Solitary Sun

It doesn’t have to be so hard,
the baby unborn,
the dog not kept,
the marriage never entered in to.
It can be as simple as saying, “no”,
and walking away,
as simple as closing your eyes and letting go.
This morning the sun is out,
the birds are chirping
and I am alone.
People,
animals,
and things do not fill me up.
I am here
no matter who goes away,
and the sun will shine for me
just as much as it does for you.

Cage Free

We are all in cages,
big cages.
Cages we create with our minds
and with our hands.
Cages built by hate and greed
and jealousy and fear.
Cages that keep us from being
all that we can be.
Some cages are built of wood.
Some of brick.
Some of metal.
Some cage cats and dogs,
others cage people.
My cage is a 1957 ranch house
with wood paneling
and pink ceramic tile in the bathroom.
A silent,
lifeless,
airless
cage.
A cage bought for me as a present.
A cage I have been unable to let myself out of.
For years I have tried to escape
the long birthing canal of a hall
that stretches from den to back bedroom
with its flat champagne walls.
But each attempt
has only produced miscarriages.
I keep getting stuck,
mid hall
and die on the wood floor in a bloody puddle.
I think of firing myself down
the hall
as if I were a canon ball.
Surely the momentum would get me out the door
and I would be free of this cage
once and for all.
But I have no canon,
only my two hands
to unlock the door.
And so I turn and turn and turn
as if my hands were covered in grease
and the house were on fire.
It is a frantic turning
that leaves me crying
the way a child would cry
who has been left in his room for too long.
Exhausted.
Asleep in tears.
And when it gets to be too much,
I sit and look at what I’ve created
and then I know
I must stop fighting
and just
be.
The only way out,
is
in.

Jupiter Rising

I keep thinking about the impermanence of things.
People.
Animals.
Relationships.
He is gone
and now I am alone again.
I thought that’s what I wanted,
but I am lonely
and now he is lonely too
there
in his little cage
with the others barking beside him.
I think about all the people that have come into my life.
The ones I have passed on the street,
the ones who have passed by me.
The ones I will never know,
the ones I know too well.
The ones I have held on to,
the ones I have let slip away.
It is easy to let things slip away,
to wake up and realize fifteen years have gone by
and you are nowhere.
I gave him away so easily,
just signed the paper and he was gone.
It was as if he never existed.
Trouble is in the ground
as if he never existed
to anyone except me.
All this disappearing and reappearing
feels like the worst magic trick in the world.
Poof,
a cloud of smoke,
and what once was
is gone.
It is that easy.

I am what I am

I am giving him away.
I am telling myself that it is what’s best for him,
but truly,
it is what’s best for me.
Yes,
he needs a playmate,
some short-haired four legged friend
he can run and jump and swim
and wrestle with.
He needs a buddy,
a friend,
an instigator.
That is what he needs.
But what I need is freedom.
The freedom to pick up my hat
and run out the door
and not worry about who or what I am leaving behind.
Yes,
it is lonely
without him.
But I do not feel it is right
to make him fill my loneliness.
That is not a reason for keeping someone.
I am trying to be brave,
I am trying to learn that short term pain
is better than long term martyrdom.
I am trying to be selfish
and honor myself.
I want to lie in the grass and roll on my back like he does.
I want to feel free
and not have to feel guilty
that I want what I want.

Stepping in Poop at the Dog Park

Nothing but bad news today.
Bad news in the market.
Bad news under the house.
Bad news from the doctor.
Bad news from my back.
I am trying not to let all this bad news get me down.
Tomorrow is my birthday
and I am trying to tell myself
that things are o.k.
I go through the list of everything I should be grateful for:
I’ve got a roof over my head,
a car to drive,
I’m not working in white slavery,
and I’ve got food to eat.
But I’m still really really depressed.
It just feels like for too long now
there has been one thing after another.
It’s like stepping in poop at the dog park.
The thick warm goo wedges in between the ridges of my shoes
and no matter how hard I try,
I just can’t seem to get it out.
I’m starting to feel like a trapped animal,
one that has banged himself against the cage so many times
trying to get free he’s now curled up in a ball
lying silent against the rails.
Defeated.
Every day I ask God
what he wants for me,
but I hear nothing.
I hear nothing.
I am paddling my boat alone
crashing in to rock after rock,
turning in circles
when I know that somewhere out there
there has to be a clear path.
I just can’t find it.

Yoga Body Yoga Mind

This morning
I tried to lift a cup
to my lips
to take my vitamins.
My arm trembled
as if I were lifting
four hundred pounds,
not three little pills.
My yoga arm biceps
bulged
like swollen eyes
on a prize fighter.
And I felt muscles
I never knew I had.
This is what it feels like
to get in shape,
to change a body
from soft to steel.
My mind
is calmer too,
a still pond
flies can light upon and leave
without resistance.

My Body

has become
the other.
The one I thought
I would never
have.

