that's mrs. mediocrity to you

I found another rock the day you planned to leave me, white granite, sharp-edged, palm-sized, set down right in the center of my path like a gift or an offering or a message.

It felt just right in my hand, too, as if it had lived there once, forever, and then been lost. Later, I buried it beneath the pine in the corner of the yard, embedded in a sea of needles.

And even though it was a rock, it took root and grew beneath the surface, became a boulder. I know, because I tried to dig it up once, I spent a day on my knees with a pick and a spade until finally, at dusk, I gave up and filled it all back in, tamping down and spreading smooth the bed of my discomfort.

I slept beneath the stars that night, too tired to move and too silent to care, refusing to listen. The sky whispered lies and the stars held their arms up high like a prayer or a promise or a salutation.

I kept my cheek pressed to the earth, kissing gravity in gratitude for holding me in place, the rock beneath me still warm from the sun of exposure.

In the morning I went inside, boiled water for tea and sat in the chair by the window, already forgetting about rocks and love and heartache, my head filled with dark sparkling stories.

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Linking in over at dVersePoets for Open Link Night today, join us!

I was thinking the other day about the way you used to mock the girl who fancied herself a writer. (It wasn’t me). And that made me wonder if you ever wrote anything at all, and I guessed the answer to be no.

I’m glad we never run into each other, glad there’s no need to fill awkward silences with pleasantries as we stand on dirty sidewalks. Besides, you wouldn’t recognize me, I’ve become a new person three times since we last met. Just now, I’m becoming another.

I’ve still got that chink in my side and those veins on my legs, but I think I’ve grown a bit taller. My knees are wrinkled and my lips are crinkled and I’m still holding hope like a seed.

I planted the moon a long time ago, watched it vine up the side of one leg. It only ever bloomed in the dark, and I laughed at how quickly we twisted.

You ran away from my laughter and I howled until tears lit my face.

That was my very first garden.

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you must have known how to can dill pickles, but just like your molasses cookies, no one has the recipe.

over the years, those cookies have become legendary, tasting far better in all our minds than they ever did in real life.

it should be an easy thing, to replicate a common recipe, but nothing ever tastes as good as memory.

that’s always the missing ingredient.

you were a little bit hard but your cookies were always soft.

you always had oranges and wintergreen lotion to soothe your tired nurse feet.

all my memories of you smell like starch and nostalgia.

and i always walk away feeling hungry.

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“I saw a murder of crows on my way home tonight. They all lived.”

You laughed when I said that, the way you always do when I make a stupid joke, because that’s what you do when you love someone. You laugh, even when you’d rather be sitting outside beneath a sun that always tells the truth. But you can’t hold the sky, no matter how wide your arms open.

So let it go, leave it for the crows. They know how to blend with the shadows and disguise the clouds, they know how to rise above it. They know, too, that even flight is a means to an end, and we all need a nest to rest in.

Laugh. Toss your voice up high and let it fly. And carry me home the way that you do, all strong and silent and compromised.

The stars are falling.

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i bend to retrieve the slip of paper you dropped last time you were here, tucked beneath the corner of the bed, forgotten in a sea of dust. it’s a list and it’s nothing but you wrote it:

lemons

butter

razors

and i wonder if you remembered all three when you went to the store, or if you forgot the razors, and were you planning to make chicken piccata for dinner?

i can’t remember when it was that you were here. six months ago? eight? i can’t remember the last time you were there, either.

later, after i’d cleaned the floor, swept and mopped and made the bed, i put the list back where i’d found it, just to have one thing that made sense.

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rose every morning

with a smile on her face

her heart on her sleeve

and the countenance

of wallflower

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she understood

that being overlooked

was not the same

as being

under paid

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Blooming is a matter of survival. You have to do it, no matter what. It doesn’t have to be big or bold or pretty or showy, it just has to be done.

Even if you’ve been trampled or blown over, even if you’re lying in the mud, even if you’re dying of thirst, even if no one will see.

You don’t do it for the sun or the praise or the perfume.

You don’t do it for the sky or the attention.

You don’t do it for the hummingbird.

You do it for the release.

Open.

Even when it hurts.

Let the world wrestle you to the ground.

Stand up and offer the beauty of resistance.

Find the light seeping in through all the cracks.

Silence is not the same as consent or cowardice or indifference. Silence is a sign of strength. Silence means you are listening.

Breathe in. Grow again, taller. Find a way. Take the path you need, or the one you can find. Keep going. Blooming is a matter of survival.

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the silent places you seek in the darkness
just before the sun comes up

on a summer night

spent

in the company of story

and all the words you wrote
were the echo of your sanity

falling from a perch on orion’s

back

onto pages thin as petal

and the whispers you carried
were your gravity

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for a dance

with a bright blue moon

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one hand

waving free

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And pausing to listen.

Because it is a small world, after all,
and the internet keeps making it smaller.
Social media becomes a too-crowded room
where everybody’s in everybody’s business,
and three square meals of outrage
are served every day.

For dessert we have your choice:
a call to arms, a call for slander,
a call to harm.

The world is full of terrible things,
foul injustice,
heartbreaking stories of inhumanity.

Mankind is flawed and we want perfection,
or at least the appearance of it on our screen.

We want everything our way,
the only way, the best way,
and tout this using words
from the list we’re allowed to say.

Celebrity rules and we feed it with our frenzy.

The throng and the masses have all the answers
and nothing ever changes.

 In the minds of the mob,
silent observation becomes the same as cowardice.

Working behind the scenes
is seen as indifference.

Not speaking out, even if you agree,
makes you less than those who do.

Yet if you speak out and say the wrong thing,
you will be thrashed or hunted or publicly shamed
with a virtual scarlet letter.

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Hush now.

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Learn.
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Live.

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Listen.

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The answers always lie

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between the lines.

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