I take Grandmother out to the small garden they have at the nursing home. It's a welcome haven from the piss-and-disinfectant smell and the buzzing fluorescent lights. We talk about gardening, and I ask her the names of the plants.

"Those are peppers there, hon. We just harvested the last of them a little while ago. See, they're flowering. We'll have a bunch of new ones late next summer, but they're done for now." 

"I have lettuce and carrots at my place. They're coming up really nicely, especially when the weather's cool."

Her eyes light up. "Oh, that's wonderful! You have to watch out for the rabbits, though."

"I'm on the second floor. They're on my patio, so they're safe."

"Oh, that's really great. What are you doing these days? You're going to school?" 

"Yeah, I'm taking some classes, and I'm working full time.  I'm a massage therapist. I work downtown. See?" I turn her around and rub her shoulders. 

"Oh, that's a great job. You should do physical therapy. Then you can work across the street with those girls, and I'll see you more often!"

I chuckle. It's a happy, non-committal sound. I wonder if that's why a lot of people end up working in these places, because they're called to out of some sense of emotional responsibility, some tie to their elderly family members. I think about reading her some of the things I've written, especially on her good days. 

"Do you get to garden here much?" I ask.

"Oh, yeah. I'm out here a lot. I get cabin fever in that wing. You know me. I need a lot of fresh air."

Conversation peters out, and Grandmother eyes the door. "We should get back inside before they forget about us out here."

"Oh, we're fine. They won't. What are these?" The basil's flowering, and I inhale the peppery scent. Grandmother's allergies are acting up, but she sniffs at it anyway. 

"Yeah, I can't smell a damn thing." 

We dither over the berries, which look like they've been planted only a few weeks ago, and a squash, which is doing its best to take over a corner of the raised bed with an explosion of hardy, furry greens.

On the way in, she tells me that she trounced one of the occupational therapists at dominos. "She thought she was gonna beat me, but at the end of our game, she was 47 in the hole." She gives a little triumphant laugh.

I ask her if she remembers the ceramic dominoes that each have a "C" carved into them. They're in a lined box, with the last name "CARR" etched on it. I don't even remember how or when she gave them to me.

"Yes, those were my grandmother's."

"Well, I have them. I should bring them and we should play sometime." I haven't played dominoes since I was a kid. I'm pretty sure the last time I played was actually with Grandmother.

"That'd be nice. You can't leave them here, though. Someone'll take 'em." She's been encountering issues with people stealing her shoes and things. Apparently it's common in nursing homes.

After we get back to her room, I go on a brief search in the laundry room, but there's no helping it. The shoes I got her are gone. 

Mom reappears, after wrangling the notary into notarizing the power of attorney form. Grandmother asks to borrow her eyebrow pencil. I go on another quest, this time to get the eyebrow pencil sharpened. I find out that there's a second floor, and that the social worker up there has a manual pencil sharpener. I've spoken to her on the phone once. She's not the one that's handling my grandmother's case. 

I take the elevator up and pass half a dozen misshapen people in wheelchairs and a vending machine. I note vaguely that part of me is numbing out, pretending that this place is not as bizarre and depressing as it is. I find the social worker and engage her in sheepish conversation while I sharpen the eyebrow pencil. Before I head down, I buy some peanut butter crackers, since Grandmother had mentioned that she was hungry and craving "something like crackers, but sweet". I think she meant cookies, but I figured the protein would do her more good than the Oreos.

I go back down and present the eyebrow pencil to my grandmother, along with the peanut butter crackers. "Ah, snacktime! Bless you, Kelly." Her smile is genuine. "I'm so proud of you." She compliments me, saying I'm more beautiful than the two of them (my grandmother and my mother) put together. There's a twinge of envy in her voice and I shrug, shrinking away from the compliment.

"Oh, so modest," my mom mocks. 

Just two hours before, my mother was complaining that no matter what she did, she could never get my grandmother's approval. And here was my grandmother now, showering me with praises over eyebrow pencils and crackers. I can feel the tension spike as my mother gets a little jealous.

After a while, Grandmother shoos us away. "I'm sure you ladies both have things to do." 

We leave, and I wish that I'd come sooner, and by myself. I'm more able to be present with my grandmother because I'm not handling the logistics of getting her affairs in order. It's a Herculean task that my mother is much more equipped to do, both legally and logistically. The fact that I reinforced my boundaries with her and incited her to drive down from Alaska made me realize how right my decision was. Even if my mother botches the whole process, having spent the time doing it that I have, I realize that it's fairly idiot-proof, it's just a lot of red tape. 

I don't know how all of it will shake out, but for the first time since all of this happened, I feel hopeful and calm about things. 

