If you asked me 5 years ago what I thought was most important, I would’ve said love. I think I imagined love as the ultimate goal in life. And while it’s still high on the list of things I find important, the older I get the more I value companionship. If I find love unattainable or unsustainable, I can only hope that I can find comfort in the way companionship. Love can be sweet, but without the valuable component of companionship-someone to spend your life with-love can be a lonely place. However, companionship on by itself can provide a measure of comfort without the trials of love. Maybe I just need someone to talk to and ask about their day and eat dinner with. Increasingly, that seems more palatable than the disappointing dates and troublesome issues of emotion that I’m dealing with now. Perhaps I need to just dispense with the idea of romance and find someone who just wants to sit and keep me company.

That sounds defeated, but when I look at what I find important, I realize that the torrid passion of love is not only difficult to sustain, it’s not even that interesting to me anymore. I’ve gotten the flowers. Been on all the the dates. The candy, the candles, the trips? Been there, done that. And it’s all sweet. I appreciated it. But where did it get us in the end?

I think placing a greater value on the merits of companionship could help me focus on what I really find important.

i know there’s not long left
we’re getting older
time is getting shorter
and he won’t be alone
forever
this tv will keep me busy
while i try not to think about
the inevitable
how one day, someday
i’ll see him somewhere
and he’ll show me a picture of:
his wife
his baby
his new life
and i will smile
stifle my heart
and say ohmygoshthatssogreatimsohappyforyou
and on some level
i’ll mean it
because he’s all i love

i know there’s not long left
i’m prepared, i think
i know that our time has passed
and since he never knew we had time
that fact will go unnoticed
i’m in bed with a headache
he’s at a party, probably meeting
the new her
i’m being dramatic
overreacting
grasping for anything that might
make me whole again
but i hope he finds her
maybe even tonight
and on some level
i mean it
because he’s all i love.

My mama lives on the other side of the clouds.

I be looking up and talking

I ask her questions like:
What should I do?
What am I going to do?
What would you do?

And she doesn’t answer. Guess she can’t hear.

My mama is a fairy that sleeps in Dorsey Miller Cemetery
Along with the ‘other’ part of my family.
My Great grandma
My Grandma
My mama’s brother
My mama
and the baby, who I called Kevin.

All spread out, under the sod.

But my mama is a fairy or a queen or a princess.
That’s all I could conjure.
Pretty sure she smells like Jean Naté
Or that crumbly English Rose stuff old women use in a bath
Or Miss Cool setting lotion
That’s all I can conjure.

I want to ask her what it’s like.
If she wishes she could reach down
and pluck me from the disasters I create.
If God calls her in for the instant replay and looks at her disapprovingly.

If she replies to God “Well, you only gave me a few years to work with her.”

My mama is a picture in Kodachrome.

I was there

teetering on the brink of sanity and insanity

frightened.

I am not a monster slayer, but I learned to become one.

I am not a magician, but I learned magic

and pulled back from the brink

again and again.

I am smart.

too smart and charming to be crazy.

And you are too,

except for we aren’t.

Cruel monsters plague the dreams of the best,

so they carry the tools and fight all night.

That’s us – fighters.

I was there,

falling apart at the seams while the world looked on and said

surely, no.

While colors flooded my brain,

sometimes vivid,

sometimes blue.

I stood with gray paint and took them on.

Eventually.

You own your mind,

even though it doesn’t seem that way sometimes

It’s yours to treasure.

Fight.

 

for JRRH

Rapturous
and not the May 21 kind
the caught up in
Anita Baker kind
the whirlwind twister she was just here but now?
she’s gone kind
I mean it was fast
and I was gone
because I was running
from sad face days

They say the best way to get over
is to get on top
and that’s just a lie because I
tried and then I cried and then I ran away again
I mean, it was not unlike riding a bicycle in that
I could do it, but I’d forgotten so much more than how
And that was not the way to get away anyway.

Caught like a pig in a poke.
Body advancing toward a new place
Mind in another county
Heart in another area code.
I decided to let myself get caught up in being something I wasn’t
I know all the parables
and the chapters
and the verses
all the surahs
and the ayats
and still wasn’t being honest.
Instead I was primped
and primed
and ready to be whoever was
convenient

It is a journey to be loved.
But I am resigned to the fact
I’d like it to be me.
Both feet on the ground.
Absolutely myself
and not off in the clouds.

You’re comfortable watching me squirm

I am in the corner, growing out of my skin and you

are fine with that

you will not give me a kind word

you will not throw me a life preserver

you will let me drown and say that I knew better

because you told me once

and once was enough

You’re uncomfortable with my heartbeat

I am writhing on the floor waiting for help to arrive and you

are looking out the window watching airplanes

and past me to the television watching ESPN

and over to the counter for your keys

and at your phone for a message

anywhere but here

You wish I’d just be quiet

and go away

find another life that doesn’t recognize you

live it and leave you alone

sleep and not dream about you

walk by you when I see you

or something like that

I wish I could.

In dreams, birds are supposed to symbolize our goals and desires. When they’re soaring, it’s supposed to be a good thing.

A few nights ago, I dreamed that I crushed a bird in my hand, a la Steinbeck’s Lennie Small.

I held it. Tightly. I was trying to prevent it from flying away. But then I was yelling because I was holding a lifeless bird, crushed between my fingers.

You ever strangle a dream before? They’re not fighters, by nature. No, your dreams and goals will let you suffocate them quietly. They won’t try to resist because they understand the nature of the relationship. Without your blessing, your desires are mute. Therefore, if you’re out to murder them, they won’t fight. What’s the use?

I have taken advantage of that, time and time again. Stabbing, shooting and crushing my own scarcely formed ambitions because it seemed the most humane thing to do. Ever see a bird fly into a glass window and die? They never see it coming. I thought I was saving my birds from a certain and messy ending.

In my dream, I didn’t mean to hurt the birds. I was, like Lennie, just trying to pet them, keep them a little longer. Dumb fingers and good intentions. The same thing that’s happening in my life, I suppose.

I can’t continue aborting things before I give them a chance because I’m afraid they won’t turn okay. Especially my dreams and goals. Maybe it’ll be okay and maybe it won’t. I have to get over that. Breaking the bird’s neck isn’t working either. What have I got to lose?