Winter Weekend

January but it feels like spring
A balmy forty seven degrees splashing
sunlight over the schoolyard
We fought this morning
Because I was hungry or because you
Wished I had woken up sooner
We both pretend to be less tired than we are
Our sleep debt surprises us
For me it’s sharp edges, for you repetition
On the way to coffee we bicker-argue loopily
Crankily, like tired people fight
The caffeine soothes us and this sun and these dogs
Our quarrel melts and it feels like spring

Marking Time

I pull tarot cards and read a poem from this day
Four years ago. Marking time is a habit. Mapping
This life out for the part of me who is scared of forgetting.

Whenever I’m anxious I dream of screaming. I feel
My voice hoarsen as words claw their way out.
My whole body is a scream and no one listens.
I get louder and my throat gets raw and I wake up
Thick tongued.

Four months after this four year old poem,
I met the woman who is now in the next room
On the phone with the bank, while our baby sleeps
On the bed next to me and a pile of unfolded laundry. He stirs,
Sucks his fingers, sighs. My heart outside my body.

I am lonely but full of love. The window behind me
Is drafty and through its gaps I can hear the rain and birdsong.
Last night the moon was yellow and huge. My mother sends me photos
Of the sunrise from the hospital where she works. My father
Texts about his apartment flooding. The heart emoji is often
My response, these days.

Breathing Exercise

I am a therapist 

for the same reason I love 

movies and TV. For the same reason 

I have been in love with someone 
or something since I was four years old.
Before I knew this, I took a job 
watching young people
sleep in a church basement, 
doing their laundry, waking them up 
gently one by one, making them breakfast. 
Because the world is so 
full of people to love 
and to fall in love is 
to break open and to explode 
is to release energy. 
Exhale and push yourself deeper, 
my yoga teacher says. 
Inhale and stay there. Breathe in 
I tell my clients. Tell me where you feel 
the emotion. They point to their chests 
to their throats to their faces. I have loved 
every one of them, in moments. 
Sitting in a room for fifty minutes 
breaking open again and again is somehow 
a way to heal. To sand yourself down 
to a smooth grain that shines.
I just keep healing myself. Loving and healing.
Breaking and exhaling. Inhaling and staying here. 
Breathing out as I push on. This is a way to live.
The only way I know how to live. 
With your whole heart 
drinking as much as it can
every instant. The sunrise. The dead bird I found on my doorstep. A phone call from my sister. My baby sleeping. 

New Years Day 2018

The boots I never wore in the city but wear every day here
Slip on easy now, laces no longer stiff with newness
I’ve broken my own heart but I’m healing it
Like that Japanese pottery fixed with gold
And it’s not the first time, I’m getting better
I’m getting greyer: my hair, my clothes
The arc of this planet swinging again around the sun
What’s hard about goodbyes is how well you know what you’re leaving
Even just the knownness makes it precious
I get tired of learning to love a new thing, but I think
Now that is just what living is
So here I am in this place smelling of woodsmoke
Here I am praying to the licorice ferns on the bigleaf maples
And here I am holding your head against my shoulder, rocking you
Counting your eyelashes and watching you eat
What’s hard about hellos is also the miracle of them
I’ve said hello to you every morning for the last 84 days
84 miracles and how many more to come, pouring glitter
Into every crack