the warm place

On their small faces I saw
The same things that I now hold in my heart –
The grief, the hurt, the anger,
The tears that we hold back,
All laid bare before us –
Who would be strangers
Were it not for our common concern.

We all have our dragons to slay.
We all have loved.
We all have lost.

But we refuse to stop feeling,
To stop loving.
Once again, I feel the terrible glory
It is to be human.

dead to the world

Wrapped in the dog’s blanket,
I sink into the giant chair
Letting its cushions envelop me.
While my relatives on the back porch
Talk of cows, friends, the weather
And the woman who’s absence we all feel,
But no one wants to acknowledge,
I drift to sleep.

Just like I did when I heard the news
No goodbyes, she was gone.
Crying on my backseat pillow
I tried to ignore my stepmother’s words
On the phone, over and over again,
Telling the ugly news
Over and over,
As I swam in and out of slumber.

In sleep, there is escape
In sleep, there is no death.
And so I dream of strange sights –
Japanese lovers and war –
But still I dream of her
Walking with us -
Her spirit gone
but the body alive.

How logical and normal
To pick out caskets
And talk of flowers and songs.
And so we talk and we eat
And try not to look one another in the eye
For fear that we will melt
and dissolve
and be consumed.

I grow tired of the pain and the talk
And so I sleep.
Everyone else tosses and turns
Or talks late into the night,
But slumber is my solace, my refuge.

Eyelids heavy,
I sink into bed like the body is lead.
Dissolving into cotton and feathers,
The current world will fade
Or will it return to haunt my dreams?

It doesn’t matter.

I am gone.