The Poetry Marathon

She has not had to deal with me in a whole half a year. She eats what she wants, when she wants, usually cookies, too much coffee, and too little water. She takes, or doesn’t take, her medicines as she remembers or doesn’t remember. If she sleeps, it can now be in her chair in the living room. She doesn’t have to bathe. If her bills go late, they call. She is back to paying late fees, but she doesn’t have to deal with me… cleaning her clothes, or the house, or making her wash herself, or bothering her with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with me piling her pills into her hand and waiting for her to take them, with reminding her to drink her water so she doesn’t end up back in the hospital like when she was so very sick, and I had to come care for her 6 months ago. She doesn’t have to deal with me kissing her forehead every night, and telling her I love her…

She hates to be told I love you. She says, “I don’t want to feel like I have to say it back.” I say, “You don’t. I know.” She says, “I know, too, so stop saying it.” I say, ” Just in case an airplane hits my side of the house while we are sleeping…” She says, “I’m not gonna sleep tonight, so we are okay.” I kiss her on the forehead again, tell her I love her. She tells me she loves me, too, and asks if I will being her cookies. I say, “No, but hoe about peanut butter toast and tea?” She snorts, “I’d rather have the cookies, but okay.” I bring her toast and tea, tell her I love her for a third time because I am going to lie down. She rolls her eyes like a teenager, “Leave your door open?”  “Always, Mom.”

Twenty minutes, and she calls for me to help her to the bathroom. Twenty more, and she is back in her chair, having scoffed at the notion of her going to bed. This will happen in another twenty minutes. I offer her water, a kiss… a new I love you. She doean’t understand that all three of those things need to be fresh at all times when you reach her age. She is quiet…

But, shw doesn’t have to deal with me anymore, hasn’t had to in 6 months, no dealing with me making protest signs on her living room floor, or organizing marches and brainstorming gatherings to try and save baby humans from a government takeover. She doesn’thave to see me, a physical reminder, a product of her once compassionate, humanistic parenting.

She doesn’t have to be reminded of the indifference and apathy that fills her heart now.

There is no voice of reason, or sanity, or logic in her home now, keeping her well and sound. She has opted out of me, in preference of one more likely to give the cookies without a thought… and the salty trade off ian’t so bad. The trade off for not having a heathen like myself hold her to the tenets of well being and kindness to herself and others is actually a glorious beholding.

She can preach to the people on Jerry Springer reruns all night long now, and holler down the hallway to my sister on her knees in the bathroom, smoking drugs, praising jesus, and not hearing her calls at all. She will never once have to be reminded that there are many beautiful things about herself that she has forgotten… those same many things she hates to see come out in me… her antichrist, that she might remember if she picked up just one of those 7 dust covered bibles sitting on the table next to that chair of hers.

He gifted his skateboards, boogie boards, and surfboard to his friends. He made hard choices over what to keep, what to take, what to give away, swallowing hard, often, in his new 12 year old throat. He packed and repacked and waded through his list of lasts until they were all scribbled out… last swim, last surf, last bike ride, last hike, last stream cliff dive, last beach fire, last goodbye to friends, last sunset, last aloha oe

He made hard decisions to turn his face to the window during take off, to hide his brand new 12 year old heavy tears from my old grandmother ones.

Tiniest bursting, expanding our Universe with pure love and joy

gingerborn toehead, your cottony perfection redefined angels

…and then you were gone. I never held you, but I cleaned away your blood.

Oranges always remind me of you, oranges and furry California wild sage.

and free range venison, the kind that tastes like it lived on a steady diet of furry, California wild sage, and oranges.

and yellow anything, but particularly yellow circles like the ones you studied for work, like the enormous suns clearing our Autumn skies when Mom would keep is all busy back at camp (year after year after year of my life) while you booted through unpathed patches of oaks, your field gear speaking its secrets in soft muffled rustle, your footsteps completely silent, your rifles strapped to your back, oranges and nuts and 2 sandwiches made by your lover pushed into pockets, and the faint swish of water in your canteens- 1 tin, 1 plastic, and the back of your camo’d head never looking back at us, but only forward through the brush to find a deer that had lived on a steady diet of furry California wild sage, bring it back to camp, and fill our freezer for the year, year after year after year.

Your last Autumn here with us, you brought no deer. You filled no freezer. You said that the sun was so bright, and the buck so magnificent, you could not bring yourself to shoot him. You took a photo of him instead, sat back, pulled a sprig of pungent sage from your hair, peeled an orange from the pocket of the field jacket in your lap, and let the bold yellow sun have its sky.

You filled a hole for her when he was gone, a giant, babysized hole.

You filled a hole again for her when her only other he was gone, a lifesize, sinking hole of infinite silence.

But, when the shot came, and it was you who was gone, no sized replacement, no volume of fill in the stillness could ease her wringing ears, her tremorhands. No amount of anything elseness could steady her tattered, waning footsteps.

You were her fill in all the blanks, her rejoice over spilled milk soaking up the cracks. You were the sounds in the house, the warm little body that snuck into her bed at night for snuggles, the reminder that for all she has lost, she was still findable, she was found.

She shutters now, alone in her chair, in the new silence you left. She closes her eyes for the eternal fall into the last hole she will know… without you.

You and he alone, a loaded gun between you. We all died that day.

She took her hands off you. Someone told me it’s like Sophie’s Choice. I never saw that. Someone else told me not to. I won’t be able to hand…le it, get my heart over it. Don’t. So, I didn’t. I am good like that about warnings, when they come. But, this came warningless… blind… blindly… blindingly, this, her taking her hands off you. No one said don’t look. No one said don’t watch. So, I looked, and I watched, and now it’s like Sophie’s Choice, and I don’t completely know what that means (because I didn’t) but now I have to…

find a way to find out what they will name you.