my legs splashing over the edge of darkness

What is so utterly invisible
as tomorrow?
Not love,
not the wind,

not the inside of stone.
Not anything.
And yet, how often I’m fooled-
I’m wading along

in the sunlight-
and I’m sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining
days ahead-
I can see the light spilling

like a shower of meteors
into next week’s trees,
and I plan to be there soon-
and, so far, I am

just that lucky,
my legs splashing
over the edge of darkness,
my heart on fire.

I don’t know where
such certainty comes from-
the brave flesh
or the theater of the mind-

but if I had to guess
I would say that only
what the soul is supposed to be
could send us forth

with such cheer
as even the leaf must wear
as it unfurls
its fragrant body, and shines

against the hard possibility of stoppage-
which, day after day,
before such brisk, corpuscular belief,
shudders, and gives way.

“Walking to Oak-Head Pond, and Thinking of the Ponds I Will Visit in the Next Days and Weeks”  ~ by Mary Oliver

the devil’s loose

life leaves us waiting.
pin pricks draw blood invasive longer needles cut through bone.
waiting again for test results.
he said it came on suddenly.

i’m not yet ready to let go of you. you who i’ve come to know just recently. you who’ve been in my life entirely yet shadowed as any father can be. my many miles away feel like a tightening grip on my heart squeezing just enough to restrict the bloodflow to a trickle, forcing me to sit down.

lightheaded.

wait and maintain some sort of normalcy. bone biopsy. breathe in breathe out. wait to see if it’s leukemia. breathe in breathe out. too many miles make me crazy, make me itchy for flights and wondering what i’d do when faced with the answer anyway. would i stare into those eyes and simply just ‘be’?

what does one do with something that weighs so much?
i’m not yet ready to be fatherless.
and so we wait.

the sun is out again as if all that rain never happened. this is the way of communication, words are typed then swept under the rug. the sunshine has people walking around, blades of grass under their feet. unaware that death is all around.

i don’t know what else to say or do.
so i try to reach out anyway i can.

i spill it to most everyone in hopes that it will somehow dissipate evaporate disappear into thin air and we can all pretend like this never happened. but illness and unknowns divide themselves into molecules, particles caught in air. they swirl around us, until we accept and understand that we are all one life force breathing them in and out. and there’s no greater word than love. and hope.

i don’t know what else to say or do but keep him in my thoughts. he’s safe there.
keep him in your thoughts too, won’t you?

the devil’s loose:
“why don’t you give yourself a rest
give yourself some room
you can’t get your arms ’round everybody
you cannot carry the doom
of the living and the dying
oh, how easily you bruise.”

passing thoughts

*hello pity*
you look a little green around the edges, pity.
that vein in your forehead is bulging again.
but you look strong today, like you just might bully your way in.
when i close the door on you, you find the window…
you sneaky bastard.
hey, pity… i’ll sit with you awhile.
i’ll see you, acknowledge you….
and then you’re outta here.

i’m awoken friday night to the gagging cough that screams illness and the sleep talking that whispers fever.

saturday is a blur of sleep induced fever chills lethargy on the couch with movies while momma frantically does work between temperature checks and doses of homeopathy.

ingestion of nothing more than three saltines in the span of twelve hours. momma grows grey hairs. we both go to sleep at 7pm.

sunday he awakes chipper full of dreams that broke with his fever, wanting food food food and momma’s eyes are pounding with migraine. life is never easy, never in sync. always syncopated tripping you up changing plans of bike rides and birthday parties into the smell of sickness and dim lights with only the glow of a computer screen for companionship.

by sunday afternoon chores call and i drag my ass out of pain, i pull and tug out of need with the power of chai, caffeine, and too many pills. our cupboards are empty and yesterday it didn’t matter but today? today we are starving.

i don’t want to always be the errand runner. the chore completer. i want to be fun too. but sickness always steals my shift it seems. it takes pins to my party balloons with a wicked laugh. mommas’ a drag. always the one to trim nails, trim hair, enforce bedtime, set the alarm, pack lunch, say goodbye say hello.

not anymore.

i shield my eyes with sunglasses and we step out into the world. not much has changed since we’ve last seen it 48 hours ago. not much has changed other than our perspective.

fever spikes in the car and i gulp down the thought of a day missed from work. welcome to my world testing the boundaries of “24 hour fever free” because we have to pay the bills.

when did i become this?
will i ever return to who i was before?

life is the illusion of beauty.
or, it’s beauty so true you believe it unreal.

golden

maybe the earth wasn’t spinning so effortlessly afterall. we take it for granted, don’t we? this spinning. this world that seamlessly comes together for us to walk upon.

maybe we hit a kink, a bump in the atmosphere. we stumbled and tripped and that’s what threw us off our game this week. faceplant in the dirt.

