Somewhat...

it's not
that the world hasn't changed.
Or that things aren't better,
because they are, somewhat.

But
the other day Dad and I were
talking politics, and Mom was
listening,
and after he went on about money
and how the world can't be fixed
without it, and lies and broken promises;
and I went on about unfairness,
and how politicians portray
women and act like women
are obstacles or less than
people; and Dad countered
with business and economy and
encouraging job growth would give
women power and money, and
I said it still didn't outweigh the
hate...
After that, when Mom caught
my eye and then grimaced and
with a sad voice said, "I never
thought I'd hear my daughter
fighting the exact same battles
I fought at her age," that was when
I knew
that darkness of soul doesn't leave
this Earth quietly, or quickly
but lingers long past its welcome.

And I'll remember, when my
daughters fight the same fight I
argue today--I'll remember that
no one told me I had to be a secretary
or that I shouldn't bother with college--
I'll remember that Dad married Mom
on purpose; that he helped teach me
to trust myself, to earn for myself,
to learn my own mind, and to make
my own world mine; I'll remember
things are better, but
at the same time, they're not fixed,
and probably won't be in a lifetime,
and that doesn't mean I've failed,
only that the world has, just a little,
just as it's also won, just a little.

Runny frosting and crumby cake

Drips of frosting
roll down the cracks
in lemon cake and pool
on the plate beneath. My
spatula scrapes the skin off
the cake, but the sweet lemon
taste can't be ruined by crumbs,
and if it looks a little worn, it's still
the loveliest taste.

After a restless night

One of those mornings
where dreams still crawl across the backs
of my eyelids and gravity sits too high
up my chest--
When sleep was fitful and clingy, and
morning came too early, taunting in her
bloody, slow approach, with her rays
of first light gleaming slowly over a horizon
I'd rather not have seen, and her colors
hidden by a snatch of last-minute sleep
that was in turn obscured by the buzzing phone.
One of those mornings.
I creep along in traffic with a million other
ants heading to our respective hills, and
feel the weight of too-short sleep in my arms,
at the back of my head, in my stomach floating
too close to the back of my throat in the shade
of the trees that line the highway. But then
the road bends, and the trees part. A slice
of early light slips through, and trickles up
my arm to wash my face of early shadows,
pouring warmth along my cheekbone.
One of those mornings, but now I think
I'm okay.

Raindrops, Whiskers, Kettles and Mittens

I'm holding a sweet in my hand--a chocolate
square, with salt and caramel, wrapped in
dark, dark blue foil. I hold it behind my back,
scooting into the room on tiptoe feet, and
wrap my arms around your waist, opening
my hand so you see the chocolate in my
palm. You turn from digging through your bag
and grin, and rip it open (it takes three tries
to get it fully free) and break the piece of
chocolate into two, munching on one half,
feeding me the other.

You probably don't think much of it,
because we do this all the time, but it's
one of my favorite things, to bring you
a piece of chocolate, and earn a smile
in return. Plus getting half the chocolate
is a nice bonus, too. And soon we'll watch
our favorite cartoons, and I'll put my
head on your chest and hear your
heartbeat, the taste of chocolate
lingering on my tongue, and think
I'm pretty happy doing that, too.

And then you beat me into the water.

I'm watching the cloud scoot by;
behind it an overcast sky pushes
slowly the other way. The grey
over lighter grey
seems awkward and dark above
the lake, out of context compared
to the sun-scarred planks under
my bare toes. You'd think I'd want
to go in before I got wet, but why?
I came to swim, and the lake isn't
getting any dryer because the sky
is a little wet.

As long as there's no thunder,
I'll slip into the water and tug myself
into place in the inner tube, letting
my head fall back against the plastic
plumped with fifteen minutes of
near-hyperventilating breathing
interspersed with long, slow, deep
breaths to keep myself not dizzy.
My toes will drift along the silky, silty
mud of the lake bottom, tiny clam
shells half-buried, until I dig them
out absently. Or I'll feel the slimy
pull of weeds, the water fronds that
clog the bottom from four feet deep
to the middle of the lake--they're
why nobody ever swims alone.

I'm in my tube. No worries. You
don't have to come in; just watch
from the dock as I swim, sheltered
under the gazebo. You don't have
to get wet.
Unless you want to.

One evening after work

Sitting in the front seat of the car
with the door open and my feet in the grass,
petrichor tells me to look to the sky
and finally I notice the clouds, leaking.
It's just one of those days, really,
where sitting in the car is easier than
getting out and going inside, where
sleepiness weighs on well-slept limbs
and the difference between sunshine and grey
is only the unnoticed lack of blindness
from the rear view mirror on the drive home.

The most lovely of toys

Despite the hair falling out,
rubbed thin from countless years,
and the scars from a hundred surgeries,
none well-healed or invisible,
she's the first to be hugged.

She treasures her scars,
rushes into the hands
that lead to her end,
because that's where she finds
her soul--made from the pieces
of soul that children give her
as they grow. Already she has
much of mine, seeds planted;
they'll add theirs and by the
time she's laid to rest in the
wastebasket, she'll have
a soul like no other's, built
from the seeds of every heart
poured into hers.

