Lost wax

It was a strange balm

To see his fingernails lined black

The perennial trenches of grease 

Left from days spent rooting in the guts of station wagons

A bad cold left him on the couch one winter 

Eating nothing but orange popsicles 

His hands turned pale

And worse: clean 

It was only then

My father became mortal

He taught me the dying language of setting stones 

Words I only speak with him

Sprue 

          Bevel

                   Cabochon 

And the pure alchemy of casting 

How to make a fuchsia blossom

From the brass of a garden faucet 

His hands, like the rest of him, have wasted 

Fingernails, unclipped 

And once again, hospital clean

The list of what his hands can do 

Dwindles, too

I worry about his colonized lungs

And, of course, his blood

leached of its metal

I worry about the questions mapped across his face

And equally about the ones on mine 

But mostly,

I worry about his hands

Saltwater

If crying were an Olympic sport

Surely, I would medal

I can weep over the Tule elk

Displaced from the grasslands

Their marshes siphoned to make way for cash crops

I think of them while driving through the valley

The stop motion blur of almond orchards tug at my vision

If only if only, on loop between my ears

It’s no great feat to cry at the news

But I will do that too

Mothers move around a pile of their dead children

Each of them wrapped in white cloth knotted at both ends

For a moment I think of trying to find my daughter

Could I tell it is her just by the shape of the cloth?

Or would my hands know better than my eyes, the contours of her small face?

The question itself splinters something in me

Something that will never fully mend

They say stay soft and I laugh

Oh, to have that choice

Salt water washes the silt,

Not away, but through my fingers

Back into the receding tide of this moment

Fool’s Errand

You, too, would grow tired of

Watching her try to cook an egg in tepid water

Picture the useless waiting:

So hopeful it hurts

The stubborn egg,

refusing to shake

Picture the guileless believer

Face hovering over the placid pot

Nose sinking closer to the water

Wetting the ends of her hair

Who knows how long she will stand there

Hunched

Patient

Utterly stupid

Watching it, still

Swearing on her life

She can see bubbles

Möbius Strip

It surprises me

To find

Everything adjacent to my pain

Still hot to the touch

As if neurons could conduct heat

From one year to the next

And the degrees of separation

Don’t matter

If I can quickly trace the line

From a song

back to days that left me rough-hewn from loneliness

It doesn’t matter

If the years changed my face

And my lungs

Shook blue from the sky

If the curl of a tv smile

Can stoke a memory back into flame

I can wish that my body weren’t a Time Machine

But it will always feel June like a trap door

August like an I-5 meridian

Maybe I deserve it,

The purgatory of my own thoughts

I won’t deny that

Karma is a bitch

But hey,

Time is, too.

The 17most likely reasons you’re annoyed with me right now

(alternative title: Ode to Anxiety)

1. I left the gas tank on empty

2. I didn’t tell you something bad was happening because I was more worried about telling you than the thing itself.

3. You’re not but I’m convinced you are

4. I over explained something in a meeting because nobody was nodding and so I just kept saying words.

5. I wanted to be firm without sounding like a dick. It didn’t work out.

6. I quoted Brene Brown one too many times.

7. I used words like ‘acquiesce’ and ‘perpetuity’ and you concluded that I’m an uppity bitch.

8. You’re not.

9. I donated that thing you haven’t used in years but now you’re trying to find it.

10. I told you I hate being interrupted after I interrupted you twice.

11. I’m really hungry and I’m making it your problem.

12. You aren’t but I’m taking things personally anyway.

13. I overshared. Again.

14. I laughed too loudly at a joke.

15. I cried at work. Again.

16. I…I can’t think of anything else.

17. You. Are. Not.

birthday

The night before their birthdays I buy them helium balloons and daffodils; the flowers that filled our apartment after their late winter births. I put out the birthday ring, the tree of life cup, the small wooden rainbow, the necklace with the ceramic pendant. There is ice skating and slumber parties and caramel apples and ice cream cakes. I imagine the details of these days and hope they will echo back in some future luminous memory. But when it’s done I am not thinking about them. I am, selfishly, indulgently, thinking of me.

It’s hard to look at those early pictures, new motherhood so naively and awkwardly radiating from me. Of course I love her, that wild, oblivious, 23-year-old me. I love her like I’d love a third child: without judgement, with curiosity and tenderness. But I can’t connect back to her. I can’t or I won’t. Because I’ve never been more alone than in those first years of being a young mother. And although I can see true joy on my face, I remember the price. In some ways, I was braver then. I lived inside my idealism so confidently. I was still very much convinced that if I played my cards the right way, I’d never get hurt, not really. It’s the distance between she and I that is hard to take in. I’m not the same. Time always wins.

Tonight marks 11 years since I became her. That night I laughed through contractions on the couch, ate manicotti and envied the Chianti in everyone else’s glass. I could tell you every detail of that night and the following day right up until my daughter was born in that very room. I could tell you every detail because I was there. But to this day, I marvel that that obstinate, dreamy girl and I are one in the same.

