Packing to Stay
Sometimes the joy of loving you
is so white hot
so breath necessary
I can only stand it
by imagining its end.
On the way to work and
while I wash dishes
I pack details of
wild grief and slow reconstruction
into suitcases that stand at the ready
in the back of my closet.
I know these stories better than I need to,
can trace their plot lines
familiar as the motions of a bad habit
endings circling into middles
refining and refining
In one I move to a small town
and become the mysterious figure
with the tragic past
that grows and mutates in barstool speculation.
In another I go to L.A.
wax my eyebrows, straighten my hair,
take lessons in eyeliner and dieting
until there is no me left to grieve.
In some you die, in others you leave.
In some imprisoned
to be returned to me only past the edge
of any of our dreams.
I know these stories better than I need to.
I wish they would gather forgotten attic dust
But I worry them
clear as river-bottom quartz
smooth as bitten nails.
They grow from kaddish to agenda
absorbing daily guilts and frustrations –
Here’s the stuff I would throw out
and the plans I would make
and the cleaning that would happen
and the schedules I would keep
and the money I would have
and the saint I would be
if it were all up to me
if the decisions were all my own
if I weren’t walking and sleeping with you
on a tightrope triangle
if our wills and histories weren’t tangling
in rude honesty and constant forebearance
on the floor of our homegrown democracy.
Yes, I know what I would do.
My gray-carpet front stairs raise me slowly
from the fog
I touch down into my life
and a waiting bowl of beans and greens
I breathe in this family, a vegetable garden
where half the weeds turn out to be medicinal herbs
spilling hidden colors onto the world
that, like bees, only we seem to notice.
My center of gravity
has sunk roots into this soil
of laughing eyes and kitten-tumble words
We climb the calendar together
on a tight weave of comfort and challenge.
Below, my suitcases stay
packed with
their scripts of survival,
their ladders out of craters.
But there’s no fear leaking from them.
Having them tells me
I don’t choose this love
because I would die without it;
I choose it because
it is good.
Sometimes the joy of loving you
is so white hot
so breath necessary
I can only stand it
by imagining its end.
On the way to work and
while I wash dishes
I pack details of
wild grief and slow reconstruction
into suitcases that stand at the ready
in the back of my closet.
I know these stories better than I need to,
can trace their plot lines
familiar as the motions of a bad habit
endings circling into middles
refining and refining
In one I move to a small town
and become the mysterious figure
with the tragic past
that grows and mutates in barstool speculation.
In another I go to L.A.
wax my eyebrows, straighten my hair,
take lessons in eyeliner and dieting
until there is no me left to grieve.
In some you die, in others you leave.
In some imprisoned
to be returned to me only past the edge
of any of our dreams.
I know these stories better than I need to.
I wish they would gather forgotten attic dust
But I worry them
clear as river-bottom quartz
smooth as bitten nails.
They grow from kaddish to agenda
absorbing daily guilts and frustrations –
Here’s the stuff I would throw out
and the plans I would make
and the cleaning that would happen
and the schedules I would keep
and the money I would have
and the saint I would be
if it were all up to me
if the decisions were all my own
if I weren’t walking and sleeping with you
on a tightrope triangle
if our wills and histories weren’t tangling
in rude honesty and constant forebearance
on the floor of our homegrown democracy.
Yes, I know what I would do.
My gray-carpet front stairs raise me slowly
from the fog
I touch down into my life
and a waiting bowl of beans and greens
I breathe in this family, a vegetable garden
where half the weeds turn out to be medicinal herbs
spilling hidden colors onto the world
that, like bees, only we seem to notice.
My center of gravity
has sunk roots into this soil
of laughing eyes and kitten-tumble words
We climb the calendar together
on a tight weave of comfort and challenge.
Below, my suitcases stay
packed with
their scripts of survival,
their ladders out of craters.
But there’s no fear leaking from them.
Having them tells me
I don’t choose this love
because I would die without it;
I choose it because
it is good.
