A Pile of Blankets

A pile of blankets,
quilts all heaped together in my daughters' favorite colors.
I see them on their beds when they are playing in the yard.
I miss their small bodies suddenly, and their smells.
I long to see their belly buttons, and put my face in their warm necks.
But I don't want the chaos,
the blankets will have to be enough, a vessel for heat and odors,
I run my hands along the edges and over the folds, and inside them.
I expect their hotness and respiration to translate,
But the spaces of the blanket, all the spaces, are cold on my fingertips.
The girls are just outside.

Precious things.

Precious is small.
Like something that can be held in one hand.
Or two hands cupped together,
one hanging back, behind,
holding
the
hand
holding the baby bird.
When the bird is precious
it is plump and blue
all swollen breast and
fluorescent orange beak. 
It does not have bugging eyes
or strangled wings
and when it cries for food
crushed up worms are
always waiting
in a neighboring hand
(its pair waiting to stroke beneath the blue chin)
and the bird can be sated.
Precious things
hunger
like
other
things,
but they are too easily satiable.
They cry out in pain, but submit to
bandages and healing.
The are held and never take off in angry flight,
until they do.

Not a poem, just a thought.

Today I was going pee. 
On my own toilet. 
At home. 
Bill had just gotten new toilet paper. 
It was "angel soft."
Five years ago that would have hurt.
I would have been mad.
But I put it on the roll.
I went to grab some.
The pattern on the white tissue was butterflies.
Five years ago I would have sworn.
It would have hurt like being stabbed.
Anyone who would buy that, fuck them.
You knew I might come over.
Fuck you.
My baby died.
You know that symbol is butterflies.
You know I reluctantly put them on her walls.
You know I got into that.
That's just how it felt.
Worse than being stabbed now that I write it down.
But not today.
Today I saw the butterflies.
And I remembered.
And I had a secret.
And for a split second it was nice.
It was our second.
And I've felt that way in other bathrooms.
That special moment.
It's still a recollection of my baby.
I rustle the tissue with my thumb and fore finger.
It is soft and perfumed and powdered.
(Nevermind the wiping with it.)
Whether you know it or not.
Thanks for buying that tissue.
Thanks for never changing.
Thanks for believing I'd come back.
But better.

Magenta.

Magenta is all long legs.

It is knees and lipstick.

Magenta is teenage confidence,

and that feeling of giddy soaring.

Magenta is invulnerable and

smooths over the fissures

where crimson will crack every time.

Magenta thinks itself sophisticated,

and wants to be taken seriously.

But magenta has a lot to learn.

Nothing that ever lived

stayed magenta for long.

Nothing that remembers

or bleeds true red or

forgets to breathe sometimes or

stares off at blue calls itself

Magenta. Not for long anyway.

Because magenta is the color

of the thin veneer of youth

that wears off no matter

how often we dress ourselves

in contrast to crimson.

The Debate on Breathing.

The breath takes sticky hold in my throat,
like something small and hot living there.
Must breathe out to keep stepping,
need that flow of oxygen and other gases
for moments to tick by and to make it
to night, to make it to sunrise, to make it
to night again.  And then another sunrise.
But could I hold that fiery, tiny thing--
keep it lodged in place radiating
my innards with its reminder of
the short and sweet and what burns.
In the cradling I might ignite from inside,
but would it be blazing and would it hurt just right
and would I finally remember dying in there.
Or would the last scraps of playing it back wake me,
and I'd fall and scrape my face on the pavement,
embarrassed and caught holding on too long again,
and forced back to the old breathing.
The questions and the diaphragm ache and
are too much invisibility, pulsing, themselves.
The debate on breathing is natural
as once was the breathing itself.
But I exhale and let the holding of it die hard
and the hot curl scrapes as it leaves.

Be grateful.

Up late again.
            Tapping and switching.

Buttons.
Thoughts racing.
               Grateful.

Grateful.
        Be grateful.

Meerkat Shanty

shanty town living room
tents of blankets and wood chairs

meerkat blonde heads peep