healing

July

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 7 Comments
Image courtesy of O’Conner Mortuary

 

I’d nail all the windows in that month shut.

Board the place completely up.

All closed and shuttered,

Leaving it to the dust and rot.

July—the only summer month

I’d abandon

The month forced me to abandon you—

How is a starving  child forced to leave

A mother who sold herself

So the child could eat?

Thus, I cared for you

Until I had to reach out and close your eyes—

Then I dreamed

Dreamed–

I nailed the windows in every room shut

And I boarded up every room.

I took a hammer to that floor to ceiling avocado green tile

Of the kitchen tomb,

Shattering every single inch

Of mirror green shine.

I brought the garden hose in

And hosed down all our scars

Until yours and mine

Nearly disappeared.

Then I woke

And buried you

Under roses

In hot, steamy July

Shuttering you away

Until I thought there’d

Be nothing left of you.

But you are always here.

I pick the good of you

From the rubble,

See little bits of you

In each of your grandchildren.

I see bits of you in my daughter,

And our legacy is not only

One of scars.

The World and Technicolor Youth

~ Annette Kalandros ~ Leave a comment
Image courtesy of LearningRadiology.com
 
 

When colors bled into the world

Through the ice blue topaz of your eyes,

When we both dreamed dreams of kaleidoscope horizons

Blooming in colors too true to be real,

The universe grew beyond our measure

Where recall of dreams came so easily,

Happiness and joy found no reason to arm wrestle

With the stark reality of the world back then

In our younger times—

Before the world shrank

To this extra small size colored

In tones of X-ray grays

Now showing the long-healed breaks and cracks

Of ribs and jaw and clavicle

Yet in this time of a shrinking world and universe

Steeped in all hues of gray

With the amnesia of shrunken head dreams unbreakable,

The filter of your ice topaz eyes—

A small price to pay for wholeness

Of body, bone, and mind.

Next time– Get a Dog

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 2 Comments
pexels-photo dog
You should have gotten yourself a dog.
              No, really.  I mean it.  Instead of chasing me
              Until you caught me.
What you thought you’d found,
When you found me—
And that’s what you wanted me to be—
              A rescued dog—
                             Full of gratitude and loyalty for the perceived rescue.
                             With no record or memory of previous owners,
                                           Ah, an extremely important part.
                             A wagging tail at every word or look from you.
                             Sitting at attention, waiting patiently for you.
                             Desperate for any command you should happen to give.
                             Dutifully complying with each command, each wish
                                           You should ever express.
                             No friends, no family, no loves.  No needs
                                           Other than you and to serve you.
 
That is what you wanted
That is what you needed—
              In your own words—
                             To be my number one at all times.
                             After all, no one would love me better.
                             No one would give me a better home,
                             As you so lovingly liked to remind me.
                            
 
Next time get a dog.
She’ll feed your ego better.

Dreaming of You

~ Annette Kalandros ~ Leave a comment

Medusa

Image from lostgirlmyths.wikia.com

I dreamed of you the other night.
A dream in color and complete.
We both know I rarely remember dreams.
But this one I awoke from—fresh
With that it felt so real feeling.
Imagine my surprise
when I realized
this dream hadn’t dripped from reality.

We sat, it seemed, at some café
In Dallas or Houston,
Or perhaps, we were strolling
The streets of Provincetown,
Walking across the Golden Gate,
Hiking some trail up a Colorado mountain,
Riding the subway of Manhattan,
Driving the traffic jams of Baltimore or
Los Angeles. Perhaps, we watched the whales
Out on the Pacific or maybe it was the Atlantic.
For in the dream, the background shifted like
A chalk drawing on the pavement in a rainstorm,
The colors bleeding, fading, sliding into one another
The way we used to do.

The place doesn’t matter, in the grand scheme
And all, of any such dream.
You talked away as you always did,
Leaving me no room to breathe
Or even catch enough air to say a word,
Squeezing the freedom from my soul.
Your eyes glowed, shining sapphires with no rain.
Your golden bleached hair blowing wild in dream wind.
Your words twisted, tangled in on themselves,
Doing a contortionist’s dance,
Snaking their way into my ears and on toward
The inner working of my heart and brain,
Slithering under the door to my soul.

