WRITINGblaaaahg

(for Heather and Nathan)

On this white day
when your chilly hands
become my mittens
and the cold turns your pink skin
extra rosy,

It is enough for me
to smile in happy wonder
at your marshmallow eyes
and your bright, damp hair,
at the wrists that turn your fingers
under snug flannel sleeves,

It is enough for me
in the bliss of this day
as you sip at your mug of sweet, hot drink
and we exist in a globe of tiny magic flakes
as I gaze across the table at your dear face.

On a fall day that was extra gray
I could feel the molten heat
of my beating heartstuff, a messy
blood-flame guarded safely
by my chest from the icy rain.

In the puddledark streets
of the early hour,
I felt myself a priest
on Easter morning, the one
with a candle and a secret,
who turns a dark room
into a bright hot sea of faces,

I am not tired today, I will take
my happy flame and share
with anyone, and cheerfully
I’ll cup my hand around each candle
to protect your tiny hearts
from growing dim.

I wander the house
feeling lost and exhausted.
I pack up the coffee cups

and then the ball jars,
ignoring the ones that hold
tea light candles on our family altar

because I know when I pack those
I will start to cry. But I must,
so seasick I amble

with no purpose I can understand,
through the living room
and kitchen, a salty nausea

rising up with every sweet
and dusty flower I discover
tucked with love above a window.

It is days later now
and I still cannot bring myself
to take down the altar.

I could not bring myself to buy
the gray-yellow mums
that sat failing to cheer up
the grocery store shoppers.
I stopped instead
on the side of the road
to pluck an armload
of the ravishing wildweeds
who said, “Pick us
or don’t, we don’t care!
Either way we are wildly happy!”

We put out photographs,
clean scarves and oranges,
flowerweeds framing
our ghosts’ rosy faces.
As night fell we waited
in the yellow light,
playing with the baby
until she fell asleep, worn out
with the giddy joy of the day.
And our friends arrived
bearing squahsbeet pies,
bananas and yams for the dead
and the living. We lit
all the candles,

and when we sat down,
a crowd of warm animals
burrowed together
at our underground feast,
I felt the bodies shielding me
from any cold or harshness
I felt my friends’ hot breath
fan the flame in my waxy heart
I felt myself drip slowly down and down
into a happy, oozing puddle
on the hardwood floor.

Drunk, I am making grilled cheese
as they talk in the other room.
All sorts of airy gossip slips
through the doorway, and I halfway
pay attention flicking flecks
of basil over buttered bread.

I put water on to boil
to make them lemon tea.
I am glad to be facing the wall.
If they come into the kitchen,
they won’t see me frowning
as I slice mozzarella,
wishing I was as much in love as they are,
wishing I had not already strung out my secrets

like the gaudy plastic Halloween bats
slung around our Christmas tree,
exposing us as veritable heathens.

I sit on the stool
next to sleepy Camille,
bright and quiet.
Before school
she is so happy,
eating her rainbow cereal
in her new rainbow sweater
watching rainbow cartoons.

How does she know
that anything can happen?

I am also
so happy,
bright,
and believing.

Molly doesn’t like to play Wii Tennis with me unless she wins. If I beat her once, she chuckles. No big deal, surely I can’t keep it up. If I beat her a second time, she starts to get mad because who do I think I am anyways? Is it my house? Is it my Wii?

No. She stomps over to the freezer to get an ice pop. Did she eat any fruits or vegetables today? No. Are we allowed to eat ice pops before we eat our fruits and vegetables?
She slumps to the floor. Civil war re-enactors do this when they are pretending they’ve just been shot. With her eyes closed she turns her face up to the heavens. Doesn’t anybody see the suffering going on down here? More importantly, doesn’t anybody care?

I can’t see how this is relevant to the question of ice pops. I am thinking about the time I had to take her to get her cavities filled and afterwards she explained to me that the dentist killed all the bugs, which made her mouth numb for some reason. She does not know why it makes her lips and cheeks and tongue feel fat. She has no thoughts of needles or happy gas.

The five o’clock sun coming through the windows is lighting up dust particles. The room looks washed out, like when 1970s Brazilian film directors left the filters off their cameras. I know that she’s exhausted from her day at summer camp, but still I’m surprised when I come back in the kitchen to find her on top of the table, napping in rage. Her fingernails are tiny and painted a shocking pink, fluorescent next to her summer tan. Her head is warm. She smells like a kitten.

In a catalogue,
A tall model was walking
on toned flamingo legs
down a squiggled sidewalk
that I recognize
because I was there once,
I was on that beach in the dark
and a couple of boys were jogging
along the ocean and then they jogged
right up to my face. They had knives.
Not switch blades—the type
I would use to chop onions:
Giant knives. Jumbo sharp knives
and strong arms to detain me.
To scare me into not screaming.

You can’t help moving towards it.
When an arm grabs your wrist
(thin and breakable)
and pulls you, like a good lead
dancing with a clumsy follow
or a papa with a spanking in store
for a child, whether you like it
or not, whether they push you
down on the sand to rifle through your wallet,
spilling and burying your only love note
(which you cannot find the next day,
when it is sunny and safe and you
return to the exact spot, you think)
or whether they kiss you
when you trust them
in your kitchen
coming quickly all the way
around your sides,
and you realize that
you are as fragile as
a dead butterfly,
you are skinny and unpracticed,
you are no match.

Of course I always miss you
but today I miss you wildly,
with a headache.

I want to keep rolling
ahead with my projects
as I spent past summers
painting picture frames,
making songs up on the piano,
and inventing peach pie recipes.

There are times I think
I could tell you
exactly what I mean.
But today my brain
is made of ice cream.

Today brought scrawled words
and a cheesy picture of mountains.
Ephemeral cluster of hot pink
hearts catapulted across the ocean,
at golden October 4:00 the bomb hit me.
Alone at my kitchen table, it burst into
one weird sob, and a sparkle.