Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Inside of me.

There's this feeling
stirring inside of me
it's made of things and thoughts and questions and fears and wonders

There's this feeling
sitting like a rock
inside of my insides
making me sort of sad
making me wonder why it's there

There's this feeling
reaching out
from inside of me
seemingly to everyone else
or someone else.
It feels like it's telling me that it has twins
out there
in other
people.

Funny how it feels like I'm the only one who has it
or feels it
or doesn't like it
or wants it gone
or wants to know that it's in someone else too.

There's this feeling
inside of me.


Tuesday, December 20, 2011

I'm Loving You.

I'm loving you.

While you're making breakfast
I'm loving you.

While you're teaching kids
I'm loving you.

While you're weeding the yard
I'm loving you.

While you're paying bills
I'm loving you.

While you're changing diapers
I'm loving you.

While you're having sex
I'm loving you.

While you're not remembering me
I'm loving you.

While you're working
I'm loving you.

While you're meeting new people
I'm loving you.

While you're living your life

I'm
loving
you.

Saturday, August 06, 2011

Knowing. Waiting. Wanting. Learning.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

I Know Better

Floundering.
Like a toddler thrashing about in ankle deep water.

Knowing that I am safe and that nothing bad has or will happen,
it is simply change --
change that has happened
changed the landscape
changed the faces
changed the day to day experiences
simply change
nothing more.

Yet, there is little comforting the dispassionate child within me.

She wails and flails and wants to move backward in time.
In fact



She


insists


upon it.



Like Veruca Salt, she stomps her feet and shakes her hair as if these things will influence the inevitable movement of life.

Stomp! Stomp! Stomp! Stomp!
Flail!
Shake!
A dance of unbridled crazy
manifest in movements that think they are much bigger than they are...

Parenting myself,
I stroke my hair
peppering my face with baby kisses
caressing my unwilling skin
giving promises of relief...


Peace will be here soon little lamb.

She renounces my attempts and strikes at me, refusing to believe these lies.

I hold her tightly,
loving her,
knowing that she will make it through this, and that....

I

know

better.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Breath

You take my breath away.

It's not the things that you say,
though they are interesting and often
make me laugh.

It's not the way you look,
though you are certainly handsome and
pleasing to the eye.

It's not the way you work,
though you are talented and
impress me with your skill.


You take my breath away.


It's the way that you are.
You are authentic and meet me in a place that
only you can find.

It's the way that you feel.
You are passionate and you invite me into a dance that
I cannot resist.

It's the way that you touch.
Your very essence comes through your fingers
and wordlessly shows me who
you are.


You
take
my
breath


away.

All of You

I'd love to talk to you right now.

Wondering what you're doing in your world
which never stops whirling and moving
and requires


all
of
you.


I'd love to hear your voice right now.

Knowing that today it's saying what it says
in the midst of loving and doing.
Meeting obligations and needs
of the things and people that demand


all
of
you.


I'd love to feel your touch right now.

Aware that at this moment your hands guide your children
and hold your love
and you reach and do and feed and caress them with


all
of
you.


I'd love to merge myself with you right now.

Longing to crawl inside your body and soul
that works so hard, loves so deeply, never stops doing what needs to be done...
and I watch you from inside my mind

from afar,
because I love




all
of
you.

Looks for You

Moving throughout my day...
my life... my world...

My soul looks for you.

Peering between people at work
...the books on my desk
...the cars on the road
Behind the trees and buildings that I pass each day...

My soul looks for you.

There is a commitment to my life and what I do.
And as my life moves along, there is a quiet awareness

Of you........ Your eyes...... Your voice..... Your energy...

that simply oozes into the cracks between the every day events of my passing experiences.

And as I do about the life that I have and that I love...
I cannot stop that,
regardless of what is going on...

My
soul
looks
for
you.

Sunday, May 08, 2011

Mother's Day

Mother's Day is a complicated day for me. About a week prior to it, I become aware of the marketing going on: the cards... the flowers... the gifts and acknowledgements. As I become older, I am able to be somewhat more conscious about what is going on inside of me. I can sense a subtle "fingers in the ears and singing lalalalalalalala" thing happening in me. I simply don't want to look at it, hear it, feel it. I sort of want to hide under my soft pillows and will Monday to get here.

