miniature bridges

110.

2012-01-22T20:25:00.003-05:00

It was easy to become this woman.
Who does not know how to color
the air, who does not remember the taste
of mint, before mint was
a liar. This woman who does not use cinnamon
on toast, who believes in nothing
but science.

109. January 19th.

2012-01-19T13:17:00.005-05:00

Tomorrow is your birthday.

Last year we traveled,
had a hotel room in Washington D.C.,
you let me have the window seat on the plane.
The year before, I woke up at 5am
and covered our apartment
in small notes. On the bathroom mirror,
in the shower, in the coffee jar.
Your car too, although it had snowed
the night before, and your windshield wipers
were frozen solid. The year before that
I had just realized that you were wonderful
and made you a CD of my favorite songs
(and you say that things
were never simple).

You will be twenty-eight. It's true, you know,
that you begin to come into yourself
as you approach thirty. You'll see.

Tomorrow is your birthday.
I will give you only my thoughts.

I no longer want to count the weeks
that I've been without you.
As each passes, cells in my body die off
and are replaced by ones that have never felt
your touch, your breath, the vibrations of your voice.
Eventually I will be brand new.
Perhaps clean.

Tomorrow is your birthday. I miss you very much.

108. The races versus the sawgrass.

2012-01-14T23:42:00.003-05:00

The same bottle of liquor
has sat patiently in my pantry
since Thanksgiving. I have chosen
against dulling this.

It is strange to think of her
touching the clothes I used to touch.
Dress shirts that you may have bought
only after asking me if the color
was friend or foe against your skin.
It is strange to think

that you were the one to move on
first, as we had always declared me
as the one with a magnetic personality.
Although, if I were to be cruelly honest,

it was not the lack of opportunities
that prevented me from breaking
across the taped line, but is was my ability,
or less humbly, my wisdom, that allowed
me to say no. To pretend I was a great blue heron,
pretend I was at peace in the marsh,

and, more honesty, sometimes not needing
to pretend these things at all.
Are great blue herons hunted? I know they are seen
as beautiful, without being particularly delicate.

You required too much of me,
at the expense of my body and my stillness.
I notice the irony, with you now gone,
that I cannot sleep at night, that I am able
to see the world in light, that I make more conversation
with strangers. Again, honesty:

Something important was suffocated.
I am beginning to understand what that was,
and despite the grief I have for you, amidst the grief
I have for you, how I will get it back.

107. A haiku on the bottom thoroughly dropping out (see also: the stomach doesn't lie).

2012-01-14T00:27:00.003-05:00

There is not a thing
That can brace for the moment
You see him with her.

106.

2012-01-12T21:14:00.002-05:00

In Massachusetts,
it has not yet snowed
this winter.
We have not fallen asleep
to the sound of steam
trying to escape
my bedroom radiator,
nor have we woken
to cinnamon coffee
and french toast.
There is nothing about this
January that I recognize.
But I'm trying
to make it home.

105. The second haiku I have ever written: For the measurements of rebirth.

2012-01-10T00:23:00.003-05:00

There are many things
I will move past with fervor.
But not this, not this.

104.

2012-01-08T23:40:00.004-05:00

At seven and a half weeks
I have accummulated a list of small
changes. I am telling more
of the truth. I stain my lips
the color of raspberries.
Talk to strangers on the train.
Do not return their calls.
I stay up too late, but nearly sleep
through the night.
It's all very trival.

It has been long enough now.
It has not been long enough now.

The views tilt slightly, and
I imagine that you are trying to see me
as the villain. I'm not.
I'm not the hero either.

I am not covered in feathers,
nor scales. Much of the time
I am grossly human,
pointing out planets and taking
great pleasure in discussing
the scientific theories of bees,
and the possible shapes of the universe.
Once, you loved these things
about me.

When you read my letter,
did you whisper back?
Was the room flooded in light?
Or was it late, nearly midnight,
was it dark and were you
sorry?

You always said you admired my ability
to forgive. Unfortunately, for lovers
who have left me and later sought
resurrection, it was this same forgiveness
that had me say
no.
I owe forgiveness my life, you see.

103. A haiku for the measurements of death.

2012-01-07T22:21:00.002-05:00

You may be the moon
But I have long extended
Far beyond my means

One-hundred and two.

2012-01-06T22:21:00.002-05:00

The body will tell you
when something is wrong.

Sacrifice itself to push
you back onto the correct
artery.

I have been healthy
since November.

Now, tell me what you think
about coincidence

and the geese
that fly south
in winter.

One-hundred and one.

2012-01-05T15:21:00.000-05:00

You find a picture
of your lover smoking a cigarette,
and the only appropriate thoughts
are, Who is this person, and,
What else do I not know about him.

Did you know that there is a form of grief
that actually makes a person vomit?

Say you can only have one
as your heart's companion. Lantern
or compass.

Choose. Wait
for it to be finished.

No. 14.

2011-12-25T23:38:00.004-05:00

It's all very strange. Sometimes I love you so hard that I want to throw up. Sometimes I love you so hard that it feels wonderful, tingles all over my body, happiness shot straight through each organ, and that's me loving you even though you're not here anymore. Imagine that. Imagine the joy I feel loving you now, when it doesn't matter, when you aren't around to feel it from me, and imagine how much greater that joy was when you were.

