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Friday, August 10, 2012

Relationship with a Capital R

The ironic thing about the Relationship (with a capital R) is that it is the place where you are most likely to run up against your own limitations. No fair! Our culture sells romantic love as a kind of panacea for the aloneness that is inherent to the human condition. Maybe it is partially that, but its essential nature less straightforward.

It is in relationship that we see the exact ways that we are alone. This first poem is about the disillusionment that happens when you realize love - as you have known it so far - might not be enough.


Your Heart


When you give your
heart
You pretend it beats
vibrant and full of blood- You say
take this, it will be a worthy companion
to you. Then little by little the hollowness
and the cracks are exposed
The way the thing skips a beat.
You patch it up Move along, nothing
to see here.
Then one day
                                   
broken crumpled moth wings
tarpaper
daub - stick, mud tape
The crowds gather stand around and gawk at the thing
wondering if it will ever fulfill its former promise.



Sometimes you wish for something less - no matter how flawed it might be. You want to know that you are separate, even from those you love. 

In My Daylight


In the thick dark
of the front seat
of his dented Volvo
parked on a dry
nighttime riverbed
wrapped in Leonard Cohen’s voice

beside a man
I’ll never know
well. Talking
the kids
from the Elwha tribe
used to pull pranks
on that bridge. They would
make dummies that looked
real and  throw them
into the middle
of the narrow bridge
under front wheels, screeching
to a halt and almost
through that guardrail

one time.
I will never read
him in the dark. It will
be over after
our first fight. In the dark
of the places he grew
up, I am not required,
to fill any holes.





Dreams and waking blend together to make reality. Sometimes, you just want to dive in, take an immoderate helping, revel in it, because after all this is where we learn to be ourselves.

Dim Sum Dream


Dim sum has just been delivered
to the table. Round, fleshy steamed buns. Bright green
broccoli under dented tin lids. Pot Stickers folded
with origami precision.

Woken first by the cats
he is – stroking my hair three times
pretty, pretty, pretty. He pulls me close.
I move in, breathe and clasp his thigh.

Clacking wheels of the stainless
steel cart make endless rounds.
Steam seeps round the edges
trailing.

There is no price I can put on
closeness.
no way to measure moist
warmth.

Even as I grow uncomfortable I will not
move
away.

I will stay with my spine twisted to rest squarely
against his chest.
He has fallen
back to sleep. I am still
listening to his breathing.
slow it comes
rapid-fire then stops.
One, two, three. I count the seconds,
holding my own breath until he
breathes again.

3 comments:

  1. These are all beautiful, but the second one is the most touching to me. I remember so well.

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  2. Thanks Aimee, and on another note - soon I will have a Mexican follower!

    ReplyDelete
  3. If I had done anything this breath taking you would hear my wheezing in Timbuktu. Lovely and potent Sofie.

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