Syrup still dripping from your fingertips,
you try to gift me the sugared dreams
you have stolen away
from a pearlescent candied sky.
I long to taste such dreams
of sweetened rest.
Sweetened Stolen Dreams
Tag: #healing
On The Horizon
Thursday photo prompt: Vista #writephoto
Gazing at lush greenness as it travels
along this vista, a soul emptied of itself,
shrinking away to dust
for all the of giving it had done,
breathes in fullness and begins to glow.
Only here in green wildness breathed,
can pinhole prick holes and jagged slashes
be sealed in a soul emptied of itself.
Renew
Begin with unpacking
the loss of years.
Perhaps, for once,
Win the battle with tears.
Start over clean, new.
Carry emptied, broken down boxes,
bundled and tied, sticky at the edges
with their old used tape, to the curb.
Balanced no longer on narrow ledges.
Breathe now, once again.
Written in response to: https://amanpan.com/2020/05/25/eugis-weekly-prompt-renewal-may-25-2020/
Walking to Race Point
Sleeplessness always told the story
between the back when and now,
what she once thought a game,
tracks leading nowhere.
This last section of living
something not well lived.
A swirl of memory
piercing through knots
too tight to be undone.
She had lived without a plan,
having a heart that spoke in tongues
she had yet to understand.
Jagged
Written in response to:
https://onewomansquest.org/2020/05/11/vjs-weekly-challenge-95-bits-and-pieces/
Pieces broke away,
pebbles and stones
chipped from a boulder.
The edge of a pane of glass
broken off, no longer smoothly square,
but rough ridged like a broken thumb nail,
begging to be filed away.
Pieces broken away,
missing in wordlessness,
cannot be found.
Jig saw together the rest,
glue, duct tape,
what is left,
never to imitate new, unbroken.
Broken, hollowed parts,
make for an ever incomplete,
an always abyss
to fall headlong into,
always a scratchy roughness to scrape
a knee, an elbow, a hand.
Always a sharp edge to slice open
an abdomen, an arm, a femoral artery, a throat.
No. No. No.
Everything, everything
at once, best kept at arm’s length.
Never can such wounds be allowed
in the here,
in the now.
Drift, Taste, Memory
Written in response to Tuesday Writing Prompt Challenge on
https://godoggocafe.com/2020/04/21/tuesday-writing-prompt-challenge-tuesday-april-22-2020/comment-page-1/#comment-48478
I drift
Drift in purpose, direction,
Resolve in question.
Telling myself on repeat
I’ve no need, no want
Of soft skin against mine.
To feel another’s heart beat
Against my chest.
Though I remember,
Though I can still imagine,
When I close my eyes
What it is
To close my hand round the soft hand of another,
To fall asleep embracing—entwined, entangled,
To wake and smell sleep warmed skin,
To touch and take and give and kiss
Before coffee should touch my lips.
Such hunger is not a thing I allow myself to taste,
The risk too rich, too great to let it touch upon the tongue.
I am not young enough for a taste of what
Should bring me to my knees—
Of what I imagine
That she’d taste like memory.
Wild and Tame
Originally written in July of 2015. Revised 2020.
My friend, the squirrel, sits at my feet.
I wonder perhaps should I be sitting at his.
He is tame
Unlike me.
I have peanuts for him.
He knows.
He is willing to wait
And teach me
All the lessons he knows
Of a heart
That is wild
Yet tame.
I marvel at all
That is contained
Within his tiny heart.
The joys of peanuts and sunflower seeds,
Being unafraid in the face of strangers,
And making friends so easily,
Of finding a home among things lush and green,
Knowing no fear to leap
Into things unknown.
Will he instruct me
In the ways to live once again
And move on?
Tell me to remove these rings
Linked to a grief buried beneath grey granite?
Can he share with me the lesson
Of what to do with all things circular,
New and old grief– link upon link of chain?
Teach me the ways of letting go?
The ways of living without fears
To staunch the bleeding of wounds
Both new and so very old?
Is this the meaning
Of being wild and tamed?
Scars of Flame
My scars flames–
The sides of my back,
pock marked brown
drying dark
if not daily oiled in
the red, orange, white
of flames,
trailing once welted scars,
faded, now barely.
if even seen–
Feathered flames
enabling flight,
if I should like,
or if I so prefer,
burning back past paths
behind so I may fly
to places I wish,
keeping promises
to my soul.
My scars flame–
Only I see
and only I know
the power contained
in my flaming scars.
Under A North Texas Sky
No roots here,
Not under this.
Not under this,
North Texas sky.
Nothing grew,
Nothing rooted,
Although I tried.
I planted native plants,
Fertilized and tended,
Weeded and watered,
Talked lovingly even,
Became the crazy lady
With the plants.
For a bit, just a bit,
Each plant bloomed
In wonderful cinematic,
Glorious technicolor.
I would think–
I’ve got it right!
But no. Each would start
To wilt and fade.
I googled and researched,
Soil tested even.
Yes, it’s true– to know
What to do.
But I was doing everything right.
No expert could tell me true,
Just why I could not
Get anything to flourish,
to grow, to root
In this, this North Texas soil
Under this, this North Texas sky.
A Tree in Winter
My hope is
Different now,
Changed, evolved.
Once a verdant green
Of fresh, newborn spring.
Now evolved into this chilly thing–
Brown, dried husks,
A few barely clinging
To a tree in late autumn.
Seems something, someone
Sucked the hope out,
Fed on it as if it were life’s blood,
And I am left drained, a leftover hull
Of what once was. But I go on
As if all is the same and nothing
Is gone. A tree in winter,
Hoping enough green
Is left to grow, to live in spring.