Yet. The absence takes something away. The ache is equal to the joy. Sometimes they exist simultaneously, sometimes one needs to sleep for a little while, and the other is the only one I hear. It is not easy. I am not waiting for anything. It is possible that I may love you for the rest of my life. It is up to me to make peace with that. In the same way one is forced to make peace with their front porch being set on fire each morning, at the same time they have some place to be. Leap, extinguish, take the back door, the window. The day cannot stop.

One-hundred. On Surprises:

2011-12-22T23:33:00.000-05:00

I planned too far ahead.
Christmas, your birthday.
However, I didn't make it
to February, and some
might call that a victory.

Every few weeks I would stand in the bathroom
before washing my face
and say I love you
into the mirror. I'm a human being
after all,
and occasionally need the reassurance.

I grew up and that's good,
there's something
about earning the lines beneath your eyes,
at the corners of your mouth,
even in the backs of your hands.
In a picture from when we first became
friends, you look younger too.
We earned a lot in those years
when we sometimes neglected
to treat us as we were separate bodies.

I'm dreaming about whales again.
I'm in the water
but I can't touch them.

No. 13.

2011-12-21T19:49:00.000-05:00

Just because the door is open, doesn't mean I have to stay waiting in the room.

Ninety-nine.

2011-12-17T00:30:00.002-05:00

If speaking
of things that I deserved:
More goodness
than
that.

Ninety-eight. For M, on Christmas.

2011-12-12T16:32:00.001-05:00

I wear the scarf
your mother gave me
this year.
It is bright blue
and doesn't match my eyes
but something about it
is comforting.
Why I am not going home
to you
I do not understand.

Ninety-seven. A true story that doesn't make for a very good poem.

2011-12-06T18:30:00.004-05:00

I was too ill to go to into work
today. In the afternoon,
I drank a cup of coffee and painted
my eyelids cat-black,
and went to buy a new set
of sheets. Funny, how anxious
I made myself worrying
that I would see you in Central,
then at Park, then at the very end
of the green line, and then on the 87 home.
You were not there, of course.
I imagine you were in your fancy
downtown high rise, making charts
or preparing some sort of report or
presentation. I bet your hair was neat
and you looked very serious.
Maybe in your navy dress shirt.
Anyway, I made it home
without occurrence, and moved my bed
to the opposite side of the room,
a side you haven't slept on,
and found a pair of your pants
(brown corduroy), that were somehow left behind
when I gave you back your things.
I threw them away
and the sheets you haven't touched
are holding the mattress in place.

Ninety-six.

2011-12-04T18:55:00.003-05:00

It has been seventeen days.
If my cat notices that you are gone,
she does not show it,
but she has taken to sleeping
on your side
of the bed.

I had coffee with a stranger.
It is too soon and he is too cynical,
and unlike you, does not know
how I shape my fingers
to hold a pencil, what colors
I will not wear, what things
make my voice
go soft.

I notice.
I'm sorry that we painted your bedroom
together. That must be hard to look at.
All I had to do was move around
some furniture.
I still love you.

I see my mother in the shape of my face
when I am drunk, when my makeup settles
into the creases underneath my eyes,
when I tire of being a good person,
or whatever this is.

Say I am able to cover my body
in chrysanthemums. Say that I am able
to forget you.

It's not about beauty or fluidity.
It is because of you
that I knew home,
once.

Ninety-five.

2011-11-30T22:00:00.002-05:00

Since you left,
I have seen a great blue heron take flight
each day, from the window of the train.
I am still brave, but forgive me,
I could not have anticipated
this space.

Ninety-four.

2011-11-17T21:28:00.002-05:00

I was always the one
to quickly grasp the concept of
permanency
and her opposite.

Tonight I will sleep
and tomorrow I will wake
and I will remember
that this has happened.

This has happened.

Ninety-three.

2011-07-06T19:55:00.001-04:00

It is July. This means
my thighs stick together
in even the darkest rooms,
I do not want to eat food
above a certain temperature,
and I don't like this
any more than winter, and
I'm always on one side
of the window, of the fence,
of the door, or the other.

At this point
in my life I have memorized
the feather patterns on two
dozen songbird wings,
approximately one hundred and
fifty-four recipes,
and seven city grids.
I have not lived. Enough?
I have not lived enough.

Sure, there is a quiet grace
in miniature houses
with robin egg shutters
and muted fields without wildflowers.
But the two important truths:

1. I am coming back
from the dead.
2. I do not know how to love you
in an interesting way.

And the problem is,
something in my chest
is expanding at an alarming rate,
but it is not expanding
for ___. It's similar
to the way I feel about horses
and courageous women
and my discomfort at the word
"small." Why is it
that I suddenly want
only bold
and galloping things?

No. 12.

2011-07-06T19:23:00.001-04:00

You have turned me into a person of science.

No. 11. On failing.

2011-06-07T19:11:00.001-04:00

Just because you get what you want, doesn't always mean you get what you want.

No. 10.

2011-05-31T09:56:00.000-04:00

Red flag.
Red flags.

Ninety-two.

2011-05-26T10:29:00.000-04:00

I am an artist
because
of everything that’s happened to me
and what I’ve chosen
to do with it.

No. 9.

2011-05-17T13:25:00.001-04:00

I keep trying to be here, but the problem is, not a single beautiful thing is coming from these hands, these days.