The Poetry Marathon

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How many stars had

to perish for us to be

intertwined bodies?

I Have Made Mistake But You Weren’t One

Every scroll through my camera roll

shows me that stark amber circle hugging hazel eyes barely clinging to life.

Every photo is full of

mossy greens, grey blues that rival the North Atlantic, and honey browns.

The beauty is there, it can’t be missed, but the life is missing.

Smiles plastered on your face say more about unhappiness than anything else.

I have made mistakes but you weren’t one.

You survived 29 years stuffed in one closet or another.

Each one filled with ill fitting outfits of expectations.

You tried and tried and tried to make them fit.

You knew every mistake,

every piece of clothing that wasn’t you,

would bring you to me.

I have made mistake but the time I spent as you wasn’t one.

Bricks

Everything will be

alright with you by my side.

We can share our bricks.

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Being naked with you was

the least intimate thing we could do.

My bare skin covered in our sweat

was a shield for my heart and spirit.

There was nothing you could do to my body

that would hurt me more than anyone else had.

My secretly fragile skin is my only shield.

I might not have been ready to bare my soul

but you were never worthy of it.

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I broke my own heart to love you.

Attempted to make a collage of a new heart.

One part me to three parts who I think you want me to be.

Secure all the pieces together with glue and tape and hope.

Every ounce of trust I had in you when I handed you my creation

splinters when I see myself in your trashcan.

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I experience what other people call ‘god’ in a different way.

God is tucked away in the mundane.

They shine through every inch of nature’s beauty that I see every day.

God will dance from start to star

as my eyes adjust to the night sky.

One star turns to 10 turns to 100 to whole galaxies of stars.

God whispers secrets into the cool air

of the first spring day I open all the windows in my home.

Fresh air becomes part of every corner.

I tell the world my secrets while protected

by the silence of a fresh two feet of snow.

The silence of the world around me is loud enough to

drown out my words as my breath meets the December air.

Mushrooms making their home on fallen trees gain sustenance

from feeding the cycle of life and death.

I make sure to thank God for the satiation of

gulps of water when I wake up at 3am.

How can you not see God in tree canopies?

We give them gifts of carbon dioxide from our lungs and

they say ‘thank you’ with oxygen from theirs.

The glimmer of true happiness in someone’s eyes

and the rare sightings of the Aurora Borealis from my hometown

tie for the biggest miracles I’ve seen performed.

Tides kiss the shore at the direction of the moon-

How can that not be the Divine?

My prayers look like leaving flowers where I find them

purely because they are beautiful and someone else needs to see the beauty.

Religious texts are composed of

every sunrise I have not seen.

I will never see every form God takes but I am going to try.

Vows (will insert a number later when I can count how many vows I have written)

From now until our obituary we will have each other.

In sickeness and in health,

tied together as one.

I will rest when we are tired.

Even if our head cannot meet a pillow,

we will pause together.

I will figure out how to get us nourishment

when we aren’t able to tolerate the concept of food.

From now until our obituary we will have each other.

In sickness and in health and in sickness,

tied together as one.

When you tell me to brace our body,

I will wear the brace and someday I will learn to not question you.

You pick our mobility aids,

I will withhold society’s judgement.

From now until our obituary we will have each other.

In sickness and in sickness,

tied together as one.

I will hold your hand as we wait for test results.

Make room for each of us to grieve.

And make room for each of us to celebrate.

Most of all,

I vow to keep updating as we go.

One set of vows can’t cover our lifetime of growing and changing together.

CW: Alcoholism, substance abuse. addiction

For Jack Daniels

There was a time I would try to drink myself sober.

Jack Daniels was a mistress that everyone knew I had-

captivating me as soon as my tongue tasted him.

A glass bottle full of magic wishes

charming me into spending $38 on a shot in Stockholm

while too drunk to remember he had to cross the ocean to be with me.

Daring me to call an ex while daring him to do the same.

Encouraging us to cry to each other about our break up and my phone in a snowbank.

Sinatra Select Blend showed me the smoothest jack I had ever known.

Hearing him call out for me while my ex-husband

poured what was left of him down the drain to spite me.
Jack could keep me enthralled any night of the week.

Being given €3 on a shot of his sweet honey from

the English National Soccer team in a basement bar in Amsterdam.

A handle of Jack attached to my hip

for every house party I attended in college.

Jack will forever be the straightest relationship I have ever had.

He even followed me on my honeymoon in Mexico

not able to be without my mistress for any length of time.

Now I drink myself sober with Gatorade;

No longer seeing Jack Daniels.

He keeps tempting me to come back with his sirens song.

Trying to remind me of the good times we shared that were never good for me.

CW: Eugenics, June 2022 current events but not named specifically

Catching up on the news means:

relearning that justice doesn’t exist

and that people don’t learn.

I was born to be:

a canary in a coal mine;

the PSA on who you aren’t supposed to be;

a danger to be warned about.

I exist so you have ghost stories. A boogeyman.

Our screams covered by the sounds of the ocean

as we scream from our shipwreck.

You cannot get your rights without our help so do not leave us behind.

CW: Brain/head injury

I need to forgive me for what I forget

as my brain has been scrambled 12 too many times.

Bruising the several pounds of flacid bacon inside my skull

was not my plan but here we are.

The electric signals don’t flow quite right.

Words and ideas becoming harder and harder to rescue from the fog.

There’s no lighthouse inside my head to guide my way.

I will forgive me for what I forgot.