both ugly and bright

it smells sometimes –like baby’s vomit,

or maybe tastes like baked bread

fat melting in your mouth.

a small sliver of light behind a rain.

afraid of night.

it wraps its long skinny rays around

like an octopus, or

it walks away.

 

My ex-husband
is living in Chicago.
He looks disheveled when
I use technology to call: There he is
appearing suddenly on my screen:
his hair thin and gray
his face ashy. His eyes blurry
with sleep –even though
it is 5:00 p.m. The governor
has just announced a lock-down, or
stay in, or whatever it is they want
to call it. My ex-husband
on some mornings
cannot bring himself to
get out of bed. I tell him to call
his sister in Lincoln, to get out
to go away, don’t stay in the city
where there are too many people, where
every time you step out of your door
someone is backing away

People here
don’t go out
They are afraid
to take a walk
down the block
to talk to a neighbor
to look at a tree, a leaf
a flower. The only beings
left who can see
are still
flying blind.

 

Nobody wants to look
at who they are
Be vulnerable
the self-help books
proclaim from computer
screens because
book stores no longer
exist
everything is online, plugged
in. People back away
from each other
and into their screens. Who they are
has disappeared.

 

There is nothing left
at the grocery store
no bread no eggs no milk
no cheese
even the aisle where the beans
used to be is eerily empty.
Some people walk around
oblivious, trying to get
“all up in yo face.” They don’t
care or know that there is
panic
in the streets
in the air
in an accidental
touch as everyone else
scurries
away

We spend hours days years decades

waiting for our lives

to play out

the way we thought they would

something happens

after fifty before you realize

that whatever it is you dreamed you would

one day become

is already gone.

People that you thought would live on

forever

are gone.

Suddenly with almost no time

passing you are old your parents

are dead your feet hurt and your windowsills

are lined with pill bottles

your daughter is grown and flown

far away from you miles away

you imagine someone taking their last

ineffectual breath and passing from

this world into a world they never thought they’d be.

Things that you thought would always remain

undone.

I wake up thinking in lines

and scenes: a man

in a long dark overcoat leans against a pillar at the far end of a bar,

his face cloaked in inky dark. Something sinister simmers.

An angry scene, chaos, mayhem, a melee of bodies toppling. Glass

shattering, men struggling to be

something better than they are.

In the doorway, a girl

in a shabby  dress, gray-blue eyes dark as bruises, stunned

at what she could do,

what she had done.

Let me eat again

of memory sitting on the cold

concrete of my parents’ porch, one summer

night, the sticky cotton of my sundress

clinging to my legs in the heavy heat, palpable

with all I did not know.

He knew

everything I did not, cocky

with all he could take; everything

still, the night air whispering

long after he was gone. I was stunned

at what I could do,

what I had done.

he felt trapped
in a life he didn’t
plan. or want. always doing
the right thing. waiting.
The women who wanted
more than what he could ever
conceivably give. he was
honest. he told them
all he was not, that he didn’t want
whatever it was that they
wanted from him. He was
tearing something down,
the remnants of someone else’s life.                                                                                             He stood above waiting                                                                                                              for his life to begin.

mostly you think

you have nothing left to say.

You buy a kitten.  He is cute and white

with big blue eyes.  He is Harry.  A few months pass, older

and less cute.  But still

you buy another.  A Calico they said

would bring good luck.  Instead she is locked away

to keep her safe.  Harry sprawls across your lap,

needy and content –and why shouldn’t he be? Here you are

suddenly old. . . and buying cats.