Day 30: Shavasana

Close your eyes.

Feel every place where your body comes in contact with the floor beneath you.

[yang]

I have made things happen

in small hops

from contract to contract,

warranty to warranty:

a permanence continually replaced.

This is how I understood progress.

Let your body relax and sink into those places.

I signed for you.

There is a paper to prove it.

We’ve climbed imaginary ropes

Always reaching for a higher anchor;

Our palms are burned to bleeding.

This is how I understood love.

Pay attention to your breath moving down your spine. Notice the pause before you exhale.

[yin]

Yet things will happen

and I will continue to be.

As I bend deeper into life,

the energy of life will hold me up inside it.

Feel the warmth in your arms and in your hands. Notice the sensations there.

You were never mine to have or hold,

nor will You be.

So I choose to love you as the sunflower loves,

rather than the vine.

Perhaps time will offer us a bargain.

Perhaps not.

Feel the slow rise and fall of your chest as you release your neck and shoulders.

There is no private island.

There is this.

This unknowable,

This beautiful,

This maze of togetherness.

All you have to do is let go.

Day 29: no sound no questions

ghost me out for a little while

let me bow my head

please don’t orchestrate me

no sound no questions

don’t try to make sense

it doesn’t make sense

it’s not about you

just leave the light off

here, if I stay still

i have no repercussions

I can do better

but I have to catch my breath

I can smile sincerely

but it still takes some practice

so ghost me out for a little while

no sound no questions

just leave the light off

and go.

Day 28: The Next Revolution

This is the next revolution:

A child reading by lamplight

In a silent house.

Day 27: Don't go.

don’t go.

here the only eyes are ours.

the easy breath of night will halt the sun

and drown the scattered, pressing noise of day;

stay,

we’re safe entangled,

skin’s adhering warmth upon our backs,

and whispered lyrics tugging at my ear;

stay here,

brilliant and improbable,

and with our several hands we'll hold this space

till all our rhythms sync to soft and slow;

don’t go.

Day 26

Should frailty ever come to find my father,

He’ll meet it with a studied disregard,

His lips drawn tight as a plumb line

As he stoops to tie his yard-stained shoes.

Day 25: Set

I go to the mountain

to be reminded that beauty persists

whether we work for it or not.

I say, each time, that on the mountain

I will think:

about my anger, my fear, my need –

need I don’t want, that pushes and stops.

But when I arrive,

I only breathe, and feel.

I smell the earth and the water.

I’ll think later, perhaps.

I sit and heal.

I don’t ask why my fibers work their way back together

or why precisely they split apart.

I simply let them be set where they ought to be

and I wait.

Day 24: Haiku pair

I catalogued grief

Because grief demanded it,

Red-eyed and screaming.

Happiness asks so little.

It waits quietly,

Then smiles and squeezes my hand.

Day 23: Imperfect Metaphors

In the mornings

When it’s too early for language

I see in your face

No words

But snapshots of other beautiful things

And I wake my mind by finding

Imperfect metaphors

Like

Your lips are like orange segments --

the shape is right

and the pushing of meat against skin ...

Segment is an ugly word

and you don’t taste like oranges ... 

but I want them now …

Day 22: The Overwhelm

The overwhelm reflects and magnifies:

You are a giant built like a wall

Angry and primed for a

War of silences

And I am on the other end

Shrinking,

Rolling my shell darker,

Watching my broken machinery

Click and catch –

  your fault -^ my fault ,;;

              your fault -^ my fault -^ ,;;my fault ,;;

I curl too tight when the water doesn’t boil

When the page is empty

When the children cry

,;;

But here you are again

Shrinking too,

Offering to uncurl me.