The gold within you

It happens with the first purchase 

You trade in a small chip of your gold for what you think is worth more 

We've all done it 

||for the world 

Slowly your gold is diminishing and in its place is a new collection of what we will call

Hoarded objects or

People that look good on us 

But you see now everyone who sees you touches the fabric you've bought for your body (clothing) and says how nice it feels under their finger tips 

They point at you and your abusive boyfriend from far away and say how classy you look together 

What great dance partners

You're the life of the party 

Youre hurting though 

Heart disease

because you've traded what once was your soul for this world &

There is just a small piece left 

Your mom

wonders if it's there still

They can barely make out the glow of Gold still in you 

|| if not for grace there go I

|| I still believe you will clean house soon enough 

there was a little bit of conversation left 
in our coffee mugs

March 2, 2008

i love you even though you do not know

sometimes i feel like i am treading water
begging for sincere words the air i need

I bet you don't even know
you could make me feel like an olympic swimmer

E

I saw the divorce in your eyes

Your spine 

The way you bend over the counter to hand them your card 

Or respond when I ask 

"What kind of music do you like?"

"I don't really know anymore."

You study the earth, rocks, writing 

Just now finishing an essay on how you became a geology student 

You were the one that taught me if you want to write you must write everyday 

But you don't know that I know that even though you study rocks

You have none to stand on 

You have always been quiet these last 5 years 

But this is different 

This is like someone is twisting the skin of your arm and seeing how far it can stretch and you are trying as hard as you can to be

Straight faced

Your mom told me about the

Time you cried 

And the last time I saw her 

It was only a minute 

She reassured me how final her marriage is 

As if I let on somewhere along the line that I approved 

She said it right there in the salon as if I had asked her the age of her cat or where she got the brown eyes from

You are not afraid for her life

But for your own

You are grieving something you once believed in and now have nothing to write about or study for 

||did you know? divorce, it takes place in all of your children too

I was

raised among the woods

I thought I knew the woods like I knew the shape of my eyebrows or the smell of my home the texture of my hair

But when I went back I discovered I couldn't even find the old places

Where Mark scarred the skin of a maple to write our names with a knife 

Where the hunter found us with branches  Where the pond used to dirty our socks and where Elyse ruined her corduroys 

Some trees have been uprooted 

The woods have changed 

||so have i

When they beat him

I stood in you weeping

Jesus

L

My boss noticed too

The way your tone carried your story into the room 

She asked me about you at the color bar 

It may have been about the time spent in Colorado and the way it left you without the horses, the pigs, the ranch

And every organ in you 

Empty and angry

He tried to kill you, you say

And point at the hair on your head, explaining how now we will have to cut it short because it falls out every two years 

Because of the poison he wasted on you

While you breathe

I think it is only the river that makes you happy

The base of your boat is the man in your life 

He carries you

The river,

Just the two of you intertwined as lovers 

He grabs at your finger tips when you put them deep in his skin 

He died, you say

In your basement after giving you a ring

I had To remind you about him

that a real man does exist 

After you say the man you are with has made you hate men

And I always ask you why your still there 

Hating him 

In your home 

You like that he talks back, 

That's everything

your walls don't respond with a voice and you say that yes you two will kayak together this summer

In the river

Where your voices carry across the water 

As if there is more 

But it is

The voice that comes from your bones 

The bones without water 

The bones without breathing 

The bones without blood 

I want to see you live

But don't know how to tell you

My boss noticed too

That you need more

That it will be at the right time. 

we may have found you

how do i tell you that you are still lost

last year
your body was so cold it took the hospital hours to bring your blood back to normal
after the nap you took for hours in the snowbank just behind the theater
the alcohol laying slumber on you like a blanket with its fists around your neck

now we haven't heard from you since last night
last night there was a snowfall
and all I can imagine is you
dressed in knuckles, skin dry and breaking
lying there
cold

___________

I have known at least three Native American Indians
who died this way

that alcohol can lay you down hard and fast
stroking your forehead no matter what the conditions

the one with the gray streak running through his black hair
 gave me an indian name,
"Wah-Bee-Go-Nez"
Indian for "little flower"

someone saw him, the sheet over his body
stretcher holding his frame like a praying mantis,
arms upstretched
offering his soul

the gold shoes, they were the give-a-way
it was him
and he was gone

___________

the rehab has called
"no he isn't here"
"no he can't come back"

you wont pickup
you wont pickup
you wont pickup

___________
 


--substance abuse also kills family

be still my ready answers
and let me trade them in for questions
so that your journey to success
has been your hands in the dirt
and not me watering your plant
along the way.

--you don't need me and i'm sorry if i made it feel like you do