mothering

mothering is what she does,
carrying their troubles into the safety of her own breast
sheltering the children from all pain that is love, that is the dry pebbles in scraped knees.

the rain on Sunday afternoons pooled in the balcony’s potholes,
made ripples and waves til December turned it to ice.
the children are in her breast, carried over the ice so as not to damage these cherub toes.

the children passed flowering cherry blossom trees on their way to school, when they were small,
and mother had a glass cup half full of water where the pickings would go:
flowers ardently plucked from unsuspecting gardens, and dandelions.

they held bread in their fingers, and peas and carrots haphazardly in their hair,
she laughed the same way she did when her womb was brimming with the secrets-
the ones only she knew, the ones carried in her breast.

the awkward bunches of flowers in cups wilt,
the children now know dandelions are weeds.

winter sea II

the winter sea is a wasteland of rain and salt of eyes,
it is cracked and dusty with the loneliness of barren wombs;
the winter sea is wild with melancholic rage,
its waves caught in angry storms of drought that no man’s eyes can see, no man’s hands can touch.

nothing grows here in the wasteland,
there is no fresh drink for the lips of women, no lush greens to fill the air and spaces between bare toes;
only salted earth and raggedly woven skin holding sand and water.

winter sea

The winter sea is indifferently majestic;
it is unconcerned with the city’s arbitrary nighttime gunshots
or upcoming contentious elections.
All it wants is to discover the shore’s bumps and old plastic chairs left by humans because the air got too cold, and to flood adjacent highways when possible.

The sea doesn’t care that you are empty inside, or that you go to it for a calming solace because nothing else is consistently good or peaceful.
All it wants is to protect its sunken treasures from prying eyes and the sun’s attempt to evaporate its surface.

When the sea is dark and the night prevents inquisitive eyes from distinguishing its edge on the horizon from the black sky, your soul won’t feel any more enriched.
The café lighthouses that are on the brink of being engulfed in its waves will not bring you closer to home.

The sea just wants to be left alone, moving heavy contents in and out of its unburdened heart.

layers

if you peel back the layers of metaphorical brilliance you’ll simply find a string of words placed in subjective order from least important to most. That’s usually how these things go – they start off weak and climax at some point of epiphany. If you peel back the layers of a human heart, I wonder if it’s the same – the least important things at the surface, and the meaningful stuff at the core. I don’t know, but I do know that if I were an orange or an orange were me, and some hungry passerby were to inquire after the likelihood of acquiring me, I would bleed profuse uncertainty at the first prick of his fingernail.

unkept

Except that promises are made to be kept,
made to be encased and marveled at.
But some promises are like handfuls of sand thrown into the wind,
taking every word and gesture to deceitfully distant places.
We have lost track of those grains,
with no hope of them returning to our upturned palms.

dismembering every connection I have to you

I do not want an open portal into your happiness,
do not crave the information of the kinds of joy rippling through your every nerve.
Although my own life is punctuated with laughter, I had hoped that
I would never again have to experience yours,
I wished so tremendously that you would vanish from this world. But only – that means death, and I do not wish that either.

It’s a conundrum, this. To come to terms with the permanence of things,
that some loves are meant to be lost, and some loves are meant to stay with us.
There is a heavy feeling in my gut that leads me to believe I am not the magnanimous person I had assumed myself to have suddenly become when I acquired love.
But none of us are magnanimous – just simple, vengeful beings
wiping foreheads, and joining the ranks of the undeserving

The poetry of time is that it heals all wounds,
makes difficulties easy, pours sealing wax over old flames.
It blots out the embarrassing shards of memory,
makes you believe your life was all successes
and no failures.

But time is a trickster
at any moment those scab-turned-scars can implode,
leaving chunks of your useless flesh
scattered across the floor, rotting in the sunlight of a perfect afternoon.

I forget your smell–
the distinct aroma of being close to your chest,
nostrils flared so I could soak it all in.

strange dreams
are built inside empty hands
unexpectedly clenched shut,
watered by the time it takes to believe
that all things are plausible

strange dreams breathe
their first pockets of air
when strong hands grab your shoulders
and gruffly whisper:
you will be disappointed

My body is moving through crowds as my feet watch for icy patches on the snow-ridden asphalt. I am in an odd trance – I cannot decide whether I am walking towards home or away from it. Defining home proves difficult as my soles become planted to the ground. Okay, there is the moon and I can see the upcoming street where I normally turn right. Maybe if I just start walking, just start spending the time I’ve been given, my self will eventually reach where it ought to have reached by now. I convince myself to follow the random sounds in my head. After walking a while, I reach a stone wall stretched out painfully wide. No signs, no directions, just wall. I attempt to get around the wall, my bare hand caressing its rough surface until my fingers are calloused. The grey and brown mass still towers ominously above my head, almost blocking out the moon from my line of vision. But I can still see it – a tan-coloured sliver.