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and then Calliope walked out the walls carrying Circe’s storm in her arms.

“girl, you said you were writing a love story.”

I’ve never felt this much,
I begin again
to enter my body
to finish the story,
the fugue now over
and not slated to start again.
the mania quelled to a dull
buzz when I drink my morning
coffee but never more and the
deluded percussion storm
fading.
I spent years wandering
capes and cliffs and caverns
and never setting foot on
any ground nearby.
if you asked me where I was,
stopped me on a street corner,
I would blink my big owl
eyes as if I just woke up,
not be able to answer fast enough,
you’d be alarmed to find out
I’m local.
you can live anywhere
as long as its not in your body.
even Philadelphia, even
Kensington, the first neighborhood
I arrived to.
I tattooed her name
on my arm to never
forget where I came from;
the city that  unsheathed
me to beat me with it’s
black ice and corners.
she turns to me again and
says, I implore you,
for me, do you like
warnings or do
you like to drown?

and feeling myself a
smirking fox,
traipse the town in
pink chiffon, I spit on the
floor and I say:
I don’t know
why don’t you just
fucking surprise
me?

“a thinking woman sleeps with monsters.”

–adrienne rich

i wrote those poems on a plane and cried the entire flight. it took a lot out of me and deviated wildly from my plan. i never finish anything, I say to you, that’s not what it’s about.

when I am old, I want to read these things and remember, I have loved.

It is want

and memory that

drive my hand. I had a

feeling once.

I’d like to get it back.

My friends know not to mention

the straws. If they find one on their apartment floor,

they merely pick it up,

hand it back or save it for me.

later when I greet them with a hug, they point to the basket on the end table in case I forgot one or dropped it on the walk over.

I fish a blue one out of my jeans and we begin the catch up.

and they know not to mention it if I eat something with eggs in it and then return to my scrupulous investigation of ingredients at restaurants. this is normal deviation from my ethics out of either convenience or fatigue. they know not to mention my tears when they ask how my father is or to try to embrace me while I’m crying.

I  need the floor to crawl around on, not the bundle. not the restriction that touch bares. let me sit in silence and twist the plastic in my fingers like a baby blanket. Let me be the neglected child in your foyer. let me finish screeching. there is no bottle.

they sit and wait for me to finish, watching my hand reach in want, in memory of the way the sun hit my shoulders one day. but more than that, it’s the way I told my mom I didn’t want to keep Pepper’s dog brush and now cry in therapy, remembering how she laid in my bed every time I went away for more than a day or met me at the bus stop or came to my room, busting open the door. The guilt of turning twelve and denying her attention, suddenly self obsessed, hiding in my room and saying “Go, Pepper.”. I said, “I should have kept the fucking dog brush” and I turn away, embarrassed at this sudden admittance of remorse over something so menial, or how attached I am to animals, something childish about grieving your dog or sleeping with your cats every night. something childish in attachment to pets and things and memory. I spent days of my life watching the metal touch the black fur and I hate myself so much all I think about is the times I turned her away. it’s the same poem.

i’ve heard it said before and I have yet to be proven wrong: it’s the same poem. it’s always the same poem.  and people say not to live in the past so I burned all the pictures. it’s the same poem. the way we try to get our memories back. the way I insist we throw everything out, it’s always the same poem. the way our garage fell in on itself and took all of our grade school memories, the large painting of my mother, every single collected Christmas decoration since my brother was born, my yearbooks.  it’s the same fucking poem, I should have kept the dog brush.

my childhood cat lived to be 21 and rubbed her face against my face when I visited her. I believed she had lost some feeling in other places. she loved being outside, you couldn’t keep her in.  by the end, she was so skinny and her fur had fallen out. but she was loved at 21. her name was Fancy. I named her after Fancy Feast when I was five and I loved her even though she scratched my best friend every time she visited and sometimes hissed and sometimes attacked my ankles. someone called animal control on her and they stole her from my front yard to put her down. she would have lived another year of rubbing my face every time I came home. it was the way she felt me, remembered the five year old that named her. I remember everything: 

the way she sat for hours on the dining room table to watch candles dance, sat in wrapping paper, shoeboxes, laid in the street yet always had the sense to move when cars drove down the court. how she slept at the foot of my bed for years on repeat.how my dad said she was in his van once and he had to turn around to drop her off back home on his way to work. sneaking through an open window, she was crouched in the back. the same thing happened to my partner when he left his windows open. and I told my mom she could throw the dog brush away as I had no dog now, it had no use, it’s the same poem. grief; I remember everything.

you write until there’s nothing left to mull over, to pluck out or inspect. util your hereditary dementia begins, until there’s nothing left to burn or steal from someone’s front yard to put down like it was yours to take. like she wouldn’t have lived another year of greeting me, my secret wish I say to pets out loud: I hope you live forever and I squeeze their neck and

I remember everything.

