Floating Haiku

fruit dye and water
horsehair sutured to slim wood
paints a butterfly

fold down the middle
so flat wings mimic flapping
sit her like resting

imagine she lifts
wings become brushes themselves
and she paints a girl

Feast of Flowers

Aconite.  Anemone.  Autumn Crocus.
Fat purple pads, succulent and sliced
by stripes of indigo drizzled or heaped
like angel hair over bone china
on a lazy susan.  Baneberry,
Christmas Rose, Deadly Nightshade,
Foxglove, and the Iris. 

                                       Neighbors watched
her build the greenhouse last winter—
first in her dark jacket with dark
buttons, then shirtless, just sweating
and raising walls in white sun
with bare arms and a strong back—
they watched for her mouth and
several times they shook while
pouring water into glasses, but
never offered.

                          Ivy, Jimson Weed,
the root of one Mandrake, curled like a
fetal Medusa.  Each day, they watched
as the glass fogged and breathed clear,
until green began to grow up along
its insides and shut the world out
for good.  Brave boys almost climbed
the frame and followed the sun inside,
but they heard a shuffle and the clang
of a spade and their hair stood up.  Oleander,
Rock Poppy, Spring Adonis.

                                               So they waited
late into springtime, watched her mostly—
naked with boots, shorn hair, heavy glasses,
carrying armloads of cut flowers inside—
thought they saw her bite a May Apple—
eight trips for wisteria, heavy like grapes—
wondered should they bring vases and
how her fingers must have looked,
how red or purple they must be, how deep
were the thorns, how chartreuse the thumbnails.

Still I look up missing girls.

Between trees along the roadside, there is an umbrella.
Its great downturned blossom—bluebell or reverse tulip—
is small-world round and banded with turquoise, fuchsia,
pale pink—size is hard to gauge from here, but the brightly
budding colors dazzle schools on rainy mornings. 

                                                                                         Travel
down flamboyant petal and silver stem, to the handle,
which is red, and plastic, and curved to fit a smaller hand,
and there are thoughts of soft palms and paint that spills
off tiny nails and onto skin. 

                                                   Imagine the hands connect to arms,
connect to narrow mid-section and still maybe a child’s tummy,
to neck growing longer with years, to a head to eyes that blink
and well with changing feelings, hurt feelings, or something else?
 

Think of the hair, maybe long and brown and soft and wispy
and brushed that morning by a mother who trims it with kitchen
scissors and sprays in detangler, dresses it with dandelion, and
runs her hands across it and breathes as it dries.

                                                                                      And there is an umbrella
along the roadside, between the trees, and underneath is a broken
metal spoke that collapses a nylon rainbow against earth, and maybe
it was thrown in jubilation as the sun came out and the drops stopped
souping up the forest’s edge—and she took a shortcut home from the bus stop.

five.

Walking Web

I am caught          like a fly            in a web
though I am moving and have broken it

From twigs         and branches          that string it
blue, cold, skyward and tether its ends to the hot center

I am carrying          it with me         over shoulders
and neck like a noose or long pendant, I’ll wear it forever

Sometimes          it glistens          on my skin
sometimes I scratch and pull at infinite fragments

Each bit falls         away, nothing          visible remains
but still I am traced by silk and bound by its feeling on my skin

Light, down         to nearly nothing          you can’t see
that it’s there in my hair or on my face, under finger nails.

Degenerate

Broken by a fall out of bed
the pain didn’t wake me but the noise
lack of crack, a slow rumble
flipped me sideways like thunder
hitting my eardrums from inside
and hammering dully on my brain
as with elbows that don’t relent
self-defensive and close to the danger
the pain became the noise
filled with fragments of femur
my leg was red and liquid fire
They’d told me the bones would start breaking
that red and white would disintegrate
like sands from different deserts
and yes those sands were rubbing and mixing
and creating a frenzied whir
humming electric as I lay on the planks
later my collarbone in the dressing room
and all the toes while sitting perfectly still
my biggest bone had broken
now I would wait for help
and then wait for breaking

I don't usually write things quite like this...