Front Page

There's a newspaper on the sidetable.
We don't read it. Instead, we laugh.
You pass me the video-game controller
and I drop off a cliff, step into enemy fire,
dance with a koopa, trap myself between
two kinds of death and find a third,
and then settle down to kill the Big Bad.

Someone shared me a YouTube link
of all that's wrong with the world; a
horrible tragedy that we really should
know about. I read the headline and
close it. And then you start slicing tofu
while I hug you from behind, keeping
my fingers clear of your knife, with
the ground pork sitting nearby your
only cutting board (I must get you
another one.)

It's just that the good things are so small-seeming
and never make the front page, or
get on the news. So I can't read the
news without crying, and when you're
with me I feel like smiling, so I'm afraid
that if I ruin that smile by reading news
I'll become accustomed to crying instead;
there is so much good in the world, that
I think it should be my headline, my day's
front page--
starting with you.

I can read the rest later.

Sky kiss

Laying on my back I admire
the grey-cotton veil that
shields a tiny circle made of
white-fire-gold.

I can't watch for long but sometimes
the sky offers that fleeting glimpse of
immortality and perfection--things that
burn--
I can't bring myself to look away until
the last possible second, when the
just-right cloud drifts just
too far.

My eyes close and the world turns
cherry-gold
behind my eyelids, as she steps away
from her veils and kisses my cheeks.
I can't bear even this soft touch for
long; I'm too pale and half an hour
will sear me pink and sore.

But sometimes the blue sky
calls to me, and I lay on my back
in itchy grass, with no regrets
for the thousand tiny bug bites
or the strange pokes of leaves--
just for the brush of a
sky-kiss on my cheeks.

Yearning for blueberry muffins

Three blueberries sit on the branches,
a bit under-ripe.
I think about the best time to pick them
and wonder if we can go berrying tomorrow
but they won't be ready yet, and besides, they're
just the first ones to come out. Better to wait until
the sun has driven them past the edible point,
when their cousins have come out, and they
themselves have swollen to blue perfection,
then more, until they nearly split their skins
and then deflate like balloons with a tiny,
tiny hole near the tie.

Sometimes I think blueberries are filled
not with juice and plant flesh but rather
with sunlight, pure and unadulterated,
and if they go unchecked or unpicked
too long they look as if they'll surely burst.
The deflation is always a surprise, but
half the time the birds get them before
they can even get there. And even the
slightly-sour blueberries taste sweet;
I think it's all that concentrated sunshine
that pops out when cooked with sugar,
and coats everything around them.

Only, the first berries
always have to swell and wither
if you want most of the berries you
collect to be sweet and delicious. A
little wasted sunshine
is the price of summer-long sweetness.
Besides, it's hardly right to feast
until the bug spray can dissuade
the ticks from coming to feast, too.

Cold pizza

There's something indulgent about cold pizza.

Cold congealed cheese on the tongue backs up against spicy italian sausage, or else peppery pepperoni, or just tart tomato. It lingers on the tongue, all spice and chill, and draws you in deeper, holding the flavors all the longer, despite the compression of the scent that supposedly depresses taste--but somehow doesn't.

Not much like the hot, soft texture of a fresh pizza. The cheese is liquid goo when it's fresh, a pudding-like consistency when mixed with the crispy dough.

But the fresh version lacks the memories, I think, that make the cold pizza refreshing. Who hasn't sat on the sofa on a lazy morning, watching TV and nomming a leftover slice, still lingering on the memories of the friends and company from the night before? There is, too, the delightful naughtiness of the extra five minutes, even on busy workdays, in the morning from time not spent preparing cereal and making sure the milk is back in the fridge. Morning time is such a premium that even one minute is precious, let alone a few. Three extra seconds of staring out at the trees bathed in morning light, wishing you stand in them, and pass by the day--those three seconds stick with you all day, popping out of the desk when you least expect.

Maybe it's just me. But I find that pizza cold is almost preferable to pizza hot. Just shy thereof, I suppose, because day-afters are only slightly less lovely than day-ofs, with all the memories plus quiet, and the only thing lacking is the ability to bring in that one last point you wouldn't have remembered to add anyway. Still, things fresh are better, inherently, than things aged (unless they're supposed to be aged, like beef or wine or cheese); good times are best fresh, and slightly dulled with age, no matter how slight the passage of night.

Communal fruit bowl

Something about oranges
appeals to me today. I don't much feel like
having a banana or an apricot
(although the apricots are supposed to be
really sweet this time of year).

Taking out a sweet orange,
I push a knife through pulp and skin to split it
into six perfect (okay, unequal)
sections, that I then pop one-by-one into my
mouth, savoring each juicy bite.

Felix walks in and tells me I
shouldn't be eating oranges, because although the team
all chipped in, I'm only allowed
apples, because I said I wanted some on hand and they're
from my home state. Obviously.

So because he's watching, I take
an apricot and bite into it, and find they're really
quite sweet indeed, and juicy, and
the drips running down my chin soak into my shirt,
which is the best way to eat apricots.

Turns out I'm in an apricot mood
after all--it's delicious. I give him an apple,
which he doesn't eat, poor sap;
this year's Pink Ladies are super-sweet, too,
and I'll eat it later, when I feel like it.