Nothing Needs Fixing

Nothing needs fixing
right now.
Not the floor,
or the roof,
or the dishwasher,
or my heart.
Nothing needs fixing
this moment.
It is amazing how much time
I spend
trying to fix things.
My mother.
My father.
My sister.
My boyfriend.
My finances.
I could spend entire days
trying to make things better.
but the dog will still be dirty tomorrow.

Somewhere I Stopped Laughing

When I think of all the choices I have made in my life
I feel sick.
Here I am
and where I have got
is not where I want to be.
Did I go out for lunch
one too many times?
Or worry about whether one of my boyfriends
would call
or whether he needed a root canal
when I should have been worrying about my own teeth?
Just how much time have I spent bemoaning a review
or fretting over someone
who was rude to me?
How many nights have I gone to bed early
feeling like it is too late for me
promising myself I would work harder the next night
and when the next night came
I was in bed again?
All of these days, weeks, months
have added up to years
and here I am,
where I do not want to be.
I pray to God
to help me find a way out.
I thought I was doing o.k.
Doing the right thing.
I thought my life was going along fine.
But somewhere
I stopped being the youngest in my class.
Somewhere
I graduated from college years ago
And stopped using the three years of training
that I called my M.F.A.
Somewhere I stopped believing that my dreams
would be a reality.
Somewhere I stopped laughing.
I feel like I am standing in a crowd of hundreds of people
all rushing in different directions.
They are all “going somewhere”
while I stand there
trying to speak,
trying to ask for directions,
the paper in my hand,
the one that tells me what I need to know
and who I am supposed to be
in this life
falls to the floor.
And I can not get it back.

Men With Tools

There are men
across the street from me.
Men with tools,
hammers, saws and drills.
Men who sweat
and urinate in plastic outhouses.
Men who eat fast food lunches at eleven
and go home by four.
Men who can fix things.
They are the kind of men I need for about an hour
and then never again.
I watch them
day after day
going in and out of that new million dollar house
with their tool belts strapped around their waists.
I watch them like a dog in a butcher shop
salivating
over what I can’t have.
They are so close,
so touchable,
and yet
so out of reach.
It isn’t fair.
I only need one.
Just one
with his big drill,
to fix my backdoor,
and put on that new mailbox,
the shiny black one I bought at Home Depot
the realtor says I so desperately need.
It wouldn’t take long.
Why a man like one of those could do the whole job
in probably fifteen minutes,
thirty at the most.
They’d hardly miss him at the big house.
And then, I swear,
I’d put him right back
Just like a kleptomaniac
who stole a sweater and had a change of heart.
It wouldn’t hurt anyone,
wouldn’t cost anyone anything.
After all,
he’s getting paid by the hour.
What difference does it make if he’s working
over here or over there?
He’d be doing a good deed.
He’d be doing such a good deed.
Why it’s almost wrong of me
not to ask.
Who am I to keep that man from having the opportunity
to feel good about himself?

Perhaps it’s the mailbox

why my home won’t sell.
The realtor across the street seems to think so.
He says it’s the first thing people notice
and if the mailbox doesn’t look good
people assume the house isn’t good.
Maybe he’s right.
After all,
my mailbox is plastic and tied on to the metal post with a strap
which covers up half the stick on numbers.
Maybe that’s giving people the idea that the entire house
is falling apart.
Makes sense to me.
Faulty mailbox equals leaky roof,
cracked driveway,
and overall dilapidated house.
Right.
If I believed that I would have a mailbox built out of marble
at the foot of my driveway
with numbers made out of fourteen karat gold.
Come on.
Is that what they are teaching in real estate school?
“If the mailbox is lame, go to a different house.”
The truth is,
a couple of years ago
a car full of kids drove by and knocked my mailbox down with a baseball bat
as part of their high school graduation celebration.
It’s a Southern tradition,
like eating grits with eggs
and throwing puppies out of moving trucks.
So rather than buy a new one,
which would probably get knocked over again
next May,
I had my roofer try to fix it.
When he couldn’t reattach it,
he took a bungie cord and tied it around the mailbox.
It’s held on for three years now.
I’d kind of forgotten about it
until the realtor pointed out its’ uncomeliness.
But still, even with a questionable mailbox,
I find it hard to believe that's what's keeping my home from selling.
Nevertheless,
this week I am putting up a new mailbox,
a ten dollar shiny black metal one from Home Depot.
That should get the offers rolling in.

What's Missing

Stop it!
Stop it right now!
Stop running.
There is nothing out there.
Nothing in the malls,
or on the clothing racks.
Nothing in the perfume bottles
or in the pockets of furs.
Nothing in the smiles of strangers.
There is nowhere you can go
that is better than where you are now.
No beach.
No mountain.
No spa.
Nowhere.
Take a look.
I dare you.
Open up your window
and see.
See the new leaf sprouting on the maple tree.
See the red cardinal flying from limb to limb in search of love.
Listen to the plane flying south above you.
See the white moth banging against your panes.
Yes,
all of it is here,
and it doesn’t cost a dime.
God has laid a bounty before you
and you only complain of what’s missing.
The only thing missing
is you.

