until she wasn’t

a life in place, love all set, 

it all allowed for a sleep of

storied dreams played out in scripts

rewind edit replay

in waking hours of wash rinse repeat, 

of work of school of making a house a home

she wrote of things made sense in half-light

she wrote fueled on tea and sugared toast

until she couldn’t until she shattered: 

in her sorrowed hours

of the heaviness of a death she mourned 

in the vastness of a light slumber

she woke into a life out of place 

all that life he was there but not: 

while she was there all in

until she wasn’t 

“Anyone who’s had a heart, wouldn’t turn around and break it…” ~ Sweet Jane, Velvet Underground 

whence

It’s a place somewhere between awareness and sleep, a particular exhaustion that’s not exhaustion.

A fleeting moment of time when the day is too hot but the air is cooled by shade and the stillness broken only by the oscillation of an over-used fan that clicks as it sweeps back and forth in the soft glow. 

Absent is the lulling swarm of the cicada drowning out the persistent reverberations of a heart pounding wild, un-rythmic and breaths, shallow, laboring to find its depth. 

I remember loving

little lines, flesh

not so taught, exhaustion 

in the mirror

there were lovers once;

I remember loving

a body on fire

with a pulse quickening 

figments of imagination 

bled from veins on wrists 

ink on paper, scratch scratch

on fingers smudged 

the fan oscillates, cooling

in the late morning 

a body on fire

with the hours of existence 

thought crime

Moving today/tomorrow. 

Waking slow. Is today a holiday? Birdie thinks so. She wants to snuggle in. 

But we need to eat, walk, take a cold shower, face the day. 

Waiting for the dark of no electricity at the old place. My timing has been off for a while. 

Remember when moving was much like changing jobs; every time the rent went up, when the raise didn’t happen…change. 

Then one year became three became eight became a want for roots. 

Marriage was my constant. The thing that grounded me. The thing around which all things pivoted. It was my constant until it wasn’t. 

His tiny mind thought there was another, an other love for me. He couldn’t rationalize that other was his. His friends, his coworkers always before me, then the IMs.  

His new marriage is as old as our divorce.

obstacles

feet stuck in mud hardening

as the moist air turns into a sweltering 

humidity and the gnats swarm

deeply I breathe slowing to an eight count

in then out purposefully in then out

ghost flies

she looks at the wall ceiling doorway empty space

my own eyes take in too much light 

but I’m sure there’s nothing there

she growls suddenly alert -  I feel 

the rumble in her chest  as she presses close

little heart beating fast I pull her closer

to settle into a tight sleep after a big sigh