Old, Borrowed, and Blue

My grief is borrowed

Just as my joy, my love, my life

I live through an extension of my mother

An umbilical cord never cut

A parallel life that waits for doom

That remembers the all too familiar milestones

The celebrations, the successes, the great fall

And so I count my time

Constantly ticking, I look over my shoulder

I hear the laughter like an echo in a chamber

Trapped, forever observing a scene from another life

Looming over what is, and would surely come to be

As 35 approached, I clawed at the calendar

I braced myself to stand alone, be everything

Be my mother

But the boy I saw looked at himself grey in the mirror

Relief surely now, surely finally

Replaced quickly with another 

Unexpected grief

Of moving on without my daughter

And then I look in the mirror,

And suddenly see my mother

Still there, still laughing

And I pause to wonder

If my something old, something borrowed, something blue

Is not grief, not fear,

But the present

Still here, still beating.

The Cycle of Being

She used to be one to detest things or love them with incomparable wrath or passion. She was the whirlwind that didn't just catch your breath but swept you off your feet. She was the very air you breathed, the beating of your heart. Tut tut tut tut tut, not the unnoticeable one of peace, but of the heady rush after you have spun yourself into a delirious moment of pleasure. 

She was all that and so much more... 

But time.. Time has a way of rubbing at your edges until the sharpness is rounded, the bite is lost, the carvings are smoothened out, until what once cut and made you bleed, now let you slip by, unnoticed, without a passing thought to its name. 

And so, she lay down, and let others step over her, some lightly, some quite determined to make her wince, but the worst, unknowingly, with no notice to the immeasurable vastness that lay at their feet. 

Then one day, came a little curious finger that traced all over her smooth once-edges. A little nose that pressed against her cool surface until it made quite sure she was there. And then the persistent questioning began, where are you? Until she was forced to raise a tired head and show herself. Here she was. But the little voice would have none of it. It commanded full attention, complete presence, absolute commitment to be present. To be there. 

And so she became, once more, everything. 

Formaldehyde

How does my heart beat outside my chest? 

Why do the thick membranes of my room thump so loud? 

Why does the numbness float tangible, stiff like fog around me? 

Why does frivolous banter penetrate my glass-encased mind? 

Am I drowning in the formaldehyde labs of senile gods? 

Too proud to see if I can survive without their injected luck? 

Did I get the dose or am I on placebo? 

And am I better off either way? 

Do I live another day at their mercy or have I never actually been? 

Am I helpless or do I choose to float aimless? 

Do I have a voice? And are ears of any use? 

Ears are overestimated. 

Apparently they do no shut, but that's a lie. 

They never open. 

The black holes they hide are visible through the eye and so, we shut them too. 

But light, what of light? 

How do we shut out light? 

And how do we unsee the thickening of the fog and the resounding thump thump thump of the enclosing membranes? 

We can. 

Until the glass shatters around us. 

And formaldehyde washes away the last of our sins. 

The girl who forgot

She didn't remember the man with six cats four doors down from her house. She didn't remember the game of twister the first time she introduced her husband to her friends. She didn't remember the lovely red lantern she got for Christmas last year. She didn't remember what she wore on her last birthday. She didn't remember the boy with the moon glasses who lived down the street. But she remembered things the others forgot. She remembers the night her friend hushed her to sleep. She remembers the girl who drew her a leaf. She remembers the sound of her father's tummy gurgling. She remembers the wetness of her first kiss. She remembers her friend's wet cheeks. She remembers how a pair of long slender hands fit hers. She remembers the morning she knew how she never wanted to be touched again. She remembers the winding roads lit by a million stars on the way to the hills. She remembers breathing in deep as she drove through a cloud. It's the freshest air you will ever breathe, her grandmother said. And as she held her scaly hands for the last time, she remembered. 

Phosphates

Phosphates glowing in the sea

Do you know how you came to be? 

When the stars revolted

At the growing darkness

Then the moon asked them to leave. 

So the sea erupted

And lit the falling ashes

The embers are what you see. 

Paralysis

Endless is the night

Wings wrapped snug around tired bones

Lips quaking in half dreams

Letters forming and drifting away into gentle slumber

I lie awake

Terrified

Incapacitated

Paralyzed

By the consequences of thoughts

And the bliss of thoughtlessness

Does it ever end? 

Blessings

Why is there no God? 

Are we abandoned? 

Is there no one to calm our fears? 

Stroke our heads and tell us it will be ok? 

It will all be ok? 

Must we do it all? 

Live through everything. Believe. Stay positive. 

Where do they get the strength to believe? 

I must be weak, begging for someone to hear me. To bless me. To look after me. Unable to believe.

Unable to lower my head in front of stone deities.

Unable to pray for my daughter.

And Lord am I terrified.