billions and billions

helium balloons
sixteenth birthdays
blunders. my first bra.
breasts and what to do about it all.
beautiful mistakes, like what writing is.
bandaids on skinned knees.
bravado. benevolence. just barely.
banana blow jobs, then the real thing.
boyfriends. beefcake. blender. bad behavior. a bed.
back home. backless chairs. blankets. bordering on lonesome.
bent at the knee. built to last. better off.
one day, a bar. a blip on the map. buying her a beer.
banter. brazilian music. tango at the bathroom.
billions and billions of reasons to say no.
bumpy. bedraggled. berieved. brew-haha. be careful.
but altogether different.
because. between. before. behind. below. beneath.
beside.
be here now.
be brave.
blow this thing right down.
bare bones.
brightness.
be who you are.
best thing.
beloved.
be loved.

We Are This Close

in the next lane, eyes steely on the road,
a woman makes the smallest adjustment to the bandanna
covering her scalp and I think,
cancer.

The light turns red, and we both stop, parallel.
When I let myself linger on her face,
I see she's pencilled in her eyebrows.
They're perfect arcs of chestnut brown, unreal as anything,
but still, she looks like a fading movie star,
skin a little loose around her neck,
her lips a dry crimson pucker.
And still, all I see is
how the chemo's tired her out,
made her hands papery, withered with unwelcome age.
I think of her kids, and her husband,
and even if there might be none,
I imagine she's driving toward groceries,
the pick-up at school, to drop off the dry-cleaning,
any of those artless domesticities
that keep us all fixed to the calendar -
I think about how she's part of those, too.
And maybe I'm stretching here
but I wonder if, now, these mindless daily tasks have been elevated
to a kind of fresh reverence, how maybe this woman feels
the sheer good luck of surviving long enough
to run this humdrum errand, and the next, and the next.

When she passes me, I notice the plastic dahlia
she's notched into the hood of her car,
a plume of aubergine and magenta
that revives the dull grey of her Accord.
As she drives, the stem waves with her growing speed,
until I lose the car, the flower, the scarf,
the pencil-thin eyebrows, the skin, the chemo, the cancer,
the woman.

And I'm thinking, we are so close, you and I.
We are always this close.

25 Reasons to Keep Writing

1. because I can't draw very well
2. because other people are doing it better
3. because dinner's not ready yet
4. because there's time
5. my mother's jubilant emails
6. the weather makes for perfect metaphor
7. I'd forget otherwise
8. it makes sex better
9. because it's not just about the desire to please
10. because of the impracticality of yearning
11. because of love
12. because I want to remember everything
13. spontaneous, lucid epiphanies
14. the infinite alphabet of words
15. because I don't know what else there is
16. because I'm awake enough to pay attention
17. poetry and song and the deliverance of prayer
18. because sometimes I can't bear to be alone
19. the pure delight of invention
20. the long, steep climb that burns the lungs
21. the fever of midnight
22. all the precipices I want to edge away from
23. because when it works, I'm flying
24. the soundless, opalescent moments of sheer wonder
25. the electric possibility of getting it right, and the smaller, quiet beauty of almost.

Other Lies I've Told Myself

I've said "I'm not afraid" and "I'll be here" and "Trust me."
I've said "You're pretty" and "I'm hungry" and "I'm yours."
I've said "Nothing is more important than this."
I've said "Believe me."
I've made my bed look like
an invitation, a beautiful distraction,
an irreverent sort of prayer.
I've said "This is the real thing."
I've said "Come here."
I've said "Don't go."
I've let him feed me strawberries, licked his forefinger clean.
I've said "You're crazy."
I've said "You're good."
I've said "I'll see you tomorrow."
And then afterwards, the sun gone done, the day over,
and something inside eviscerated, torn from the meat of itself,
I've looked at crawl spaces, imagined my body folded, tucked away,
out of sight and incalculably small, and said to myself
"No one will notice if I disappear."

Some Lies I've Told Myself

1. No one can see inside the car windows while I drive.
1a. No one can see me get into Kelly Clarkson's "Behind These Hazel Eyes."
1b. No one sees me really get into Madonna.
1c. My version of "Live to Tell" and "Papa Don't Preach" are actually quite good.
1d. It would be a great career move for me to start doing impersonations of Madonna.
1e. Writing will not be able to pay the bills.
1f. Even writing about sex will not be able to pay the bills.
1g. Getting paid for sex, at least part-time, might be an interesting way of making a living.
1h. Getting paid for sex part-time and doing Madonna personations could make a decent life.