Because my mom died just 13 days after my 10th birthday, I have never had the opportunity to celebrate Mother's Day as an adult. I have never been able to write my thoughts in a card that I bought, or create a bouquet of yellow roses and babies' breath for her, knowing those are her favorite flowers. I have never been able to invite her out to lunch and spoil her with tapas and sangria while we laugh about what a brat I was when I was a kid. I have never been able to actively and consciously celebrate my mom along with all of my human peers that still have their mothers here on earth.
Layer all of that with the fact that I, myself, don't have human children of my own, and my husband's mom passed when he was 21, the day feels like one of those greyed out boxes on an airline availability calendar.

All that being said, as I was thinking about Mother's Day this morning, I was overcome with the feeling that, aside from the common understanding of "mother", one can mother, and be mothered, regardless of one's reproductive, adoptive, or parentless state. There have been several women who have mothered me. My Aunt Kae, who is my mom's sister, has sent me a steady stream of love for as long as I can remember. My Dad Rusk's ex, Linda, remains steadfast in my mind as a mothering presence after my mom died, and Maxine... my step-mother, who, despite my angry, adolescent attempts at alienating her, has been a steady in my life.

Finally, I know that I am not alone in my melancholy on this day. One friend lost her mom just a four years ago. Another's mother is alive, but is lost to her for other reasons. And many, many other people I know are missing their moms today. So, for all of those who share this complicated day with me..... I send to you all that a mother is: love, dedicated adoration, healing, and the smell of homemade cookies as well as a knowing that no matter what, we are loved by those who gave us life, gave us home, and who gave us a kiss when we skinned our knees - wherever they are.


Sunday, April 24, 2011

Won't Listen

Goodbye hurts for me.

Clearly, the anticipation of goodbye
hurts for me.

My mind is aware that everything always works out just fine,
but there is a more powerful part of me that simply out and out refuses to
buy it.

My mind can look back at all the years I've traveled
and know
that goodbye doesn't truly hurt; for there have been many, many goodbyes on those roads.

Nothing bad happens.

Life moves on, and lots and lots of beauty happens.
Laughs, Joys, New People, New Places, New Thoughts that bring it all into crystal clear focus.

But that other part of me
wants life to stop

moving
stand still
cease its forward motion
and just
let me stay
motionless
in the picture that my heart thinks it might just want to stay in

forever.

But the picture never stays... does it.
It is an ever shifting

moving
changing
leaving
going
coming
swirling

mass of colors and people and places and events and experiences and and and and...

And my mind knows that it is good that life forever unfolds
that way.

But there is a place in my heart

that
just

won't


listen.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Just Fine.

My heart hurts.

I am on the precipice of a big change. Change of place. Change of people. Change of Circumstance.

It feels so permanent, so .... different. As if the sweet, soft cotton that surrounds my heart will be ripped away to expose raw, unprotected flesh.

My heart, the one that is a young and impressionable girl...
the one that weeps, feeling alone...
the one that desperately tries to cling to people and places in certainty that if she holds tight enough
they will never, ever leave..

She is hurting.
She doesn't want to lose what she has.
She feels that she will most certainly be hurdled into a dark abyss

alone.

I know, in my mind, that none of this is true.

None of this is true.
None of this is true.
None of this is true.

It has never been true before, and I have felt this very way
many times.

Times when I have been left by someone I love. Times when the rug was pulled out from under my unsuspecting feet. Times when the page was turned without my consent. Times when a player in the script of my life was eliminated from the play in a breath of smoke--

and like a child who did a belly flop into still, glassy water -- the breath in my being
sucked out. Fast.


There have been times when I have felt that I was
Left sitting in the tire tracks of someone that I thought was the key to my very existence.
Holding my bloodied, wounded heart in my own hands
Completely unaware how to put it back together.
Darkness covering the sun, who's warmth I was denied, for what felt like

Forever.


Yet, in every case,
the sun came out again.

Yellow. Warm. Life-giving. All-encompassing. Joy singing.

Sun.


Silly girl...
The sun was never hidden for even one moment but for your own hands before your eyes.

Silly girl...
The love you have felt can never leave you, but for your own insistence of separation.

Silly girl...
The life you were promised always sits just before you, a road to the next beautiful, amazing thing just a footstep away from where you are.

Silly girl...
You are never, ever alone, not even for an instant.

And everything

everything
everything
everything
everything

Is going to be...


Just.
Fine.