1/18/23

Today I read a quote that said publishing your writing is both arrogant and generous: generous to share such vulnerable pieces of yourself and arrogant to assume anyone cares enough to read it. I laughed out loud. This is exactly the conversation I have with myself any time I think about sharing something I’ve written. Like, Jesus, am I really willing to cast these tender details of my life out for public consumption? And why? To what end? And I always come back to the same thing. The only times in my life when I have felt seen and understood and connected were when I was willing to be brave and honest. It’s never a guarantee. In fact, it has been disappointingly rare in my life. But it still feels worth the risk. So I will keep flinging those tender details out there and let them land where they may.

***

Untitled (alternative title: I hate titling poetry)

When I say

In your darkest hour,

I will pray for you

I don’t mean I will fall to my knees

Small,

Supplicant

Calling in favors

Or pulling invisible strings

I mean

I will think of you as I brush my teeth:

All that love with no place to go

I will paint a landscape

Of the lake you visit every August

Where castilleja still stands like matchsticks

In the high Sierra summer

If you forget

I will water the peace lily on your desk

The one you worry you won’t keep alive

But I know you will

I can’t pray with folded hands

Believe me, I’ve tried

The only true prayer I’ve sent is in the work of my hands

Or my hand in another’s

I can only offer them to you

To fill your glass with whatever lets you sleep

To cradle your grief

In the here and now

Giving it all

Somewhere to go

Warm, not cool

All I know is the title: “Warm, not cool”

And that it’s a story about being 34

And realizing that what you want

Is for others to describe you

As warm

That ‘cool’ is so firmly in the past

You wonder why you ever wanted it

11/15/22

Sometimes I work on a poem for weeks. Or I give up and let it sit unwritten in my Notes for years. This one took nothing at all. It’s the kind that comes with such clarity of feeling that it almost writes itself. They don’t come that often but when they do I get that giddy, heart-rising-to-my-throat feeling, like falling in love; the ultimate high.

Untitled

You might think

If you met me on the summer solstice

I’d been studded with light

Holes punched in a tin can lantern

You might see 

Freckles on my shoulders 

And think

I could keep warm next to her

You might get me all wrong 

Watching me 

Tease the night

On the longest day

If you waited 

You’d see me in the woods

Shaking leaves from the trees

Smelling like November

Moss, smoke, and wet bark 

With enough time 

You would watch me

Become the parts of the forest

That disappear

Into themselves

You’d see me 

Walking into the dark 

For a glowing ember

On the longest night

them’s the breaks

My writing has been stuck for a while now. This isn’t the first time it has ever happened. I expect fallow weeks, months, sometimes years. But this time is different. It’s not that there isn’t anything to write about. There’s just too much. There’s too much that hasn’t yet been “composted”. I learned that term from Natalie Goldberg. She says that after an event or experience we must spend time letting it compost; allowing the carefully separated layers of sight, smell, word, and emotion to break down into something useful, something easy to move your hands through. So that when it lands on the page it has coalesced into memory. But I can’t do it.  I can’t seem to put the past squarely into its rightful place. Instead, I am constantly startled to find myself sitting in the middle of an emotional puddle, unaware how the hell I got here and why I’m covered in the remnants of something that happened a long time ago. There’s just not enough space, not enough oxygen to compost it all. There’s shit at the bottom of the pile that I can hardly bare to remember, let alone consciously bring to light. So it all stays buried and when I try to pull out just one part the weight of the last (and the last and the last) pin it down. And I give up. Because the present itself feels like plenty enough.

Roe

Do not tell me not to let this steal my joy

I have been the chaser

The wooer

The rescuer of my joy for 33 years

I have watched it struggle and resist

inside the closed hands of men

I have watched it spin out from inside my body

Dart across the continent

I’ve lassoed it back to my chest

Thousands of nights

Tucked it inside

And sung it to sleep

Do not tell me that my rage steals

My peace

I’ve seen them dance together

In one drive through the mountains

Windows down, breathe full of cedar

Lupine, sweet pea, Shasta daisies

And gasping sobs

Throat sticky with pollen

And impotent words

On a less than auspicious Mothers Day

I’ll be honest: I don’t like Mother’s Day. It has always felt disappointing and performative. Maybe it’s because of that very first Mother’s Day when Rob gave me two tickets to go hot air ballooning and when we tried to book them a month later the company had gone out of business. 10 years later, I still haven’t been in a hot air balloon. Or maybe it’s because the way that mothers are celebrated on this day tends to have nothing to do with giving them what they truly need. Rest. Support. Advocacy. Policy. Ok maybe an eggs Benedict. Motherhood is sacred. And it is mundane. And if that particular intersection of the two is not where you find yourself drawn, there is nothing and nobody that should be allowed to say otherwise. I don’t say that in theory. I say this with the knowledge of what happens to the children of women who were not able, ready, or willing to walk this path. They are the babies left unbathed for months. They are the children left to sleep outside their trailer with only dog food to eat. They are the ones told they are the product of rape, and whose subsequent rage lands them in foster home after foster home because nobody wants them. These are the fates of real children. And yet there are human beings out there who think it is merciful or holy to force their mothers to bring them into this type of existence. So this year I’ll be sitting Mothers Day out. I mean I won’t, because my kid is vomiting. But don’t bring me a fucking card or flowers. I’ll take the eggs Benedict though.