2. It's okay to spend $240 on a pair of pants.
2a. I deserve to splurge on a pair of grey pants I'll probably only wear 5 times.
2b. I like the nice, even, clear sound of $240.
2c. Retail therapy is an actual, psychologist-approved course of treatment for stress or sadness.
2d. There's something truly life-affirming about expensive slacks.
2e. Work performance is greatly improved by high-end clothing.
2f. I will get more work if I own grey pants.
2g. I will deserve more money to support the future purchase of other pants.

3. Getting the middle seat in the airplane is an act of personal heroism.
3a. I was meant to sit next to that baby, I just know it.
3b. This plane is not crashing because I'm in the middle seat.
3c. I am immune to the woman 1 row up who's coughing up a lung.
3d. I will not need to use the bathroom for the duration of the flight.
3e. I am capable of being in an upright and locked position for 12 hours straight.
3f. I enjoy flying even more as an adult.

4. Buying organic is a rich, meaningful experience.
4a. A $12 bottle of Coppola spaghetti sauce is leagues better than Prego.
4b. I am so glad they make organic brussel sprouts.
4c. Seeing a big pile of Free Range Rocky Jr. chicken makes me want to eat more chicken.
4d. I think $9 is not a bad price for a quart of orange juice.
4e. I'll eat anything made with quinoa.
4f. I do not miss Dunkin' Donuts.
4g. I really appreciate the abundance of wheat substitutes.

on analysis

quiescent as sleep,
the winter bulb accepts the possibility
it won't be warm for quite some time,
that the rain will come and nearly
untether everything,
and that no one will come to watch what's happening,
or nurse it back into the earth,
or offer gentle, soothing words
to hasten the coming of spring.

the bulb knows about spring, somehow.
does not ask, of winter,
"where are you going with all this weather?"
does not beg to be released
from the hardship of waiting,
does not complain, or tap an irritated foot,
or wonder about what it did to deserve
the roiling, mulchy turmoil underfoot.

it simply does its bulb thing,
forging a temporary truce with January which,
by April, has turned into a decent acquaintanceship,
which has led to a certain forgiveness, and which leads, one day,
to a burst of yellow bloom,
climbing, inch by inch, and without apology,
out of the exhausted, yielding dark.

two

two eggs, two toasts
two spoons of sweet.
all things in twos
are good to eat.

two socks, two mitts
two shoes, two feet.
two sides to look
to cross the street.

two hands, two eyes
to look and meet.
two lips, two mouths
with which to greet

two words hello
and lungs to beat
two rays of sun
to aim for heat

two silly monsters
all too neat
collide to make
the mess complete.

grace, revisited

we are a rash of jellyfish
the impact of sandbars
the pool of a soapdish
the haranguing of cars
a collision of windows
a dim wash of pain
the pointing of arrows
the hardness of rain
repetitions of error
and platters of need
a boxful of terror
a whinnying greed
and yet, in the dark,
with our love at our side,
we are loyal as bark,
clutching hope like a bride
we forget what's been said
we surmount our distress
we lose track of our dread
our unfixable mess
and the night keeps us still
while our feebleness dies
then the sun breaks the chill
and thus lightened, we rise.

a great miracle happened here

The amazing thing
is that my feet grew one whole size this year
as if I were 13 again, and just beginning to transcend
the child that was my body by sliding into some other, mucky arena.
In this way my feet, too, enjoyed an unseen, subsurface blooming
until an impromptu visit to the mall betrayed their real circumstances.

I'm stunned. I'm a 33-year-old woman
with sudden size 11s, which thrusts me into
the slimmer aisles with fewer selections, or worse,
points me to those specialty order catalogues
created for near-freaks of nature, who bypass
all of the physiology laws by continuing a slow, steady expansion.

What God made these feet, I wonder,
and what's the point anyway? Things were doing just fine down there.
Then, hauling my purchase to the front counter, I remember
this business about embracing change and I think,
hey, it's just feet.

And later, musing about the odds,
finding the number 11 almost lucky,
I can't help but imagine
a great miracle happened here.
At 33, an impossible, unforeseeable adolescence
starting at the very bottom of the ladder.

Now, with three new pairs of shoes holding the fort down,
I start to picture other invisible blossomings,
my body making tiny, incalculable ascensions,
the slightly bigger fistfuls, minutely longer strides,
the little bit of extra weight my shoulders can bear,
the modest flexing of my own stubbornly decisive heart.

I tell you,
I didn't think I would grow like this again,
parting the air with each new quarter inch,
as if something inside of me, long held back,
kept in check and neatly tucked away,
was finally loosing itself from its niched privacy,
unfurling at last its true length,
and like a creaky old door, awash in a mysterious subplot of breeze,
yawning open.