“to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.”
Ellen Bass

The Way It Is

The first thing I do
When consciousness touches me, early morning
Before I open my eyes
Is figure out what day it is.


Is it Friday?  Am I taking her away today?


No.  It's Sunday.  She's coming back.
I breathe.


Sunday morning,  better even than Sunday night.
When I tuck her in tonight I will already count
How many more tucking ins I have
Until Friday.


Call me nuts,
It's just the way it is right now.

Superfluous

When she was tiny and needy someone asked to hold her and then, when she cried for me, wouldn't give her back.  Go relax, they said.  She's fine, they said.

And now.  He decides when I have her.  When he's ready he'll give her back.  If she cries, if she needed me, the softer one when he is harsh, when Daddy needs to be stern, well that's too bad.  She'll be ok.  She'll cry without me.  She'll be perfectly fine.

And I should relax.  I should enjoy the time.  Because I do need it.  I've become the one who does the stuff.  Who gets her ready for appointments.  Who wrestles to get out the door on time.  Who makes her get to bed.  Who says no more treats.   And they are the ones who play.  Until she is too wound up and rough or unkind or overtired.  And then I'm not there.

Somewhere between asleep and awake I was telling someone about the things we'd done. The memories we shared.  "When did he die?", they asked

And I take anxiety meds to make me let go.  To let go of being Mom who I've learned for almost 7 years how to be.  The mom I need to be.  Because there's no room left to be that mom.  Now I have to be the one who says, "Yes, you're right."  Laughs.  And walks away.  She'll be fine.



Tomorrow is a holiday.  So tonight she leaves again.  

A day.

Too hot to have the windows open.

Closed up, shrinking, waiting for the heat

Turned into one

With every door open wide

Welcoming the rain, the cool breeze, the thunder

The clean air.

Open, open.  It's ok right now.

Take it in.  

Bleed

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

 So said Ernest Hemingway, at least according to Facebook. I'm not taking time to fact check, I'd rather just say "Right on!". Or maybe "Write on."

 There's a funny thing about bleeding. It's messy. So not only are you dealing with the pain and the actual trauma, now you also have a mess to clean up. The point of bleeding though, I'm told, is to clean the wound. That makes sense with a small cut. With a large injury, the kind where bleeding becomes the issue, where one may in fact bleed to death, that can hardly be the point.

 So here's the blood. It's messy, it may be cleansing, but at this moment I just want to find a way to stop the bleeding because I'm afraid I might die.

 The other thing about blood. It gets people's attention. You can hurt for a long time and no one sees it. The moment there's blood everywhere, it's everyone's business.

I am looking forward to
Seeing the road stretch out in front of me
A new sort of wilderness on either side
Opportunity

looking forward to
Watching water fall
Roaring, mist hovering
Strength

looking forward to
Breakfast and late nights
Remembering the world is big
Enough

I feel as though I have settled into my skin in the last two weeks.

I'm not entirely comfortable here, still trying to figure out the rules, learn where the mending is kept and how to leave things there

But I can feel my skin again, and it feels nice actually.

There is less fog now, and when I bump against something I don't even cry

Except for when I cry, and I feel the tears on my cheeks.

I have cheeks again and repetition feels like heaven.

February

"And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown. And he replied: Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way." Minnie L. Haskins

The Invitation

The Invitation by Oriah

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.


from the book The Invitation