Floating Away on Words Unsaid

Floating Away on Words Unsaid

From his armchair isolation and remote recliner
his condescension and contempt ravaged the softest parts of her.

Silenced by her severed tongue, bitten off from holding back her words

she stared into years when happiness was cheap.

All those early years ago easy love lingered with sweet talk

until she gorged on thoughts unsaid and filled her belly with despair.

Youth and confidence made her pretty

before she grew fat and full with stifled words and stunted dreams,

and so filled, her caring floated away with the last of her hope.

He doesn't see, his head bowed with unconscious and unclaimed shame.

He averts his eyes to the damage done, and resents her absence,

condemns her silence and hates her with indifference.

The quiet speaks volumes of violence.

First Friends

Sometimes a flash of bare legs

dipped in water and always romanticized

in youthful black and white memories

slip behind my eyes before nightly dreams

usurp conscious thought.

That day, the sun played over rivulets of lake

that smiled in curves down child-sized calves

to return to its home cooling at our feet.

We dreamt of where these legs would take us

and swore about forever things

with newly learned spelling-list words.

I liked the way loyalty tasted on my tongue

and how it fit with infinity so well.

When our mothers called, back on the beach

we ran full of the knowing of first friendship.

So certain were we that it would outlast us all.

Time,though, breaks and cracks 

so that hours tumble on days and crush the years

and weathers this moment to memory.

Storyteller

Storyteller,

let words drop from your lips,

flow from collected memory

and weave us a tale from knowledge

born into your veins.

Culture keeper,

store the harvest of words, putting like with like

each basket full of years and ideas.

Carve up time and season to taste

with creation, myths, and tradition

to fill us on the past.

Grandmother,

decipher the sound of forgotten tongues

speak to our apathy as an artisan of language

as a master of remembrance.

Whisper to us the flow and ebb of time,

and sing of what we should be pleased to know.

Sisters

Let us each look our own way

and dream of directions to follow.

Our roads shall be perpendicular to one another

so that we will meet again when we are older

and more knowledgeable about love.

I envision us, these sisters,

as adults with disparate lives and lies,

cloaked in costumes of unshared memory

that reveal only a trace of maternal sameness

under all that is new.

Will we recognize each other,

when our paths come to crossroads distant?

Will the old familiaritities still linger

like the gentle scent

of our mother's perfumed neck?

Tchaikovsky Bliss

Rivulets

of cooling

maple syrup

glide through my veins

and I feel sticky with sound.

Notes dipped in honeyed beats

and caramelized tone engulf me.

A sugary sweetness

pours into my ears

and I crystallize

in this moment

of Tchaikovsky

bliss.

washing dishes

the plates are simple

washing them smoothly

hot water burns my hands

reaching into suds

thinking things

as I mechanically sweep

the wet cloth back and forth

rinsing clean

drying and putting away

staring out the window

at nothing and everything

pulling at the knives and forks

hating every moment

the intricacy of silverware

it is too tedious for me

rinsing them off

drying and putting away

staring at my neighbor's light

and then my own 

above my spotless sink

I sigh

drying my hands and

put myself away too

In a Sparkle

Outside the cafe window,

life paces itself with people

ebbing and flowing so much

like stormy ocean tide.

She thinks the moon must be over taxed

and will surely fall from the sky.

Waiting for the celestial downpour,

she views the reflected movement

caught in the smooth pane of glass.

Held still in a moment,

her breath tightens and

time stops in a sparkle.