Grace there used to be in the mourning
Banded arms, veil-shrouded tears
Private yet publicly seen scenes
Black cars with black windows
To hold the bleakness inside
So that it doesn’t leak out and get on passers-by
Why did it have to come the year she understood
there is no afterlife This is life, get after it
One per customer, one size fits most
Unless you have the imagination for two
Which proves good, since she is one now.
Why did he write for forever preserved in words, her manna
His inked fingerprints staining the paper “I hope this is your best year yet”
In the year that all colors turned to ash, heart turned into
Endless forms, mailings, courtrooms
The vagaries of dead life
Why did people say ‘he’s watching over you’ like
That is comforting – oh, to comfort them, that’s right
Because love can barely bear to watch the loved
Suffer, fall apart, spin out of control, lay staring at the ceiling
Mumbling like a mad person alone in the dark
I opened up the magnum of memorabilia that is
Life, until death did us part
And let the warm taste of remembered love
Fill my mouth, overflow my lips and spill onto my chest.
As it soaked into my skin near my breastbone
It felt heavier than before
When it was a living thing
Infused with the daily breathing in of you
I traced the line of your jaw on the screen
Looked deep into your brown lively eyes
And fell backwards in time
Like a drunken sailor on first shore leave
As I fell, images flashed past my mind’s eye
Sex on the beach (and not in a cup)
A fight in an alley in a downpour
People-watching from balconies, making up their lives in snippets
Broken bones and torn flesh in a hospital bed
Pale freckled face awash in computer screen back-light
Frolicking with the dogs in the pasture with frost
Hands on my shoulders and a kiss on the head
It is an old-time carousel slide show that lives in my brain
Locked tight, unmoving, until release becomes necessary
To let grief seep out through selected pores
So as not to overwhelm the universe with the heaviness
Curled up on the floor of my memory, eyes open wide
Dry heaving up love, tears, laughter and pain
I realize I have done the previously thought unimaginable
Lived, without you by my side
It looks different though, from out here
Than it did from beside you back there Hindsight is twenty-twenty it is said
And one cannot un-know the known
Like an abandoned tortoise shell
Some of the intricate scaling
That transforms the bony carapace
Swings loosely, revealing the hard truth
The love stands unscathed
Even as in acknowledged, willful destruction
I smash the magnum, watch it shatter explosively
And I tiptoe warily through the sharp edges of broken illusion,
I swallow two doses of reality, served up by elapsed time
Before I lay my swimming head down on the pillow
And hydrate my weary blood as it pounds in my head
With the waters of understanding
And so, when I awaken in the morning
Hopefully I will circumvent
The disorientation, the wincing, the vulnerability
Of a memory hangover of you
~SMK
Inspiration: I finally gained access to an external hard drive, inaccessible for several years. Inside were photos, E-mails written, poems, fragments of a ten-year segment of my life. Even a .wav file, with my late husband saying “To my love and my wife, I love you now, and forever”, recorded over ten years ago. And there were other, more bitter, things.
I’ve never had a hangover personally, don’t get them; but I watched their impact on him for many years.
Thanks go out to a friend, who, a few months ago, in one sentence by a fire-ring, made a hairline crack in the illusion, something that I was too weak to do.
Keep me near you, like a well-worn, revisited book
That favored one you caress the pages of before
Succumbing to slumber, the thoughts that frame your dreams.
Sleep, letting the essence of me float through your resting mind
Rummaging gently through your unguarded nooks and crannies
Causing your lips to curve in a soft, sleepy smile
Awaken, with thoughts of me scattering
Like startled sheep on a hillock
Giving you pause before throwing your legs over the bedside
Feel, as you face the mirror to shave, me
Grazing my fingertips against the stubble and pulse
Halting your breath a bit before you continue the ritual
Let me inhabit you, be the whistle on your lips
The niggling song you can’t put out of your mind
That accompanies you throughout the day with a smile
I can be with you, while without you
Like the river that ducks underground
Resurfacing miles later, present, but unseen
Sustaining, always flowing, moving through you via my inhabitation of your heart.
Water flow
~SMK
Inspiration: While working on my recent other post ‘Stone Cold?’, I thought about what want feels like for me. How it feels when someone inhabits my thoughts. How I want to be wanted by another, and so I dressed this other with the way it feels for me to want, how the wanted flows through my life when it is going on. It is gentle, but steadfast. It makes me smile at odd times during the day. But can one have that expectation of another, that they will want in like manner? Inhabitation is by invite, differing from possession.
I also realized that while I’m being pragmatic over there on my other blog, the romantic part of me has to get out somewhere, which is, ahem, apparently here. We all have more than one side, and dissonance comes when they wrestle for primacy.
Water is something that nurtures and supports life, and my mental imagery is that for what I consider loving – it is both sustaining, and sustainable. However, excessive consumption of water can make it run dry. Do you think that is true also, of loving?
(and…apologies for the birdsong that accompanies the reading. I thought of re-recording, but, I often write against the backdrop of nature, and what bird is not drawn to water?)
The Impetuarian 