the view from 20D

Airborne again, Hartford to Dallas to home,
the lights of Santa Fe twinkling 32,000 feet below
and the exit row all to myself
which isn’t a bad metaphor for the last week,
something opening, revealing itself,
the freedom to choose, to stay or to leave,
not the defeat I was thinking it to be,
the consolation prize, the last-ditch ditching,
but freedom, a clear exit row leading to the right wing
of this big, beautiful bird. On the phone two nights ago,
E said that it would be alright if it turned out
we needed to live apart, and it wasn’t about the dogs
this time. She said it calmly, plainly, without controversy
or ugliness or as a substitute for I dare you or do you love me.
Just an “if and then” scenario, a choice, the best kind
of freedom for a girl like me, clear exit row,
all the legroom in the world, and this is the only way
I can imagine sitting back and enjoying the flight.

All week, resting at my mother’s, sleeping upstairs
with a slightly too-thin blanket and a mattress
I would not have chosen but sank into anyway,
the stretchy solitude, the night all mine, the light all mine
at the side of the bed and turned off at some ungodly hour
only when the jetlag and my mulchy, meticulous mind finally
let me sleep, and I don’t know how many times I turned over,
put hands behind my head, manipulated the pillows,
thought about her hand on my thigh, just lying there,
as if there were nothing else in the world we could be.

This is what good love does to you, lays its hands on you even
when it’s not in the room, and this is why I can sit
in my exit row and not think about the sound the handle
would make if I pulled it, not think about the million pounds
of pressure, not rehearse a scene that features a perilous drop
to the bottom of the earth, the rush and catastrophe of
abandoning ship just when it’s reached such a fine
cruising altitude. Instead, I am measuring the two hours
to go before the plane touches down again,
I am imagining the ginger ale she would have ordered,
the trashy magazine we would have ogled together,
the sun sinking down so fast but that solid palm on my thigh,
like good reason, like faith, like its own kind of forever.

hardly any words

why do I work so hard to locate myself,
identify my coordinates, map my body in relation
to where the earth is, scan the horizon for street signs,
crossing guards, traffic cops, familiar landmarks,
hold my compass so it is only pointing north,
take careful steps in case I have to retrace them,
light the lanterns in preparation for the confusion of darkness,
leave instructions, flight plans, itineraries in the event
I must be retrieved from the land of the lost?
why do I do this when the trip is imprecise
and the road is haphazardly moving from one state
to the next, impromptu switchbacks and deadends and
gravel-less detours? why do I try to pinpoint
anything more than where I know myself to be
when there are hardly any words better than "I am here"?

the walls of this room

You've been trying to write for days—
artful, delirious prose to lift you to the banks
of a musical river, the sun at the perfect angle
for dappling shadows and pinking cheeks.
You want a peaceful scene to deliver the good news,
some freshly seasonal offering to enlighten and inspire
and that would be wonderful of you, it would.

But you are where you are and the walls
of this room look different. The paint is peeling,
for one, flecking off in little chunks, and there is no
nice way to write about that. You could say something
about the spots on the rug, turn them into lyrics of light,
but come on, you know where they came from. The dog, in his
impatience, had to go somewhere.

You are impatient, too, and you turn to the page
for your relief, but all the lines keep coming up empty,
or full of disaster, the internal combustion of molecules,
and you don't want to write about that. You don't want to admit
that you sat at your desk, chewing your nails, wanting
to claim the house across the street, even with the toddler wailing,
you wanted the baseball revelry happening inside,
the glorious clinking of bottles, cheers wafting up
like chimney smoke, thick with direction and purpose.
You wanted the focus of the man up the street grilling
backyard steaks, or the middle-aged woman chipping away
at her afternoon hike, thighs clenching with gratitude
for the movement, the sheer grace of it.

When you look down, your own thighs are smashed against
your desk's underside. You search, hungrily, for a sweet story,
something full of spectacle and wonder, the epiphany of
found objects, but your mind has emptied mightily of words.

Let go of your handiwork. Its preciousness will not
serve you, will not release you from the stained carpet,
the peeling walls, the wish to fly from your window
into the living room of your neighbor's colicky reality.
The more you lie, the longer you will stay here, imprisoned and impotent.

Do not try to make the grey sound less grey.
Admit you have temporarily lost your rhythm, your
sunny warbling, your easy obedience to beauty.
It will not make you less beautiful to pull your sounds
from elsewhere. Even the ambulance is singing. The metronome
of the dishwasher. How the raccoons pulverize the garbage cans
the night before the truck comes to empty them. This is your
musical river now, your slash of sunlight, your sibilant muse.

Pick her. Take her dancing. Show her the creaking chair,
the missing handle, every square inch of wrongness and upset.
She will not ask to fix this room, to scrub it of mistake,
to swipe at the walls with their paint chips dangling.
She will not pause, aghast, at your mute melancholy.
Instead, she will gaze at this footage with a delight
that will, at first, seem rude and almost cruel. But soon,
you, too, will see your own wreckage as the rich soil it is,
a burying ground from which it is impossible to remain buried,
something of you persistent and vital. And this how you will rise,
once you have put away your paint brushes, your heavy touch,
your myth-making, your romance. This is how you will rise,
strong and clear and ferociously true.

still life with ice cream

The day has turned out gorgeously,
I know that much at least and in fact,
I know enough to get an ice cream cone
on the corner of Dolores and 18th.
Mint chip and cookies & cream go perfectly
with an afternoon like this, what
with the kids just coming out of school,
the whole city in shorts and flip flops -
and even though there is a strong likelihood
tomorrow will be absent of magnificent weather,
a strong likelihood that tomorrow will, in fact,
will bring a sheet of fog - heavy, wet, opaque -
slow as narcolepsy, and the city will take
a turn inward, there will be scarves and fancy hats,
there will be a buttoning up and a hunkering down,
and the impulse for ice cream will be replaced
by slippers and hot cider. It could be that kind of day,
a day in which I will not sit leisurely at a picnic table
in the park looking at the picture-perfect toddlers
on the swing set, their well-coifed parents. It might
not be a day during which I make several comments to friends
and other loved ones that this is the reason one lives
in San Francisco, the surprise, the reward of ice cream in autumn,
the cone barely containing its cargo, it's that warm, so warm
the ice cream begins to melt faster than I can eat it,
and isn't that like life? Such a beautiful day, such
gorgeous ice cream, these Scharffenberger chocolate chips,
this fresh cream, this 4 o'clock sunlight, the easy wind
flapping through the park, the swing set, the picturesque toddlers,
even the teenagers, loud with cell phones and catcalls
to each other, even them, and the kite fliers down on the flats,
and their kites, graceful on a band of air, like life, all of it,
ice cream dribbling southward at a rate I will not be able to
take it all in, the ice cream I will have to let go, give up,
come to peace with, all those bits and pieces that will escape me,
the likelihood of grey skies tomorrow, who knows, but still,
letting this all go, taking it in and then letting it go.