You began the conversation with
“We need to talk”
but talk is the last thing I wanted
I knew it signaled the demise of the silence
that held things tightly and neatly in place
It would begin the process of unboxing
which is messy, in words
Our winter come to end
in dignified formality
you were gone
love
January
You were cold when I met you
with bitter winds and sleet that chilled the bones
and stung bare skin
Etched
but beautiful and dazzling
sun on shards of broken glass
a blizzard, a tumult
a beginning
S.O.S.
You think you’ll find love
and you do for a moment
in the arms of a boy
with eyes that see into
the places other people won’t
or can’t
And you fashion an image
of happy ever after
very much like the movies
you watched with your grandpa
before he died
Only the rescue
never happens
the sun goes down
and rises without him
And you realize
you were holding
the life preserver all along…
Seasons
You are winter wind
that bites my face
and burns my lungs
Fleeting and painful
in the moment you are here
and in the next,
gone like snow that gently melts away
in springtime sun
Returning as the leaves
of summer green
and put to rest
by autumn darkness falling
a memory I live again
Like seasons…
Penance
perhaps you are my secret
left in the darkness of a closet
filled with dry bones
that rattle like fallen leaves
on pavement on a crisp and windy day
yet unlike those drifting leaves
I can not sweep you away
because you are alive
with beating heart
a memory I revisit in the silent night
with hope
that I may somehow change the past
rinse you clean and bright as dawn
bring you back to Innocence
and into light
forgiven
She
You tell her
she is worthy
and just because her dad left
and never calls to say hello
it doesn’t mean she is unloveable
And you dry her tears
and you say over and over
it’s all going to be okay
because you will be there
to pick up the pieces he left behind
Her tears, though dry
leave stains that no words can wash away
So you pray
and you love your little lonely child
hug away her doubts
seize every giggle in tightly clasped hands
and watch the sun rise in her beauty
And you realize
she is you
Ghost
The taste of dark brew
conversations overheard
from a wooden chair at the coffee shop
where the clatter of glass
a laugh a smile
all of these are reminders
of what was had and what is lost
and of the fleeting, dizzying pace of time
all things go on
as I go on
your ghost
like fading photographs
my company
You
You are my world in words
a shaft of sunlight splitting through
a dusty library window
where in silence lives
a heartbeat heard only in your embrace
my face pressed close to you
and your tattoos
every page
my love
Gone
her pillow is her company
since illusion has dissolved
to reality
like darkness to dawn
an understanding
that you and she could never work
despite her desire
and she was forced to face
her neediness and loneliness
and in some instances complete lack of any sense of self so lost
she hates it all and how
you strung up her dead dignity
and let it swing in the wind to be ridiculed
she was alive
the girl who once colored rainbows in black and white lines
is unpacking dark emotions
this purge may not bring purity
but it has brought clarity
and she is glad you are gone
Random thoughts
Off the top of my head
I’ve plucked thoughts of laundry
dinner and love
how one is never done
one must always be planned
and one is never mine
at least not
to my exact specifications
and how all of them
begin with something clean
a cloth a pan a heart
and end up stained
dirty broken or burnt
and I am left to (with some trepidation)
try to get what’s dirty
clean again
Golifely 