Once there, your words tried to bite away,
Injecting some poison into my heart, my brain, my soul
To twist me into saying all the things
You wanted me to say–
All the things your ego needed—

Like that oppressive August afternoon
When you argued nonsense to get me to say
I was to blame and beg to stay.
I never knew a slither of words
Could slide and twirl so many ways
like those ribbons of a gymnast, circling this way and that.
As you saw a snaking pattern wasn’t working so well,
I watched your frustration rise.
Your back straightened even more so.
Your eyes narrow almost microscopically,
Your thin lips disappear completely.

I woke then, laughing.
I think I startled my dog.
I laughed again—
To think the last few days I had been missing you—
To think I had once thought you beautiful as a goddess–
Even wrote Botticelli and Byron got it wrong.
Now I see Medusa
When I think of you.
It’s a bloody wonder I, myself, am not stone,
But the well of my hope is another matter.

Lies We Tell Ourselves

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 2 Comments

a85067d662325fd67f5b8aaf448668a1
image from Pinterest

The lies we tell ourselves
Such sparkling things.

Belief needed in the moment–
See diamonds, rubies, sapphires,
Gold, treasures to cherish.
Let the mirror reflect
The lies to eyes
And souls
In needing desire.
Do not hold them in harsh sun.
Too thin,
Too frail,
Too fragile
To withstand such blazing light.

Gently bury them deep
Beneath the soil
Of a needing heart
And the damp decay
Of foolish wants.
Let the lies take root
Growing into the very soul.

Believing
The lies
We tell ourselves,
We smile
To keep
The truth at bay,
As the lies grow
The rot of hopelessness
Into our very souls.

Air

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 3 Comments

Never could breathe
When in your air.

You, your perfume,
Or something in the scent of you
Clogged my nose,
My sinuses,
My bronchial tubes
With fluid like cement,
Leaving me no air
To live on.

Really, suffocation
Never felt so sweet.

You were warmth personified
Like fire you fed on the oxygen
Whenever you wanted,
Wherever you were.
But God, it felt like heaven
To warm myself near your flames.
Until it felt like hell
And I burned in the flames,
Sucking in nothing but smoke.

Now, from the ashes,
I rise and breathe.


Once again,
I know the air.

Illusions

~ Annette Kalandros ~ Leave a comment

A word or two,
You. 
A word or two,
You.

And on it goes,
Until my throat does close,
And the bar with six screws
That holds my neck bones
Together rubs
At the esophageal tissue there.

And I think maybe a screw
Worked out of the bone.
That would be me—
A screw loose.

And I think
I am just too old,
Too old, for this–
Heartbreak shit.
Like Prufrock,
“I grow old, I grow old.”
Oh, how fuckin’ appropriate.

And then I go walk.
But not “upon the beach.”
What I thought you were,
What I wanted to believe you were,
There still when I return.

Time

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 5 Comments
image from istock

Time broke,
And you were there,
Black and white upon a screen,
Seeming to tumble
In time to the thump, thump
From a machine.

Time split in half,
And you were there,
Barely a teen,
Trying on a mountain of jeweled dresses
Frowning and sighing.
Finally smiling
After reluctantly putting on a dress
I asked, “Just try it, please?”

Time shattered,
And there you were,
Clattering down the hall,
Your tiny toddler feet
In my size nine heels.

Time wrecked,
And there you were,
An adolescent sleeping,
Lips parted,
A fist clutching a beloved stuffed bunny,
So grown, yet so tiny still.

Time crumbled,
And you were there
In your toddler car seat,
Sobbing, fat toddler tears
For we had no food
To give the homeless man on the corner.
So, we drove through McDonald’s and bought a meal for him.
Your tears stopped. You smiled as I handed him the meal.
But the incongruity of your toddler voice admonished,
“Next Sunday, after church, we need to buy a healthy meal
And bring it to him. McDonald’s isn’t healthy to eat all the time.”

Time exploded,
And there you were,
Sitting in a swing, hands reaching for the sky;
Crying in my arms, heart breaking for the first time;
Laughing on Saturday morning, maple syrup running down your chin;
Praying the Lord’s prayer in church, brow furrowed in toddler earnestness.


Time coalesced,
Healing its broken,
Shattered,
Split,
Wrecked,
Crumbled,
Exploded
Self.

Time mended,
Leaving us broken
In its wake
To find ourselves—
Mother, aged
And daughter, grown
To know each other
Again.