She Thirsts

Too much to do
don’t
distract me
taking care of it
this to-do list
obligations
please fuck she suggests
strongly
I exhale
hunger roils
eyes follow
body breathes
all shapes and desire shadows
so empty will not slake
anything real
we cannot be surface
we, chthonian sinuous
unearth dark places
hidden tastes
discover and reveal
tipping the vessel
content to flood
I’m all cups, sweetheart
and you’ll drown.

Undertow

I always say
I’ll be the first to fold
seeking to plunge and
peel away the tides
to what lies beneath
ever submerged

not true now
content with this container
the deep end of an indigo swirl
a pool where
I can see the surface
ripple above me (safe)

no undertow oceans to
contend with here
only waves that lap
and churn, beckoning
but softly, siren call distant
mimicry

I lean to the shells, to the shore.
I grin at the grit there,
the illusion of a body to be grasped
squall squeezed
and wet released.

Ellipses

you’re pressed

against the poem

on my door

white on white

all gasps and grins

the flame of

your hair licks

my ear

as I kiss your lips

I’m breathing now,

starved for the oxygen

of your mouth on mine

and you laugh

I’m so late

I capture your green

your impish grin

make time contracts

in the air

while you sit

white on white

I’m breathing again

music on, lips enmeshed

I doubt you’re lyric listening

but I don’t care as

we get lost in the crescendo

Our kisses become ellipses

like they always do

a conversation to be

revived, reconsidered, revisited, resumed

as you turn away

trot down the stairs

and I shut the door slowly, saturated.

Vows

I lay in my desires

Unknown and known to me

Like a mystery loved Rilke written

I

Write us because dreaming is doing is manifesting is being

But to say what I wish and not what I am is full folly I am here I wish to be there but

I cannot plan our survival or our destruction love takes a light touch and you and I are overfull

In our abundance rife with dreaming high on the opiates of new and novel and egoless ego of
invulnerable compassion passion

As we ride these tides under over between I feel a sorrow coupled with my ecstasy a sorrow for each
day each moment each molecule of each breath as it forms and inspires expires between us I am
experiencing our now as if there will be no more of it because there won’t be because all we are is
momentary and in that, eternal.

If there is one thing I would beg of you, and I do beg as love makes me a beggar, humbled and empty as
I am full and tumescent with the deluge of your fluids, the juice of us dousing me and only trickles pass
my lips as I let them, I sip you in supposition sometimes gulp until I’m clear and expansive as the endless
cosmic undulation of affinity between us I am enveloped until I am numb with sensation I beg you I beg
you still don’t stop but keep going and listen:

As you have vowed our makings and our minds, our psyches and our cycles, our puppetry of love, our
gallantry and circumstance, I will vow to counter you, always. I will vow as you lay down your armor and
give me the pen to write you a fool or a queen, I will always hand the pen back to you.

You write yourself.

All you create, all you determine, all you digest from me must be refashioned with your own hands, your
own blood and ink.

I give you what you have always handed away to those who would exploit it, a thing so precious and
priceless, a thing that this world would falter without: your self.

I refuse tattoos, I refuse eternal trappings because as much as I make of all my plans and dreams, the
Wheel turns only a little by our steadfast claws, our desires made manifest. The rest of it is a design
we’ll never deign to know, and the how or why of us can sometimes not be written by writers, but by
a pattern we cannot change or control. We may be playing a game, but it is a game we cannot lose or
leave, despite our urge to merge, to possess and be possessed.

I can never hold you as completely as you will, you do hold yourself and only you. In all my solitude, my

leavenings from love I have learned that.

I vow then, too, to always show you me, in my sacred solitude and in my raucous clamor with you. I vow
to walk beside you and be a second guardian of your untouched center, a place no one is allowed to
crack open and digest but you. I vow to be not the soil, nor the sun of your growth, but a pair of hands
suggestive in your garden, a co-creator in dreams built for two, yours and mine distinct but congruent
and entwining. And I beg of you to do the same, your deft fingers wrapped around my tender tendrils,
my aching roots. Will you place them where is best for both of us, where we agree completely, and sow
with me your seamstress hands so capable of loving both yourself and me, your children and our future
unwritten?

I have high hopes for us, for you. I won’t lie.

What goes on and in

my heart tattoos stitches

blood and ink

your skin vices to verse and

you are indelible on me

fingerprints on my soul

incandescent whorls

my growth spiraling

seed shoots

break the loam

of all my grief and

I am rife

with blooming now.

Do not trample us in haste, in fearless abandon as headfirst diving into the rebirth of ourselves, via the
midwives of one another’s hands. We will create and we will destroy, as we are wont to do, without
reason or recourse. So I beg you then finally to let us be and become, always.

