I grew up with them in the yard. No real garden, they were just always there. Got mowed over, bloomed, mowed, bloomed, all through my youth. When my older brother passed, we put purple iris on his baby blue casket. I remember the day, what I wore. The surreal distance engulfing a soon to be sixteen-year marriage. The minutest things. But I can’t recall his age, He was thirty— and I was thirty—. It’s been nineteen years and twenty-one days.
Out the window I see purple iris in my yard, abundant.
The right side of my body feels swollen and on fire, ankle and jaw tingling. If I didn’t know better I’d think I been bit by ant, spider, or bee. They tend to hate me. But the skin ‘round the needle site is kin to fine grain sandpaper. I think I’m glad I said right arm though. If it were the left I’d have sworn it were my heart breaking.
Brother left 19 years, sister 6, mother 5, their stories gone to ether along with bones buried and dust interred or tossed to wind. From youngest to only to eldest thrust. My own story of youth passing, ink bubbles to bursting, ready to be pricked to a bleed again...
In Texas, we compare hail to sports balls instead of small change. Windows, windshields, roofs, home, schools, neighborhoods, the destruction is indiscriminate here. What snow is to Eskimos, storms are to us, myriad. Thunder, lightning, hail, tornados, rain, electrical, dust. Even snow, pollen, crickets, and those damn 7-year cicada that emerge from the soil to swarm come sudden and oft leave just as quick. Maybe that’s why I learned young to speak of the weather and to feel deeply tethered to the sky as much as the land.
and the Spice is ink yet no,
the white space
manifest, bourn
of words and lines
the negative twixt and ‘tween
lips parched she licks
looksabout
in one emphatic sigh
then walks away
Can we cry now?
Can we breathe?
Can we finally admit to the bone~weary of exhaustion?
Anxiety?
The pressure to produce...
and produce
and produce...
Can we cry now?
“I do not want, I do not feel...” ~ A.O.S., History Repeats Itself