Sparkling and paint-splattered, Saturday oversleeps turning into her pillow Pillow soft Sunday urns for another day and a trenta iced coffee Coffee carries Monday to work in a fireman’s hold Holding her promise Tuesday clings to the edge Edging from the brink Wednesday throws her leg over the hump Humpback chest Thursday breaks open spilling pages free Freed Friday shimmies down a fire escape with handfuls of sequins
How much we love each other An anniversary surprise Pictured Rocks Your gift to me despite your fear of heights Let me take your photo Back up you say Take it all in from First date to first grand baby That woman just one of many That woman you talk to late into the nights she is seconds Our love is decades Cool sandstone heavy No one understands How much I love you In this our marriage Indian summer What we have weathered Ribbons of iron ore red, copper green, and limonite revel Our love is stone polished Back up a little more baby you say You send me to the edge I’d go to the edge for us
My knee the one that always gives me troubles gives out I stumble back My hand that has reached for yours In the dark When I’m afraid For years stretches out now I reach, you run You kick, I drop
Like a stone Tumbling to the pebbled shore far below No one understands
Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas mornings Watching screamers and starbursts late into the night Easter baskets and homemade firemen costumes Plastic t-Rexes and spaceships built with blocks bright
Hollering and hollowed promises deck these halls Waiting half the night for him to com through that door Photos laughing in a stack of photo albums Of a happy family that doesn’t exist anymore
Once upon a time Damsels in distress A tower among the clouds The hero on a quest True love’s kiss In the dark a chittering of evil
Tell one more please Bedtime is princesses and knights Man eating giants and question filled trolls Fluffy stuffed bears and race car comforters Not for me My dreams were fed on other stories
Sharp knives and trip wires Snap of a branch Reading the signs How not to be seen Tracking legends urban Remember there is always one in the chamber
Concrete pillows and a blanket of moonlight The city’s glittering throat offered up to my touch Tracking ghosts, hunting hunters Armed with a backpack of wooden stakes Thwack! Even the dead tell stories.
Knowing you’d slip beyond the horizon, Still you cast your net for my silvery heart That laughed at romance’s silly clichés. A spy in the house of love Feet planted in the shifted sand, I was. How could you trick me with an unblemished shore? You held me under ceaseless waves Naked I washed upon our shoals, Driven and tossed
Find me
Find me
Driven and tossed Naked I washed upon our shoals. You held me under your ceaseless waves. How could you trick me with an unblemished shore? Feet planted on the shifted sand, I was A spy in the house of love That laughed at romance’s silly clichés. Still you cast your net for my silvery heart Knowing you’d slip beyond the horizon
Tell me bout the children Are the girls okay Let little Lucy know I would sew her Spring Fling gown if I could I wanted to rosebud pink with Swiss dots Spaghetti straps No don’t bring them here I want them to remember Meemaw like I was Like I’m supposed to be Don’t ask how I’m doin’
Did Bobby and Jack cover the hay From the summer rains Daddy’s gonna be mad if—that’s right some days it’s like he’s still here Even if you don’t love somebody They are still yours You are still theirs I never had a say in what happened to me Like an old tree growing with a fence You can’t break them part Without one being cut Don’t ask me about your father
Even in here I can smell the harvest It’s a warm sweetish smell Daddy and me would’ve been forty years Come October He done what he did And I never asked questions He’d slap me into next week if I did It’s not fair they blame me for what he done You know I would never hurt nobody What could I have done
My seed catalogs came today I turned the thin pages half the night Busting with Choices The papers say I should’ve known so many farm hands coming and going Always leaving their things behind Us never paying salaries and all I kept the books And my mouth shut Come spring they’ll move me from laundry to gardening I hope I’m not the kind that asks questions
I want waffles. Golden buttery windows Drizzles of maple syrup Cheek and jowl, with sausage and eggs A saucy wink from peaches
I want waffles. Melted mornings The day’s sweetness drips Jostling with solitude and paperbacks Flirting with a nap
I want waffles To savor over time And time to savor over A morning set on a plate Curled on the sofa Unfurling my thoughts With my favorite mug of possibilities.