The Promise

let’s talk about the promise I made you

our armor even now

I demonize

so reminiscent of past hurts pain

no fucking armor allowed here

I want to sweep it aside

peel off your carapace

in pieces

and you clutch it, desperately

I need this, I need this

it’s not practical

to go naked

we fight over breastplates

and gauntlets which

have made us gaunt all along

but I know

if we jump into the sea

with all the armor on

we’ll sink to the bottom

into the murk

of it’s not enough never enough

can’t swim with all of this on

and I’m rushing to undress you

as you’re rushing to devour my body

and all of this urgency will not do

because each piece of armor

has a story and a reason

and rusty catches

and tarnished promises

and it’s keeping us sane

as we two week four day marry one another

but here is what I’ll amend

because I will never take it back:

I’m not going anywhere

even if we undo

I’ll sign the contract saying, “sticking around

for life” because

I made a promise to myself my own

necessary armor to only promise others

what I can reasonably fulfill

and nothing more and you know

when Scorpio sisters promise things

what it means (our hearts sign contracts the rest of our selves can’t deny)

so relax and just take that one piece of

armor off right there, let me help you

there.

isn’t that better?

love (enlightenment)

how it peels away the layers

of the self

to create an us bigger than my self

all of us together is my self

no self, selfless

push pull

space to grow and be green

be you be more than be better

be flawed and free

humbled and holy

how it strikes compassion

to know and love each bit

that cries for healing

for validation for reckoning

dual lights shining on

darkness hidden

fears brought out and held

and known

and you could do this with me

or with yourself it’s okay

either way I’m here and

I get it

how it takes time

kiss meditation stirs solitary

seeking completely incompleteness

ascension through friction

be you, baby, be me

be both and we’ll be

stronger together but no less

powerful apart

how it never ends

a universe unfurling cycles

seeking only to be and unfold

and wither and replenish exist

fed by striving and sitting

attaching to nothing but the breath

inhale (energy)

exhale (ecstasy)

it’s the only thing ceaseless enduring

undoing as we go

forward momentum an illusion

just to be is to find it.

sonnet lxxxi

And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream.
Love and pain and work should all sleep, now.
The night turns on its invisible wheels,
and you are pure beside me as a sleeping amber.

No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go,
we will go together, over the waters of time.
No one else will travel through the shadows with me,
only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon.

Your hands have already opened their delicate fists
and let their soft drifting signs drop away; your eyes closed like two gray
wings, and I move

after, following the folding water you carry, that carries
me away. The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny.
Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all.

-- Pablo Neruda

Sea Tree

i boost you up
grasp the soles
of your feet in my hands and
show you how easy
the branches embrace you
you hold it
precious fruit
it's important you have it (perfectly)
in your hands

without me

it cramps twists stomach churns
to withdraw sensible
unknown tangles wrest with Scorpion will
water like concrete headaches
the tension of existing
in private spaces

untouchable

sacred

we have to allow ourselves unknown
let loose guarantees because
there are none
even in our power we are powerless
limitless

and we flood one another
ample and strong
wave after wave
affecting tides
individual hip rhythms
to match
a dance

i lead/you lead
but not at the same time

we inhabit
our bodies our souls our selves
in congruent vibrations
outside of one another
concordant sines our
sounds

when we kiss and slip inside
each other and
ourselves we
dive into those seas of sound
wet and warm
we breathe and
become a machine of intention
speak softly to one another's fears
cradle them in hands built for love
and so much more

and even in our darkest
our senseless terror
that roils like the ocean
fathomless
we can only remove handfuls
at a time
and grant space for the rest

She Is

she is
long and lean soft cigarette voice
tousled red tendrils
brushing my face as
she is
merge melting verdant vines
unfurling sweet squeeze
pale shelter as
she is
bold gaze piercing
lips in bloom glistening
tender thorn teeth as
she is
dragging the sun across
this weary landscape
populating new life as
she is
impregnating it with sticky pistol
fingers sordid stamen insides
red life raw contracts as
she is
afternoon slick flexing
dark gaze flitting over
fragile hidden apertures
that loosen tight buds

and take

her

in

petal by petal

Tattoo You #1

I'm sitting here the buzz

of the needle

an accompaniment to your becoming

a statement of yourself

powerful medicine

we are both

leaning over the precipice of

growth

our tangles and spirals

tendrils seeking sun

i watch you

all grins and endorphins

and I feel blessed to see you

so solid, sordid, high and happy

contained radiance

that trickles out

every time you speak

or look at me.

Tattoo You #2

Fears come flooding

like my deep deluge

quivering

you are in me

surrounding me

with your love

I'm marked by you

as I tattoo you with

kisses and bites

nails sink in

fingers spread

to claim me

I am only half possessed

tamped down

quieted by mercurial motion

We hold eyes

gaze locked as you give

I break apart

underneath your lips

and I will be remade

by this remedy

by my surrender

an incremental death

an imminent release

into peace.