“Grief pt 3”

No one embraces me when I cry. It is not allowed. And what I mostly try not to talk about is anything to do with home.

I am 34 and cannot remember a single time I collapsed in someone’s arms the way I watched my one year old goddaughter allow herself, snot-nosed and shrieking and red, reaching for the door after her mother left for work, to be sheltered in mine. To be buried in my knit black sweater her uncle later picked gluten-free apple cookie crumbs out of.  How I don’t want to wash that smell off: baby wipes or something light like vanilla but not manufactured, calming that way, or like lilac. That inexplicably pleasant aroma that babies have. Her allowance of me; being carried and twirled around the apartment in rapture. Me, dizzy but stronger than I thought. Her thirty pounds a feather. Her leopard footed pajamas.  Mouth doused in watermelon juice. Me, turning on the player piano so she can bob to the euphonic, lyricless Hotel California. The way she looked at me with a sudden streak of joy as I began to sing, reached those sticky fruit fingers to my lips, beckoning them to continue. A stranger that appeared in the bed next to her in the middle of the night, all black, tall and humming.

Is it the bosom I miss or the way the sky looked the day I chase; the day the sun hit my shoulders the first day of summer vacation ? I have not been carried to bed. I have not been shielded. I have not been kissed all over the face. I will not allow it.

As my goddaughter mimicked my notes back to me, doing her best to capture the correct inflection, I began to tell her my name. She first tapped my teeth and I showed them for once. They are brand new porcelain. She will never see the molars stained, or the way I closed my lips on instinct when someone got too close to my face. She will not see me laugh with a hand in front. She will see the brIghtness of each one, test its durability as she places her plastic teething ring inside my mouth so i can show her how to bite. “I’m the alligator,” is one of the first things I say, Then the way I showed her how to say this alligator’s name.

 The way I whispered it to her the first time, so every time she said it again, it came out a muted  “sah.” A whisper back. “Sah.” My name is Sarah, I whispered looking her in her long eyelashed eyes. Never full volume, a whisper.  But correctly and immediately repeated. “Sah.” The way I kissed her ears and told her that I met her in a dream before she was born.  Before laughing hysterically, I felt her pause, gaze back at me, drool on my cheek. I felt the grass on my feet as I ran outside with my summer reading list after first grade. Me. being the first in the class to learn how to read in Kindergarten, my teacher applauding me, overhearing me silently reading an entire book aloud to myself during free play. I always chose the reading section during free play. Then being marched across the hall and forced to read a book in front of all the first graders, now me, diligent in my studies. My mom cleaning the blinds. She was always around in a way. The smell of bleach and the sound of the screen door as she walked into the back yard, the sun hit my shoulders and my goddaughter whispered “sah” back to me, forgetting the shut front door and I felt her fingers press my neck, the memory form and the grief of it passing as she slid back to the floor to pick up her plastic guitar. As I let myself fall on the plane ride home. Hood off.

I’ve mailed her letters every few months since she was born. Sending her a stuffed fox, stuffed shark, lucky stone, a postcard with an explanation of sand dollars just in case they go extinct before she touches one.

The sudden wish to be hers and also blushed and squalling in someone’s arms on someone’s floor, probably telling them about the way my father taught me how to dance to The Rolling Stones or how I was wrong. About most of it. Returning to my earlier journals, always sparkling with a forgotten dream repeated for three years straight and then buried deep. My father’s dentured smile. “You don’t want to be like me, Sar.” That’s how he said it. “Sar.” He called me “Sar.” These things hurt later, never now.  “Take care of your teeth.” My father’s note to me after graduation about how proud he was of me that I threw away in ire. We subsist on removal of anything that invokes the way he used to move in front of the stereo, hands out to me, tall glass of Wild Irish Rose on the dining room table, the smell of smoke “Come on Sar, dance with me.” The note he gave me before I moved to Colorado, gone and he’s only ever written me two and my old journals: “I really want a daughter” repeated in the margins. The way he hugged me in tears telling me he would miss me. Did you forget you didn’t believe him?