Ginger and Germs

Now we are dating.
He driving the car around to the front
to meet me.
Me standing on the black driveway
in my short denim skirt
hoping in the car
like I did when I was seventeen
anxious to go make out with some boy.
We do this weird escape ritual
to keep the dog from knowing we both have left the house.
It is hide and seek,
fun and games,
a life of pretend
just so we can try and not upset
the dog.
So far the dog hasn’t caught on.
It’s kind of fun too
like outwitting some dear deaf elderly parent
or having an affair.
We dine on sushi
and look into each other’s eyes,
and debate our happiness
or lack thereof
and how we both got to be so fucked up.
We look at the waitress,
who barely speaks to us
and wonder if she hates us.
We think everybody hates us
because we share meals,
order as little as possible,
and complain about everything.
But today
we dip our vegetable rolls into the same
saucer,
sharing ginger and germs
and hold hands.
I have known him for almost eleven years
but in the car
I look at him and kiss him
as if I were kissing him for the first time.

Push Pull

He is fighting for a spot in my heart,
in between the scar tissue
of loss and betrayal.
He is hoping I will open up
like a rose
and allow him
to stay where the others
once did.
I feel the struggle inside myself.
The pull to close off,
shut down,
and heal.
The desire to be free,
to walk off with nothing or no one,
to have only myself
to come home to
in the dark.

Finding My Voice

It is so hard to do the right thing.
It is so hard to get quiet enough
to hear which voice is speaking.
For me,
I can not tell them apart anymore.
Fear’s voice is so strong
and urgent
that it is hard for me to refuse it.
But I must refuse it.
It has led me astray.
Fear tells me to hold on,
to cling,
to grasp,
to try to control what is happening.
It is the terrified child in the corner
certain it will die
if it lets go of the pole.
It is the face of tears
and redness,
and curly hair askew.
It is the voice that keeps others away from me.
And the voice I use to judge with and hide with
and protect myself with.
It is the voice that keeps me closed off and shut down.
And yet,
it is all I know.
I am trying to learn to find the other voice in me.
The one that says,
“slow down,”
“it’s o.k.”
“you’re still here.”
That voice remembers there is still time
to breathe.
That voice remembers
that every choice is not a mistake,
that I am loveable
and good and kind
and worthy.
That is the voice I am hoping to find
sitting here
alone
in the den
staring out the window.

The Responsible One

I can not run fast enough
from it all,
the floor and the bathroom
and the rotting wood,
the cracks spreading across the mortar
like rumors.
It was all here when I moved in,
a problem passed down to me
that nobody saw
or that nobody wanted to see.
Silent
and terminal
like cancer
passed down from one generation to the next.
Everybody turned their heads and walked away.
Everybody shut their eyes
and pretended nothing was there.
But now
I am
waiting for it all to fall down
like Humpty Dumpty
sitting on my rotten wall.
I am mad
for being lied to.
I am mad for not following my instincts.
I am mad for being pushed
and refusing to say “wait”.
I am mad for smiling
when what I really wanted to do was get out my knife
and cut out the liars’ tongues.
I am mad that I
am once again,
the responsible one.

Sniffing Ghosts

He is outside sniffing
where Trouble was
trying to make sense
of a ghost he can not see.
Yesterday, he pulled out one of Trouble’s old toys,
“doughnut,”
and without thinking,
I picked it up and threw it to him across the grass.
I haven’t touched it since Trouble died.
It, like “Jewish toy”, his beds,
his collar and all his other things
have become almost shrine-like.
They are “hot objects”,
objects that I haven’t been able to look at or touch
since April,
objects that only made me cry
when I looked at them.
But now,
throwing the toy across the hill
it took on a new life,
it had a different meaning,
less meaning.
Suddenly,
it was just a toy,
and someone else
other than the dead
was enjoying it.
And I thought,
yes,
this is how it should be,
life should be passed on
to another.

Definitely Trouble

When I am away
he acts like a nut,
terrorizing the garage
and the gate.
He is determined to get out
or get back,
or find his old owners.
I don’t know what it is,
maybe he’s looking for me.
Yesterday,
he followed me into the bathroom
and lay at my feet
and I asked him,
“Where have you been all your life?”
A question
I could easily have asked myself.
Now he is here
and while he definitely
takes my mind off of Trouble,
the problems are starting to add up.
We can’t fix the fence often enough
and his new tactic of terrorizing unguarded rooms
is starting to be problematic.
He is smart and sweet and gentle.
And when I am here
he is the perfect writing dog,
content to lie at my feet and sleep
beneath the fan.
But when I am gone,
something happens.
He has this split personality thing.
I have visions of him in my head
gnawing the metal fence
like a fugitive
with a makeshift saw.
He pulls everything off the shelves in the garage
he can get his paws on.
I found a white t-shirt in the yard,
a baseball cap,
one of Trouble’s yellow play toys,
a pair of gardening shears,
and a mop pail.
I only wish I had the whole thing on film.
He is either bored or scared or insane
or all three,
and I have nothing to offer him
in the way of sheep
or four-legged friends
to keep him busy.
I feel like a failed mother,
although I know that is ridiculous.
Whatever problems he has he had long before
I found him.
But still,
I feel bad.
I didn’t get him just to give him away.
Now it looks like he’s headed somewhere else.
I think he’s been down this road before.