Love and loss

Heartache is on my mind today. Someone I care about is going through a divorce, someone else I love may be moving away, and the memory of my mom is especially present today.

I feel lost, drifting, unable to offer advice or meaningful assistance. All I have to offer is moral support. I googled How to support a friend through divorce, and found numerous lists of do’s and don’ts. I probably should have googled that back when my brother got divorced, it might have helped me preserve our relationship. Too late now.

Speaking of family, I miss my sil lately. Not the most recent version, all stressed and angry and lashing out, but the older (younger?) version. The woman with cornsilk hair and a quiet observational calm and a sly, smirkingly subtle sense of humor. I miss her clever wit, her unpredictable generosity, and even her prickly standoffishnish. I miss her children and her husband.

Maybe it’s because of all the outdoor family time we’ve been having, and it reminds me of the outdoor activities we used to do with Missy and Sparky. Maybe it’s watching our puppy play, and remembering when Moose was that age. Maybe it’s watching Sirius grow old, and acting more and more reminiscent of Ginger. Maybe the distance has softened my memories of our disagreements. Maybe I’m just in a nostalgic mood.  It doesn’t really matter, I guess. It doesn’t change how they feel.

1997

are you ever afraid of love?
I am.
I’m afraid of falling so hard
I’ll hurt myself.
I’m afraid that I won’t love them enough —
or that I’ll love him too much.
I’m afraid they’ll leave me
to go somewhere else.
and I’m afraid that
it might just be physical —
that I will delude myself
emotionally.
I am afraid of hurting who I love.
Sometimes I’m afraid of hurting
who I hate.
I am afraid of being used
or of using someone.
I’m afraid of never discovering real love
or that I will discover it
and lose it.

ashes to ashes

I thought the hardest part was the phone call

Saying I would never see your smile again.

Then there were sympathy hugs; false commiseration

From people who dismiss your life as sin.

 

My last memory of you, well, that simply isn’t fair.

No daughter, no friend should remember

cold-corpse fingers, stiff arms and straw-like hair.

I kept expecting you to move.

 

you were awfully loved.  The church was crowded.

warm bodies pushed together, jostling

spilling out into the bluesky summer afternoon.

Mourning what would be forgotten..

 

The hardest part was yet to come, though.

That took weeks.  Months.  Years.

Slow, insidious, cruel me – I kept living

Living without you, without tears.

 

I stopped expecting you to be there.

Stopped reaching for the phone.

Stopped each half-turn at a familiar gleam of hair

Stopped crying for the loss of you.

 

Ah, that’s the cruelest of all.  Acceptance.

Acceptance that you won’t return.

That I’ll never see that smirking glance.

That we’ll never again be back to “us”

 

 

voiceless

I would write poetry and prose, words of love and comfort

if I thought that it would help

I would speak in volumes, verbs and tenses

dissecting, psychoanalyzing, explaining and extrapolating

the meanings of what

I feel for you

what I know to be true

in us

if I thought it would help

but nothing seems to help anymore, and I name myself Cassandra,

voiceless

no Helen here.

I see the ending of this Troy

(don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.)

I whisper and I speak and I cry, I try try try

but it seems I will remain

unheard

so fall silent and wait, precipice-balanced, trembling

for the end.

 

work for a living

some of us have to work

for a living

shouts, voice cracking with anger, trembling

at the injustice of it all

the words slap with accusatory force

stinging tears up from the depths

the shameful message clear

jobless, work less, worth less

how do you know the worth of someone

who has not been assigned a value?

off to bed with you.

there is no work to do.

tears sting, and I

grind the coffee beans,

some of us

make tomorrows lunch

run the dishwasher

feed the animals

start the robot vacuums

have to work

put out the dog

nighttime routine (not work to do)

just things I do.

for a living

In the morning I will clean

pick up tidy dust and sweep

unload dishes, reload more

start the bread and do some chores

some of us

I will dust and wipe down counters

empty trash and refill litter

wipe the hair out of the sinks

fix the breakfast, pack the lunch

have to work

appointments, paperwork, bills to pay

ordinary day-to-day (not work I do)

just things I do.

for a living

left without a partnership

the half that isn’t whole

the message clear, I dropped the ball

didn’t do my part, show my worth

without a paycheck, value is negotiable

the shameful message clear

we shout, voices cracking with anger, trembling

at the injustice of it all

 some of us have to work

for a living