i don't remember writing these at all...

i love/hate going through old notebooks and finding poetry. i love the surprise of it and hate the painfulness of reliving old wounds.

poem 1 - February 15, 2009
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i always miss you on the first days of early spring.
i hope it doesn't hurt you that i don't
miss you at any other time of the year -
not your birthday or mine,
not during the saddest times of the year.
i only miss you on those days immediately following winter,
when you look outside and know that life will begin anew -
that things are growing underneath the earth
and will bloom soon enough.

any psychiatrist worth their salt
would probably attribute this to
all the dead children between us
who will never see the light of day
as part of your gene pool.
There will be no children named after
our favorite inanimate objects.
no children to experience the loss of love
in exciting detail, right alongside us.
but thinking about that
doesn't make me sad at all.

i think i only grieve you in the spring
because the cold sunny days
give a limit to my grief.
you can only be a little melancholy
0n the only sunny day
during a week of rain.
and i don't want to grieve you that much -
just enough.

just enough to acknowledge that i loved you -
not enough to unpack how wrong that love was
or how poorly that love played out.
i want to miss you enough to get misty
and then to pull myself back together
and then to wish you well,
finally, wherever you are.


This Is Not a Story About Hope - February 15, 2009
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The last time I saw her, she looked at me,
confusion crowding in around the edges, and said,
"I can't remember what I can't remember anymore."
And you can see the clockwork slow down, imperceptibly.
Her pains stay around longer than they should.
This is not a story about hope.

The last time I saw her,
she said that now her yesterdays
are more vivid than her tomorrows
and today loses itself in a sea of fog
as soon as it comes around.
This is not a story about hope.

This is a story of who we become
when all we have are stories,
when we live lives in circular time.
We lost the ones we love yesterday
and we will lose them all over again
tomorrow.

This is a story about the hopeless cruelty of age.
This is a story about being lost in the massive fabric
of your own life.
But, somehow, whenever I see her,
she's still happy
and she still pours her love into coffee cups
and soup bowls
and cookie jars.
She's still proud of us for the things she remembers
and she's sure she would have been proud
of those things she's forgotten.
And she's secure in our love - a love that is constant
and somehow unforgettable.

Perhaps this is a story about hope, after all.