I know a woman
who keeps buying puzzles
chinese
puzzles
blocks
wires
pieces that finally fit
into some order.
she works it out
mathematically
she solves all her
puzzles
lives down by the sea
puts sugar out for the ants
and believes
ultimately
in a better world.
her hair is white
she seldom combs it
her teeth are snaggled
and she wears loose shapeless
coveralls over a body most
women would wish they had.
for many years she irritated me
with what I consider her
eccentricities -
like soaking eggshells in water
(to feed the plants so that
they’d get calcium).
but finally when I think of her
life
and compare it to other lives
more dazzling, original
and beautiful
I realize that she has hurt fewer
people than anybody I know
(and by hurt I simply mean hurt).
she has had some terrible times,
times when maybe I should have
helped her more
for she is the mother of my only
child
and we were once great lovers,
but she has come through
like I said
she has hurt fewer people than
anybody I know,
and if you look at it like that,
well,
she has created a better world.
she has won.
Frances, this poem is for
you.
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--from my latest substack post--
ordering coffee, again.
i’ll grab this one.
of course; it’s no problem.
oat? soy? neither? okay, no milk, right.
it’s a thursday, you don’t put milk in your coffee on thursdays, i remember.
you told me that last autumn for the first time.
at the shop on the corner of streets running north and south and east and west
the location as ambiguous as you were to me.
i held onto your words like candlelight,
which is to mean,
i felt myself grasping at the wick of your thoughts as they released.
hold onto it slowly, i did, each tendril of smoke had meaning, for you have never said things that did not matter.
i’ve always held the space to gather up all your meaning, to keep attempting to collect the strands of everything that encapsulates you. the long strings of yarn strung together in loose cadence;
but i can keep the rhythm,
and i can keep the pace,
and i can hold the room for all of it,
i’ll hold the threads in my palm and i’ll grasp it with certainty.
because it is without effort,
there is no weight,
or burden,
or distraught,
to be the one to hold that which you carry;
it is not beyond my strength to hold all of you.
for to love was to bear it all,
or at least that’s what i read,
but isn’t that how it feels?
to be seen,
to be understood,
is to recognize that any
quirk
fear
inability
lack thereof
is not a withholding
nor weakness
nor failing
it is the space between us
the location in the strings where we meet in the middle
the threaded spiderweb of life has bound us this way
no, not doomed; no, not ill-fated.
for you are the red string connected to my wrist
the one that has lead me to you
the universal pull to unravel the thread so that i may reach you
even though you exist outside of my grasp as i see it now
all i ever needed was your hand pressed against mine
i want to feel myself expanding and compressing underneath the weight of your eyes
soft winding and slow crackling do we fall deeper
the string twisting
and tying
and threading
and then
loosening
unraveling
the yarn
crocheted and knitted do we find ourself
loose ends and damaged strands have we come together
to make whole the both of us
i’ll order the same coffee every thursday
i’ll walk you home from the station
i’ll make the pasta that way you like it
and i’ll keep writing these letters so that one day you’ll read them
i’ll press them with the flowers of your tomorrow
scented with the bloom of longing
sealed with the certainty of promise
the promise that i’ll keep collecting and saving the things you’d like
the letters
the movies
the albums
the trinkets
the odds
the ends
the things yet to be discovered
and the things you’ll have to show me
i’m just a scrapbook of all the things i’ve loved before
a capsule of intricacy
i’ll keep the light on outside
i’ll wait on the porch
i’ll keep the fire warm
i’ll know when you’re here
and you’ll know it’s me
for the strings will connect,
the yarn unraveled,
the lines no longer crossing but joining.
and if it’s a thursday,
a plain coffee, no milk
just so there isn’t any lack of a sign.
#poetry #letters #substack
Dec 5, 2024
✏️
After Metastasis by Ja’net Danielo
She can’t remember and maybe that is why I keep rearranging my living room, thinking about where the floor lamp should go.
She can’t remember and this
is what I tell myself when I am frightened into thinking that I am forgetting what a floor lamp is.
Yesterday night I overheard a woman telling a boy to adopt a bunny and pretend to be one so that the bunny thinks he is also a bunny
and befriends him and makes him one of their own like the wild ones do with each other in the bushes
of thirteenth street. I want to know, when do bunnies stop being rabbits?
Across the street from the home my grandmother was put in, the night owl of eateries, the pine cone open until forever
and ever where I eat chicken dumpling alphabet soup
every weekend because my grandma doesn’t know how to make
it anymore. She can’t remember and the cold noodles in the warm broth repel each other like oil and water
and while I wait for my soup to settle I draw a picture of what the noodle-alphabet spells out today and think about
what it’s going to spell out inside my stomach later and I wonder if this is what my grandma meant when said that you must not add your noodles in too late before our 67th introduction
where she asks me my name again and we sit in each others company
talking about the weather over and over again.
Pine Cone is a truck stop and Rabbits are the same thing
as bunnies and my alphabet soup says that my floor lamp should probably go in the corner.
Sep 17, 2024
📜
was no consolation to the woman
whose husband was strung out on opioids.
Gone to a better place: useless and suspect intel
for the couple at their daughter’s funeral
though there are better places to be
than a freezing church in February, standing
before a casket with a princess motif.
Some moments can’t be eased
and it’s no good offering clichés like stale
meat to a tiger with a taste for human suffering.
When I hear the word miracle I want to throw up
on a platter of deviled eggs. Everything happens
for a reason: more good tidings someone will try
to trepan your skull to insert. When fire
inhales your house, you don’t care what the haiku says
about seeing the rising moon. You want
an avalanche to bury you. You want to lie down
under a slab of snow, dumb as a jarred
sideshow embryo. What a circus.
The tents dismantled, the train moving on,
always moving, starting slow and gaining speed,
taking you where you never wanted to go.
Feb 12, 2025
Top Recs from @naluwai
Dec 5, 2024