What Was

Since last July,
when my sister and I were forced to move my parents’ our of their home in Texas,
I have been homeless.
Yes,
I have a roof over my head
in Nashville,
but Nashville isn’t home.
Home is Wade Hampton.
Home is 713-464-8774.
Home is where I lost my baby teeth.
Had my first period.
Kissed a boy.
Home is where Mattie told me stories about the big white cat
who would eat me
if I walked across the freshly mopped floors.
Home is where I would run
whenever someone was mean to me at elementary school.
Home is where we ate Thanksgiving dinner,
and opened Christmas presents,
and had Shipley doughnuts on Saturday morning
while we watched Bugs Bunny cartoons.
Home is where I hid in the closet,
where I dreamed of being a star,
where I learned I didn’t matter.
Home is where the arguing
was as constant as the t.v.
It was never great,
but it was home.
Now I am like a bee
whose hive was knocked down
from the tree.
I am hovering,
and buzzing
and trying to make sense of what isn’t there.
I have no place to land,
and no where to go,
and I can not recreate what was.

Things I like

White roses.
Yellow roses.
The sun on my back.
The sun on Trouble’s back.
Hot water.
Seventy five degree days.
Spring.
Tulips springing up.
Empty parking lots.
My wind chime rustling.
The happy chirp of robins.
An unsweet ice tea with a chocolate chip cookie.
Peach cobbler.
Walks in the woods.
Driving to the beach on a whim.
Time alone.
The smell of sesame oil on my skin.
Cloudless days.

The Unworthy

I listen to their calls,
the same repetitive sounds
like the thoughts in my mind.
My yellow daffodils.
The red cardinal by the holly.
Trouble asleep in the dirt.
The bushes alive with the rustling of nature.
It is like that here.
Settling down into myself
I am leaving the world of worry behind.
There has been no call from the woman with the check.
No word from the broken.
Yes,
I am doing it again,
giving myself over to the day
and it’s troubles.
Now,
I must sit on the couch and confess
to the page.
Now I must find what I want,
once more,
regardless of who or what or how.
For most of my life,
I have let the unworthy lead me.
I fear I will never leave this place.

White Roses

White roses.
Curved over glass.
Heads soft as marshmallows.
A bridal vase of yellow, red and white.
I see you in my dreams.
So soft,
so soft.
The ruffled lace of virgins’ gowns.
I dream of holding you,
your sweetness filling my nose.
How still and beautiful you are.
If I could paint you,
capture you,
remember you,
I would keep your image in my head
and recall you
on days that are bleak and sallow.
White roses
do not die.
Such loveliness should never
be forsaken.

Breathing In Chicken Fat

I am so excited.
I can barely sit.
I am leaving this town.
This boring, stale,
close-minded town.
I am leaving the cicadas,
and the trucks and the tobacco.
I am leaving the anti-abortion stickers,
and the pro W people,
and the phonies who promise
but never deliver.
I am leaving the doughnuts,
and the toothless
and the slow.
I am leaving suburbia.
I can feel it now,
the water.
I can hear the traffic,
the buses,
the cabs,
the trains.
I can see myself on that bridge,
that balcony,
eating Chinese
that tastes like Chinese,
feet in the sand,
watching the sunset
with the harbor below,
shopping
at real stores,
dining
and not leaving nauseous.
I feel so free,
like I am starting the next chapter of my life.
Whatever it will bring,
I know it will be better
than breathing in chicken fat.

FSBO

I am ready to pull it down,
take in the sign
and forget it,
resign myself to this hill,
and the pollen,
and the mosquitoes,
and the drivers.
Twice now I have been offered an opportunity
to leave
and didn’t take it.
Once,
from a psychotic buyer
from L.A.
who offered me a low bid,
and now,
a month later,
I have a thirty-month renter with two kids ready to move in.
Neither are all that I had hoped for.
The renter can’t pay enough
and the buyer,
well the buyer was
nuts.
But still,
I wonder,
what am I waiting for?
Is it the noise of New York that scares me
or the fear of the rain of Seattle?
Maybe I’m just scared that
I wouldn’t be any happier there
than I am here.

I am a Vegetarian

Somewhere
I
lost
sight
of myself.
The downward descent of
ebb and flow,
the marker that keeps one
reaching
for the right path.
This year has been
my mother,
my back.
Weeks lost
to plane trips and lawsuits.
Months spent on grief
and the fear of permanent loss.
Where did I go?
The Jew
wandering through the desert
in search of the promised land.
Today
I sit in a room full of children
and try to get them to listen.
A Herculean task to say the least,
and I am not Hercules,
but a mouse
running from boy to girl
trying to dole out markers and crayons
while they poke each other
and laugh.
I was told I had to be tougher,
meaner,
but I do not like to yell.
My throat doesn’t know how to scream.
So where can I go?
Where can I go,
a silent muted girl
walking home after school with her books
so alone,
so alone.
The pushers,
the stealers,
the grabbers,
they seem to get what they want.
Just like in the time of the dinosaurs,
the plant eaters were eaten.
And I am
a vegetarian.