What's Left

It is all on the left now,
piled up and waiting to move.
Cameras and pens and recorders and tuners.
four-tracks and cassettes and boom boxes
no one wants.
I have let myself get caught up in all of it,
tangled like a dolphin in a fishing net,
fighting and struggling to get
free,
unable to find my way out.
Dead.
Now,
I want nothing to hold me.
Not my past,
or bookcases,
or dressers,
or books.
I want to wake up in the morning
with nothing and no one,
and sit down to write,
knowing I have no one to answer to,
but my pen.

Note For Note

I am starting to question the costs of things.
The weight of tears and anger
against the fight.
The tolls of resentments against surrender.
I am slowly learning that the objects
and emotions I have carried around with me,
are no longer as valuable as I once thought.
The veil has been lifted
and I am learning that the weight upon my shoulders
has not been worth it.
People and feelings,
once held sacred,
are now nothing more than chalk marks on my forehead,
wrinkles around my eyes,
dark circles and dry skin.
How precious I thought they all were!
And how wrong I have been.
What I once thought valuable, isn’t.
And those things that I took so little notice of,
are now more valuable than ever.
So, here I sit, scared to let things go,
for fear I will never have another house or piano as nice as the one I have now.
For months I have worried about where I will live,
and in what,
and dreaded what my future life will look like.
For weeks I have worried that I won’t be able to provide a grand enough home
for my piano,
to honor the legacy my parents gave me.
That I have somehow failed as a daughter and a provider.
Now, I learn my piano isn’t as valuable as I thought it was.
Like someone who bought a Rembrandt, and is now learning they bought a Rembert,
or some other equally obscure and much less valuable painting,
I am disappointed and confused.
For the last few hours,
I have contemplated selling my piano.
Lifting some of the weight off my shoulders.
Starting over
with something different,
that suits my lifestyle better.
When I share this idea with my mother,
the first words out of her mouth are,
“you know you’ll never have another piano as nice as that one again.”
And in that very moment, I see,
everything.
That is where the voice came from,
the one that swirls round my head over and over again.
The one that keeps me tied to all my STUFF!
There it is,
as plain as the ivory keys,
I practiced scales on for hours.
It is her fear that I have ingested.
Her belief system.
Her song I am singing,
note for note.

Zombies and Puppets

I understand
the big white whale
in the living room.
The one that doesn’t speak.
The one that sits there
watching
it all unfold
like cardboard puppets.
We are all just
zombies,
brushing past each other,
never really touching,
always on our way
to somewhere else.