look around. there’s beauty down there in the decay and rot. it reveals itself if you’re able to open your eyes.

now instantaneously, the sun shines golden. as if we were suddenly jolted into fall. push, stumble, trip.

huh? wha?

simultaneously clumsy, all of us.

but happy to be here, right? with the sun shining golden orange. coming in sideways through the trees showering everything in a mellow peace of autumn.

paddler

the first time i saw you, you were all sweat stains and pigtails. hoisting your kayak onto the roof of your honda. ass in the air, knees pressed to the concrete. your jeans were frayed.

is that what you noticed?
it was breezy that day.
those patched up jeans are 15 years old.

hey.
hey. 
woof.
i was breathing heavy because that kayak is fucking heavy!
my dog seems attracted to you.

i didn’t see you coming til you were already there and then i’m all tugging at my sweatty shirt wondering how long you’ve been watching and if my skivvies are hanging out cause i’m in desperate need of a belt. it was your profile i saw first. you were scruffy and bearded. your dog has a big slobbery tongue, i like that about you.

your kayak is orange.
yes she is.

that’s stella. i insisted on her when i was pregnant. (insisted, not like i stomped my pregnant barefoot down in the kitchen, but insisted on that color and that model. it specifically rides two, a mother and child.) that was a long time ago, another lifetime.  the first day i saw you i was sweatty and hoisting my kayak all on my own. it felt like a maiden voyage. that day i realized i was stronger than i remembered.

i saw a pair of swans that day and i thought of you.
i didn’t even know your name yet.
you know that swans mate for life.
that’s what they say, but i hear sometimes they split after nesting failure.
i hadn’t heard that, is that common?
is anything ever normal? shit happens. biologists say small parental investment is the major cause of nesting failure.

i was a bit frantic that day, i had to find peace on the water.
you seemed calm enough to me.
hey… wanna come over?
hey … wanna go paddling?

awakening

remembering 9.11

“In those days,
we finally chose
to walk like giants
& hold the world
in arms grown strong with love
& there may be many things we forget
in the days to come,
but this will not be one of them.”

~ story people

leave your weapons at the door

are you there blog? it’s me meredith. ten days gone, i think that’s an all time record. i’ve thought about you. your glowing screen waiting so patiently nodding off in sleep.

truth is i’ve been busy.
but that’s an excuse.

truth is it’s been ten days. three migraines. 326 pages of text. the first A on a quiz. drunken 40 year old sibling rivalry. three homework assignments and one project proposal. divorce papers. childhood sickness. single motherhood. no time for bullshit.

i’m 34 years old, i may be your little sister but i will demand your respect. i’ve got my eyes wide open, bro.

truth is i’ve been hearing voices.
they speak with smiles but their words do damage with the tiniest bit of manipulation. train wreck. no one used to read your blog before the train wreck. you are wrong, you are just like they were. it’s why you always said you weren’t.

i want to silence the voices. they only speak every other weekend across static phone lines. across statelines with drunken emails. they speak with a smile not knowing what they are saying. ‘watch your mouth’ my mother would tell me. i think before i speak. but you, you outpour and i stand in your wake and take it even though i dont’ need to.

this is multi-layered. this is cryptic. this, you will never hear. even though i can see behind the scenes of this blog. even though i know the viewers, the readers, the voyeurs, the stats. what do you take me for?

you are narcissus gazing at your own reflection. downing gallons of liquid lsd, you think you are god. but i remember the wild eyes as you turned over our solar panels one by one, we were being watched you said. meanwhile you’re taking pictures of yourself with your dick blowing in the breeze. now tell me who’s being watched.

you, narcissus, you are all the same. you were the cautionary tale used to warn boys not to be cruel to their lovers. words spin back to you, revolving around you. the sun.

i dislike having to be redundant.
i told you no more hate.

so instead of reaching out, i reach in. close doors. hibernate. and i find the voices that speak beauty from the west coast. i revel in conversations about all that is human. this is truth. this is life. reality. i find the voices that reach out to me from the east coast about connection and family and photography. i wrap them around me and find comfort in that solitude. in that deep rooted feeling that we are not alone. and that we are all the same. that’s what i turn my focus to.

i focus on school work and text books and photography adventures and future gigs. i will not play the hate game. instead of words i focus on images because that is one thing you can not taint. you can not take an image of mine for anything other than how i see.

blog, you’ve been patient. and kind. and i’ve been putting you off blaming and pointing fingers to everyone else but me. reoccurring nightmares… bubblegum stuck in my mouth. me, unable to say what i need to say. unable to scream. unable to shout. i blink myself awake and panic myself to breathe.

i am the baby. the little sister. you don’t see me as anything more than that.

just wait. just wait til my kayak hits water for the first time in over a year. then i’ll have something to say. something positive to focus on. just wait.

until then, leave your weapons at the door.
don’t come around here anymore.