I'm so sorry"

You mention

And hold up your hands

They are shaking 

There are pills full of water 

Collecting in your eyes 

And out pours all of it 

The violent hurt of a father 

you cannot celebrate on a day you should be able to 

The man you almost loved surrounding all four sides of you at the church water fountain 

A man your daughter almost called father 

And a divorce from a man who

Left you alone with Emma

You apologize over and over again to us

While we watch the trauma in your fingertips  

_no apology necessary 

"I'm over here "

He called out to the cops as they 

With their guns at their hips like soldiers circled the garage 

She was going to leave him 

Because recently his behavior was different 

She had taken a few strokes across the face and wasn't about to take more 

Slowly she would take the boxes she told him

Maybe it was his slow attempt to push her away because he had a gun rattling for his attention on a drawer somewhere

"It wasn't because she was going to leave me" he had stated in the letter 

And on Facebook it says in his status that he loves wood, and Cindy

She could hear the gunshots from where they had put her in the back of the police car And he requested to not be remembered at all 

Cremation

No gravestone 

No funeral 

I was probably mixing my Mac and cheese over Lindsey's stove when it happened or taking in air as I slept 

And his spirit was leaving his body 

Cindys hands pressed to her face 

_You can never save a man he must resolve it himself 

"I was raped last night"

She said rather carelessly 

And then pressed the matter in

Like an iron on a white crisp shirt 

By glancing up right into my eye 

slung her leg around

Propped the plastic part on the metal footrest and told me she wanted to be platinum 

She sucked tea into her esophagus 

While telling me about the chronic headaches 

And I found a large arch of a scar along the right side of the back of her head 

Where the tumor came out 

Hatred of yourself will not be punishment enough 

It can't pay for all that you've done or the things your breathed under breath and into the air

But 

He has taken the razor to his wrist (nails to his hands) for you

So that despite your flaws my flaws 

we have no flaws 

_you have no flaws in my eyes either 

I wish you knew that I don't want you to be hurting 

Or drinking your way out of feeling 

I think you should flood the house with grief if that is what you need 

And recover when your organs have emptied themselves of him 

Someday he will simply be a pasture you once walked through in a storm 

_ive been there 

The Forrest in you 

Has syrup in all of its trees 

I recognize it under your eyes 

See it laced in each of its sentences 

he has not found it

he probably never will 

& you will be tapped dry

_run

You are sharp like a pearl 

No one would understand this unless they shook your hand and tasted the softness

And vigor 

All at once 

_passion

Ally Suzer

i remember the waiting in your home
my mind was a beesnest
your home
a haven
the fan blew in peace every night and I relearned how to sleep

we slept so close to each other
you slowly became that sister I had always asked my mother for

you with braces and a torso that fit my cotton

i remember the long drive way
muffins at doorways
the long cast of the lawn and Kirt who kept it
the man who was a hermit with the home crowded with lamplight
and the old lady who dropped off ornaments and lived verses
the time I made cake out of black beans
my mind awake with confusion 
found a tiny drug of love in your family

you were a child then
and i was growing out of one

and now you sit here 
your hair falling over your shoulders
your arms long like your legs
all of you coming to a soft placed called

_woman

i watch the two of you
tall like twigs
become a tree

you make him unafraid of Grand Rapids
or of the tiny fires planted in him


_partner

W

Wesley,

You and your wife have grown on me

Her with her timely straight sentences and interior design sense
the way she always makes me feel like i'm by a fireplace

and you with vigor say every word like liquor

Carefully I've taken the top of your hair to finger length and hers to honey

I'm fond of you and your cussing

Cigarette breath

The half empty cup of coffee you always leave in the eating room 

The bark on your chin and the curve of your back from the surgeries and age 

Yesterday

With a twenty dollar bill and hug you said goodbye 

And Oceans Springs will take you like oceans do

You remind me of bark 

Be aware that the quiet of her 

Does not equal boring 

A fire only whispers 

And does all the damage you can imagine 

He took the knife and carefully slid it across his bicep 

The blood climbed out of the skin 

Quick and with long legs 

It felt a little like alcohol 

_and a bit more like breathing 

You

A lightbulb

Full with firefly 

You have the leather of a

Peony pedal 

And the blood of strawberries 

_Kylie, happy birthday. 

The power we have to grow things with water and time 

&

An ability 

Daily to be reborn 

To come back into the womb

And for Him

Father

To say 

Start again

With new seed

Up from the wet earth

With this he whispers

Also

Give each person 

Everyday

A new birth

Jana

When you put

Just the right break in between those two words 

And the paper starts walking 

_poetry

You asking for arms to hold you up

You begging for roots for your tree

You asking that his legs to be strong like cedar planks

Is not failure 

_it is saying it want this I want this I want this 

She didn't have to say the right things 

The cancer had said all of it 

And had 

Like a thief 

Taken normal 

She hurt thoroughly

And only cried 5 times 

_people grieve differently 

It was then I saw him, really


He was so small


Yet I could not put my arms around him

I watch her carefully collect her things 

Her palm sweaty from the tiny trinkets of falsehood

Disorganized childhood

Death 

She held them carefully out to me 

"I cannot take them from you" I told her

"But I can teach you how i set mine down"

I forgive you 

And like soil can be reawakened to produce fresh fruit 

You will soon grow like bamboo

Strong and quick 

__i know because I'm praying for it

I asked you to share with me a small picture of what I meant to you

Your brought me bushels and bushels and bushels and bushels and bushels and bushels and bushels and bushels and bushels and bushels of apples 

__To many to finish in a lifetime 

I'll take the ocean and all of its chatter 

And know I could never swim to His end 

__your love for me 

When she couldn't answer me 

When I asked her how she was 

Through the flock of geese 

caught in her throat

Then I knew 

__Somethings about to change