soon she goes

in the quiet

there is a chill

an exhaustive pulsing

near indiscernible 

felt distinctly

 

my heart

my breath

 

and in the other room she lay

wasting

Chelsea didn't eat today...

She stands

back arched, back legs

shaking 

from the weight of years

refusing food she

walksabout

front room to kitchen 

and there and back again for

sips of water, constantly

looking, searching, constantly

milling about, until

She lurches into 

a laying

inelegant, deeply 

emphatic

a tiny frame thrown into loud thud

 

“I don’t wanna need your love” ~ Stronger by Sorry Girls

Iris

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.

These dreams that pass me by

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. 

pricked to a bleed

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...

well hail...

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.