aquí nomas

 these two have saved my life, my guardian angels

  how often it was yours became ours and now it’s back to me how do I untie the threads we sewed into each other? the stitches itch when I think of you, bleed through the double knots  did you ever drive back to the house out of habit? familiar route on the tip of your nose, tapping your fingers along the steering wheel  as you cut back my seams  threaded but fraying in your heart? I fear I will spend the rest of my life  missing what never became what cannot return what I don’t ever want to feel again 

when I say what I mean, loosen my hands  and lay my honesty down on the table, who loses?  my stubborn brain, holding out with white knuckles, has cost me a tender heart time and time again. 

thank god for quinn, thank god for my camera that allows me to love my friends through the lens. 

the familiar dusty bottle in one hand while I press the napkin down with the other,  I ask the wind coming through my window, how does the smallest scratch hit just deep enough to rush all the blood back to old wounds?

september, a time of in betweens  remain tender and open, keep your childlike wonder, don’t harden just ‘cos it’s easier 

  george used to come around with 2 things, the coffee pot and a bottle of ouzo.  we played pool at 25cents a pop and got our asses handed to us.  prices kept climbing and the place kept empty but the lights stayed on and they never closed.  rest in peace to a san francisco staple I’ll miss forever. 

 

 

I look up in a meeting and someone is wearing a built to spill shirt. a reminder that it’s another summer of missing somebody. a yearning that’s lit, stings my skin the longer I sit in the sun and burns through everything I feel. how many more summers until I’m missed too?  

  my best friend and I sat on the patio the other night. they asked about my woes, I told them. I asked about theirs, they told me. they’re going through a divorce from a young marriage. I recently ran into an old love, one that ended badly. we talked about love when you’re young. how big the love is. how it’s actually so big we don’t realize. we don’t know what to do with it. we fall into what we think we’re supposed to do with it. so we never really see how big it gets, how huge it really is to tether and tangle your life with someone else’s. even when it ends, there’s no doubt there was love there. to what extent and what fiber doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of it all. we felt the big love. and it’s everywhere now. we carry so much of it with us. we think of it even when we don’t. I didn’t know what to do with it. so I did what I thought I was supposed to do. in ways, I failed it, failed the other person. but I look at it from the roof now and see what it was. next ti...

sometimes it’s no more than as it is, ticket stub from a train in paris kept on a mirror,  an old novel once shared on a new bookshelf,  the perfume always kissed off found at the bottom of my old purse. little pieces strewn about, ashes of what was, blowing by with the passing of time. 

in another universe we’re driving around in the plymouth,  sitting in our usual seats at arts cafe, spending our sundays close.  waking you up with coffee at bonks cabin, my hand on your thigh, bare feet on the porch. maybe I’m forgiving you again over our usual at Giorgio’s,  keeping your secrets from my friends, asking if your friends would think of you different, believing change is coming after a trip out of town. maybe the glass you threw at the wall hits me instead.  maybe it’s the same in every universe.  and every universe, I’m glad I’m out. 

nostalgia holds me the same way a counterfeit bill keeps value in my wallet.   

we kept a horseshoe above the front door, a formica table with twinkling stars we found in a garage sale, kitchen green with plants hanging off every edge, and shelves you made me by hand.  you kept photos of me by your side of the bed and I rested my hand on your back when I slept.  we had hooks for our keys with our initials, your grandmothers meatball recipe in the far kitchen drawer, and a lighter from our night in japan sat safe on our desk.  the dog kept her paws off the kitchen floor, I cried in the shower so you couldn’t tell, and you slept further away til my hand couldn’t reach. shards from a glass you threw stuck to my selena record I kept on the wall, you turned my photos face down,  and your coffee mug stayed in the same spot for weeks after the day you left. 

they say god laughs at those who make plans, so does grief.  except she sits beside you at the dinner table while you laugh amongst friends, as you make your bed in the morning and she keeps caught in the corners of your mattress. she remembers when you forget, reminds you the knocking you feel isn't hollow at all, rather full of the love, the wonder left with nowhere to go. she sits while god laughs and tugs at your pant leg.

two birds perched on a barbed wire fence, the sharp edges of time passed cutting into mind, the painful bits that have since scarred over, keep the tally, maybe it’s god or the cosmos but it all comes together, I am alongside those two birds.