The Heat of a Real Friend

Some friends grow cold like winter,
rain frozen on eaves,
I easily reach up and snap it
and feel the ache as it melts in my hand.

We risk a cold wind in our bones
every time we share a smile
or a cry, for the warmth created
by the heat of a real friend.

Slow

A tree in stillness,
bowing over me, fatherly
The hairs on the back of my neck 
stand in worship.

Waiting, instead of
expecting. 

{There's a difference.}

A bed of warm grass
beneath these redwoods 
tickles my back.

The birds lift their voices for me,
and then the rocks,
and then the sky.

Phone Calls with My Mom

When I got older and we lived on opposite coasts, phone calls with my mom were fun.
We giggled like girls, and clung to the receiver.

Until the day she put the phone down and got lost.
I heard her in the background searching for me,
searching for me 2000 miles away,
praying she would find the receiver
and pick it up.

Love

Lying in a hospital bed a world away from reality,
I whisper my mother’s life into her ear.
I fold like a child against her frail body
and silently inhale her love back into me.
I comb her white hair with my fingers,
memorizing her delicate features.
She moans.

Her voice, my cocoon.

Hope

Born with a lily white thumb,
I wasn’t drawn organically to the garden.
Housewarming plants have been given to me
with sideward glances and strained expressions,
as if sacrificing something to the altar.

Yet, as I've aged and grown into my own home,
I've filled the yard with new ambition.
I held my breath all season, turning corners
in hopes of finding a bright white bloom
on my sweet gardenia bush.
But it's not bloomed a single flower.

"Why would it?" I thought.
I know nothing more about calling a blossom forth
than I know about raising children.
And there—as they say—is the rub.

I raised my fist, my voice, my lily white womb
and sank back into the couch staring restlessly at my hands,
grief rising in my throat, and looked out the window for an exit.

And out there
on my gardenia bush
was its first
white
blossom,
shining at me

like hope.

The Growth

You couldn’t see it from across the street
where she waved you over from the porch.
Inside was lunch and everything delicious.
We all laughed at the sounds our sticky summer skin made
moving on her plastic covered furniture

It was when she leaned in to kiss you that you saw it,
coming for you like a radish upon her rumpled
red
mouth.

Middle-aged and Bountiful

I can see how radiant their skin is,
how smooth the bodies they call fat.
I watch as they wriggle themselves into a pretzel,
without a single moan.

And I, middle-aged and bountiful—
can’t squat at the Crisper anymore, digging for veggies,
without great pains to rise, and sometimes softly falling back
onto the kitchen floor, cats sniffing at me.

I used to be a pretzel, wriggled,
salty and crisp,
but now I sit twisted
and a little doughy.