...but I am today.  Because today Eleanor and Josephine got a new room.  As their bodies expand, so do their things.  Bigger beds.  More books.  Bigger, bouncier, less fragile bodies, means less room for sentimental things.  So now there is a big peach chest emblazoned with S floating around the house.  It squats in my room.  In the living room.  In the girls' room.  It is in danger, in a sense.  Constant ever present danger that it will be opened.  I will take a shower, and come out, dry off, find its contents scattered.  Rose petals, pictures frames, book pages.  I am delaying making a decision, because I know her chest will end up in some closet.  For the safe keeping I never meant to do.  In the meantime, I've been digging through it.  This is something I don't do.  The wound picking I used to love that no longer feels good.  Not that I don't miss it. 

So much has changed since I folded her Christmas sleepers and ran my palms over the yellow striped bits of cloth.  I cried, but I smiled.  I even laughed.  I laughed when I saw the rip in the back of that Christmas sleeper.  Made by our dog.  Who let me cry on his scrawny shoulder.  And later bit Eleanor.  And was put down.  When I was hugely pregnant with Josephine.  That's a story that is anything but funny.  I guess.  But what a life.  That just keeps moving and changing.  And, with time, even the shortest lives take on new significances.  And I laugh because I know new, more important things all the time. 

"Mom, are you a tiny bit sad about Sophie?"  I tell her I'm very sad about Sophie.  "But you're a lot happy about us?"  I tell them that I am--that they are the absolute lights of my life.  Those times make my heart swell.  I am teaching them something about joy and sadness.  And deep emotion.  But my heart also beats for the times I hear Sophie as part of their daily vocabulary.  "Josephine, GET OUT OF MY ROOM!  I want to be alone.  GO GET A SNACK!  GO THINK ABOUT SOPHIE!  GO MARRY A PRINCESS!" 

A few of the things I saw in the chest: 

A Gators uniform.

A Spalding shirt.

A pink hooded towel signed with curly letters written in sharpee.

A quilt from the Atlanta gift show.

A book called "When Sophie Gets Angry" from Barnes and Noble in Bowie.  (Which now makes me laugh because it makes me think about Sophie as a scary angry haunting ghost.  And that's nothing like anything I believe about her.  And it's absurdly funny.)

A book called "My Friend Gorilla" which really does break my heart a little.  Too much to read.

A picture of her that I scanned and printed and tried to pretty up and make presentable.  So I could frame it in my house.  And, fuck, it hurts that she died.  That her skin was that red in places.  But breathe.  Remember that documentary about the moment of death, in which they say bleeding to death is like slowly slipping away.  There.  That hurts a little less.

A slip from the florist, regarding a tree, that later died.

Cards.  Pinks and greens.  Brights and pastels.  Congratulations!  Dated from my shower. 

Cards.  Subtle colors.  Sensitive fonts.  Kind words.  From people I talk to daily still.  From family and from friends.  From people who still remember, and people who've moved on.  From people who've lost their own babies.  From people with whom I'm no longer friendly.  From people I love.  From the Dance Party.  From the giver of the red rocking chair and the eclipse gazer, who've since both died.  The world just keeps changing.  Its makeup constantly shifting, as my sadness really does drift away to make room for my joy, and the joy and the sadness of others.

A box of crayons.  And I gave it to the girls.  I just gave it to them.  For coloring, paper stripping, breaking, melting, and throwing away.  Just for living.

I look at and finger these soft things.  They smell old now.  And they strum new chords.  Or maybe the guitar is tuned to a new key.  Or harmonies layer the sadness with joy.  They don't hurt like they used to.  What hurts is the way they make me laugh, and how the smiles come easier than the tears.  But even that hurt feels so fucking good. 

I'm not some great person.  Changed.  Or calm.  Or taking things in stride.  I'm not more brilliant.  Or more patient (god, no).  But I can look at these things that felt like a thousand knives twisting, and see a story that unfolds.  That keeps unfolding.  Doubling over, reaching into and out of me, in ways I never dreamed.