Maybe this is essential

Maybe this is an essential part of what it means to live right now: that my heartbreak lies alongside the bombing of a hospital in Aleppo, and I have a duty to hold them both.

I love you, goodbye

It hurts. Mostly in your stomach, a sort of nausea. You don't want to look at it straight on because then the pain goes all over and you start to cry, and you don't want to cry.  You've never had to fight back tears before, but then you found yourself biting your lip, breathing shallow and looking down with such ferocity because you knew if you started to cry now it would turn into the heaving sobbing, snot mixing with tears kind of crying and that's no way to say goodbye.

Later, I would wish I had called out his name.  I was standing on the bridge, and I watched him board the ferry. Somehow, this would hurt even more than the fact that he didn't look back since I know he couldn't have imagined I was watching.  I would wish I had called out his name, wish I had seen him turn, given him one last wave, maybe even shouted i love you, or Trevor, i pine for you. The first would have made him blush, the second made him laugh. Eventually I decide that my voice would have been lost in the wind, and what could have been sadder than calling out his name and him not even hearing?

You thought that heartbreak came from another's deception. What do you tell your broken bits when its you who half betrayed it? You thought that when the lovers say "i love you" that means they're going to stay together, that "i love you" was the final beginning. Where do you go from "i love you, goodbye?"

another poem about fruit and things

In cherry season I laid long afternoons on the wooden bench in the backyard (not waiting) and one day the cherries were not quite ripe and the next day they were bruised from falling and the birds had taken a bite out of each one.

In blueberry season I took a carefully plotted afternoon to pick ten pounds of blue gold, not counting the pounds I put away inside me without even using my fingers. The heat was a hustle and I barely had time to eat the berries before they went mushy.

I think strawberry season passed me right by. But I have money enough now to buy them.

Blackberry season came early this year, sweet surprise along my path one day. We picked until our stomachs turned purple, my hands awake with red spiderweb scrapes. But when we got home you were too full to eat any.

It was picking blackberries that I saw the scar.
Dirt where once there was meadow.
Meadow I had walked across each afternoon in tenth grade singing great love songs from the moulin rouge soundtrack.

And it occurs to me that I no longer belt love songs into the wind.
And it occurs to me that soon the meadow will no longer be.
And it occurs to me that soon the apples will ripen, boughs bent with heavy pregnancy, on the edge of the nearly not-meadow.

activist cookies

My cursor hovers above the "post" button. Two minutes, five minutes, nine minutes. The post is still the same: "shout out to everyone at Hampshire demanding institutional accountability to and resources for Students of Color and survivors; I don't know all of what has happened these past few days/months but I want to send my virtual support to you all."

Unfolding these minutes I find that the creases are greasy with a dirt I recognize, and the cloth is rough and raw:

1. I contemplate erasing the whole thing and going back to Buffy.  I wish I had never decided to check Facebook. I imagine all the likes this post will receive; the idea of my own self-satisfaction is revolting.  I imagine getting a comment from someone who was there telling me how worthless my virtual support is. I won't need them to remind me. I consider erasing the whole thing. I imagine writing "please do not like this post; I am not writing it for activist cookies." My fingers disagree, however, and it is they who get to choose, humble workers though they may appear to be.

2. I want to write something like, "if there's anything I can do, let me know." But I am afraid to put  "anything" out there. Dare I admit I don't want to be held do that?

3. I want to escape the distance I see in these words; a virtue of privilege and also one of insignificance. I think of erasing the whole thing. 

4. But that quote by MLK comes to mind, about remembering the silence of your friends. I have been that silent friend. And that knowledge is a worm eating its way through my lungs and stomach.

5. Would that it might turn those wretched memories into fertile soil for a new voice within me.

6. Ahh, Voice. My voice is a fork-tongued goddess you see. With one fork of her tongue she sings a song that is valiant and righteous, while the other fork's song is a poison. This second song is heard only by the small lion in my breast, and he awakens at her beckoning and swells and swells inside me. It is fear that keeps my voice locked away more often than not- fear, not of those who would hear my truth and turn from me, but fear of lion inside me.

7. And so, eagerly I fall into a pit of judgement; they are demanding too much, this is all a misunderstanding, etc. But it is a shallow pit, and in the rivulets and puddles that surround me I see only reflections of my own disconnection and alienation, their oily surfaces can barely hide the strength of my desire to be involved. This desire soon floods the pit and it dissolves.

8. There is a moment of calm. My ankles are submerged in a fine silty mud. The oily veneer has run off leaving the shallow water clear. I can see small fish dart about, each consumed in a chase. They do not notice me, nor each other, nor even that the pool is a mirage.

9. This calm allows my fingers to think.  They type, "and ask that if there is a specific role for alums to play please let me/us know." then click "post" so quick it's hardly a decision. 

I walk toward my lion, awakened by the goddess. He is panting now, full of power. This lion is a part of me; I cannot cage him, cannot kill him. We look at one another, and I know what I must do. I will have to learn to train him.