I am eight days late and openly crying on an airplane. Not the whisper of it but the full volume roll. Not an eruption but more than four rolling tears, kind of a loose sob. if anyone touched me, I would turn and they would see me unperformed: not made up or plucked, tear streaked, unvaulted and the kick of it,  hoping to be carrying the world’s next bastard.

 everything about me

ancient but my teeth,

now singing. 

they are proud;

showing, shiny and

sharpened and strong

like screaming daughters.

“The alligator”

You don’t insult your parents and you don’t tell them things that would frighten them. You visit every two months and stay in your dead brothers room even though it haunts you and you don’t care about the rats or mold or cockroaches or snakes or the way the bathroom sink doesn’t work or the  missing garage or anything and when you announce your pregnancy, you do it with pride. Ask your dad to name the baby. Ask your mom to give the middle name. There is no father and you have two cats and a small backyard and lots of friends and a nice fat savings account. There is no wedding and no husband and the likelihood there ever will be is decreasing.

You didn’t mean for this happen but you go through with it, being a daughter. Being stronger than the dread they bring me. Being wrong about some things but right about this. You finger the black cohosh and decide to name her something with some bark.

You remember everything. The intrusive thought: you only get pregnant once. The psychic asking who the little girl is. The psychic asking if you’ve ever had a miscarriage. The psychic asking about your  daughter. Finger the anise and name her with teeth. There’s the given names from your parents and then your special name for her; the thing that cuts its way out of you. The Name that called to you from the closet and half etched itself onto your tricep. Your secret name.

“You are my only daughter.” And then you fill the tub with the rose and lavender, and let your body soak. You’ve never been particularly decisive. And it’s not with malice decisions are made. There’s investment and aging and desirability. Financial strain. Your business to consider. You’ll be hung for this series and you write it anyway.  You are stronger than the way they judge you. You carve her name onto a stick and throw it in the cohosh tea. Drink the cohosh tea. Feel her drool hit your cheeks. The way you sang her name, the way you watched her take her first steps towards you and the way you beamed with pride, telling everyone of your goddaughter. The way she laughed and danced any time you turned on music. You only get pregnant once. Did you have a miscarriage? Who is the little girl?

 You’ve never been decisive. Be easy on yourself.  And do not fight the urge to scream when you first see the water turn pink. The way you rub your face into your cats fur and begin the long wail.  Let them down easy. Something about how not all pregnancies take. Did you have a miscarriage? Do not resist the urge to scream, red faced and reaching.  Touch your cats fur and now know the difference. You only get pregnant once.

“grief part 4”

the people that say you can raise a daughter
on your own have never tried.

I am sure her chest cracked
leaving my grandmother
in pink fleece and white socks
on the porch of a house like
that, the way I am sure she
longed for him still, and
without a reminder.
later, she will pull
a light green pacifier from her
bathrobe
and tell a worried neighbor;
her, breath of bourbon
and donuts and her hair
falling out in clumps,
the way the neighbor cleaned
the shower drain,
in her native language asking
her if she had been babysitting.

the mother smart,
ripped it from the baby’s mouth
so she’d wail and the door
would open and they’d see her
swaddled on the bare concrete:
her only daughter,
chilled and panicked.

“Black cohosh (redone)” or “grief pt 5”

it’s all the same poem;
me losing something
and later,  not
remembering anything
as I fall into the dementia
and I think,
some things are hereditary
and some things are a wash
before they arrive.

I wish I would have saved
my dead dog’s hair brush,
my dead cat’s mouse,
some pictures of my friends,
my childhood house
before it crumbled from
the moisture, the squirrels,
the rats and us;
wish I saved anything to
do with us,
I think as I erase
our conversation.
when i’m old I want to be
confused about what shook me
most.

you end up counting pennies
at the end,
penurious again
wrapped in pewter
mansion.   you’re lost
in a giant house
with a giant yard
by a giant lake you
swear contains an alligator,
a few dogs and cats,
a room lined with books,
a nurse to remind you not
to eat your sweater
and dreams of sons,
or daughters if they’ll have
me, and us. trying to
remember us. 

“Grief part 7”