In Which I Address Your Fears

come here children
rest from your rambunctious clatter
and listen
for a spell

are we all gathered? good.

i want to tell you a story
about a woman
made of amorous abundance
she carries with her
a vessel of love
that splashes over all she creates
and connects with
absolutely

this woman is wise of word
and wary
she collects children and animals
is discerning of space and beauty
constantly rearranges
and moves in the tides
of today yesterday and tomorrow
she swims through it like
breathing

she

records, recollects, and gathers

precious solitude and togetherness

this woman
loves each and every one of you
hears you, sees you, grants you space
to grow large and tempestuous
to shrink small and shiny
beautiful dark voices
a cacophony of tapes and trauma

this woman
knows that time is a healer
and that you can trip up your
mother's able body
and heart
with your clamoring demands for safety
and assurance

this woman
loves your mother like an ocean
full of ebb and flow and sea-creatures
which opine and pine for feeding and
nurturance and also grant the same
in overarching supply to her and you

there is no end to this love, it's limitless coming from
the cosmos universal the only thing that stops it
is the inability to see it and hear it and feel it and children

sometimes love can feel like drowning but you
have gills you can breath the oxygen in this brilliant fluid deluge you just
have to take a breath say ahh open up and let it in
and breathe it out cleansing your wounds and the scars of before

I must be honest with you, because I love you. Listen to this too:

I will hurt you. This doesn't sound good to hear, but it's a hard truth
that my clumsy humanness will not represent my divine origins at times
I will do my very best but my own children will surface and shout and scream
and steal your toys because they're learning too and sometimes your mother
will have to talk to my children this way

and I'll want her to but

you also need to know that if I frighten you it's because you cannot see me
for who and what I am and
because I'm wearing a mask that you made and put on my face
and only you can take it off and we'll play this game a lot because
putting masks on people seems like a good idea in order to understand them
but really it's just something you do to feel safe but I'll tell you

my voice will never change and I will never be deaf to you, dear children
the monster has ears
so when the face of your fear grows grotesque
and "i love you" sounds like a threat
just take my hand and tell the beast
what it looks like to you, describe details in perfect horror and one by one
these features will dissolve and you'll see me again

smiling and oceanic, present and accounted for
full of flaws and sometimes frail
but also able and affable, carrying you on her back
cajoling and full of strength, steadying you as you
balance and learn to walk instead of run breakneck frantic
into heartbreak traffic
you

mind the signs in the sea where they appear real and right
and learn to see again and take as long as you need to get it down
because it'll take several lifetimes if ever but I'm determined, children
to love your mother the way I was meant to and
the way she deserves so I'll ask you finally

to be patient with yourselves and with me and know
that my closeness will make you nervy and raw
but just take the time to gather together when you
find yourself flailing for air trapped in the tides
open your ears and mouth and
dead-man's float surrender

and see
that you can breathe
with and in me

it's effortless.

Tangential Love Poem

you
word write stitch sutures and vows
fearless open eyes wry smile
my hesitancy ages you
suddenly mother made
your hands crave cup me
cradle kiss
depart

so often
my heart has made decisions
that my mind, my soul
departed and disagreed with
but overturned for lack
of love, of loss, of loneliness

pick someone pick someone pick someone
and adapt
chameleon love, scarce love, take
what you can get
love

shut up and smile love

fit into this box because
this woman
can only be parsed into pieces
love

i came to you with a hear no see no speak no love
face
all hand covered and critical

i was sure my missive to the universe
had been hung in the gutter
pulpy paper wadded
and stuck between twigs
and crumpled beer cans

coffee-stained into obscurity
on Goddess' to-do list

but more you prove by being

by your open mouth
that slings out spit and smoke and
sordid consonants

and keen ears
that prick and pick out phrases

and sharp animal eyes that wander
tangential and exacting
clairvoyant
and unclouded
insightful and intense

that you are my mate and match
the one that strikes a spark
the one that complements the other
my darker shade
my lighter fare

with all your disarray
your force
to be revealed and reckoned with
your hurricane spray
and torrential winds
and gentle regrouping
careful phrases
slipped on the kitchen counter
which build homes
for my homeless heart

if all divinity exists which is
of me and you
and in me and you
and reflects in the puddles
of iridologic complexity
this green this blue this gold and grin gains
pupils expand with learning
free radicals that talk to themselves
we are microcosmic to our skin cells secret
and macrocosmic galaxy regardless absorbing
and rebirthing one another and ourselves
 
endlessly

and

allowed.

How You Moved

the hush of