Beyond the Atmospheres

Truth does set you free

erases myths, removes 

weighted down notions

like those beyond the earthly 

atmospheres of silent, vast 

depths, resigned of gravity.

I'm lighter under this new golden 

sun, coaxing me from my false 

stupors; shimmers blanketing

me like ribbons swirling about

lofty clouds pinned against an 

azure canopy, described only

as the heavens, heralding 

purity, harmony, abandoning 

my falsehoods of yesterday. 

Yesterday, when I realized how 

the stories I whisper to myself 

when I believe God is listening

will be different now. Warmth 

streams from this blessed sun 

holds my face in its hands, 

and whispers, a brand new world 

is coming.

Nostalgia

Choosing a man like 

deciding on a combo meal.

How did we get to this place

where people with no physical

or spacial knowing of another 

are comfortable enough to say 

cock and balls in black and white.

The texts come any old time, with 

questions on how I like my sex. 

How I like my sex?

God, I miss flirting across the bar. 

Long, smoldering glances, and 

then he walks over, he's near, 

next to me, my heart thumps

like wild gallops. I'm lit up inside. 

He's adorable, perfect, just as he 

was a few moments ago, only 

up close his musky, masculine 

scent is intoxicating, and I about 

die when he gently moves strands 

of my hair to talk into my ear. 

Then he hands me a paper 

napkin rose and I fall into a thousand 

tiny hearts and butterflies. This is it. 

The dance.Two bodies, suddenly 

together, moving in step, maybe in love.

Not clumsy, rude texts, precursors

to an awkward, arranged, and safe 

coffee meet. How unimaginative, 

unromantic. (CUE NOSTALGIA)

Winning

Sometimes I think
maybe this time
this e-mail
this text
this poem
will catch him
the chase will end
he'll surrender
I can rest my heart
thumping through my chest
from the desire 
to win.

And then I lose, again.

Always, In the Cat Food Aisle

It's literally become my whole life

standing in the cat food aisle 

confounded, contemplative, indecisive

while others notice how afraid I am 

to bring home the wrong food. 

Other feline moms and dads

shuffle by, toss in a few of this

a few of that and they're off. 

Amazed by their quick choices

and untroubled expressions

I backtrack, recall the wins and 

what was rebuffed. I think of 

those long furry faces in tiny cages

wet food beside them, hardened.

They could be using their course

tongues to lap up ever last bit,

purring melodically that it's not 

the same dry pate; it's a feast. 

It's a Small World

I put the sugar water out for the 

hummingbirds. Now I just wait.

The squirrel sneaks up and steals

the fallen unshelled black sunflower 

seeds, a favorite of the grackles too

who are the mafia of bird world

chasing off the little ones, stealing 

all the food. Jasmine is fascinated 

by the squirrel, observing it in military 

stealth mode, assumed flat on the 

ground position so as not to be seen. 

All she's missing is poking her head

out from between tall blades of grass. 

The fan is oscillating, cars whiz by 

on 17C and the different dialects 

inside bird world are the only

conversations going on at 7:00 pm.

I'm sitting quietly, listening, watching 

our small world through the big window.

Dancing to My Own Music

I told her she needs to let go

and I saw the hypocrisy on my wall.

I told her to stop focusing on 

the uncontrollable in others, and

like an outer body experience 

I was face to face with the me

who has not accepted no, not 

accepted rejection, not accepted

how truthful silence can be

but instead filled it with false 

ideas and fairy tales, and like 

any psychiatric patient playing 

checkers in the wreck room

fooling the aides by not swallowing 

their pills, the theatrics continue

the music plays and plays, and me, 

I continue to dance; smiling,

my eyes fixed upon his returning 

gaze and I think how this song 

could last forever, if I let it.

Twenty-First Century Teen

She wants to take a walk,

alone, stretch her legs, be 

independent. I ask, "How far?"

She says, "Never mind."

I'm not a helicopter parent

but the world is different now

and danger lies for those who

don't know it. 

On the walk, wearing earbuds, 

not hearing the horn, warning 

her to see someone speeding,

running a red light. Or worse, 

she doesn't hear the van, she's 

dragged into the back, door 

slams, my girl is gone. It happens

to young girls, like her, too often.

She's gotta be all eyes all the time. 

At fifteen the scope is narrow

missing so much on either side 

of the barrel. I get being free,

being young, being more than 

your parents think you are. I was 

much more than mine ever knew 

but luckily she's not like me, like that. 

Pleadings

I composed three or four different 

versions of another plea, another 

beg for his understanding, when 

I swore the last was my last. 

But here I am, again, trifling 

with words, words he will no doubt 

expunge, words he will decide 

are meaningless, empty compilations 

of letters strung together

echoing the hundreds of other 

submissions, and I will never know 

which words, if any, did he choose 

to ingest, swallow whole, accept 

them for the desperate pleas they 

were, and in some small way

cherish them, for they depicted 

a suffering he could not end 

but was still compassionate.

Things I Would Say

I wish I could start off with 

"When I saw him last night" 

but I can't. Such casual proximity

is impossible, and such amicability

would be unlikely even if proximity existed.

I'd like to say he was gentle and kind

but in reality he's only ever been evasive

nondescript, and distant; not only 

geographically but interactively.

The tiny words he's used, when used at all, 

convey my smallness, my insignificance. 

What else can a woman think when intimacy 

is offered as the main course and he's 

barely touched the appetizer?

I'd like to say he came to my room

brushed the hair from my cheek

and was as real the moon appears

on its fullest nights. He was shining

smiling and he lit up my world.

Knowing, Really

The familiarity of community

seeing people you know in 

the grocery story, the bank

or whatever shopping venue 

in your small town.

But the familiarity of faces is 

nothing more than face recognition 

software in your head. 

True recognition needs something

else; some fondness, sameness, 

planetary understanding of it and 

its surrounding atmospheres. 

It's the quiet, lack of words, 

feeling akin in the eyes, like lasers 

pointed at each other, self-guided, 

knowing one another across the marble 

floor, echoes of clacking shoes 

and running children towards the 

food court. It's the run-ins you never 

run from. It's the people, like yourself,

making sense of the world.

So Many Questions

Something about the rain.

I think more, I feel more 

I get lost inside, hours pass by.

Something about the wind too.

I'll wrap my arms around myself 

to lessen the eerie chill of solitude.

Meanwhile, that wishful silhouette

appears more as night thickens.

So days and nights become one

and then, right on time, the other

over and over, and we expect this

we know it's coming by the hands'

hourly movements. We anticipate

its beginning and its end, and there

is comfort in such predictions.

But how then can there be comfort 

with the absence of tell-tale signs

or precursors that notify us? 

And what if it never comes 

and we spend eternity waiting 

for an inclining of its fabrication, 

materialization; an incarnate being 

who wonders so much of the same?

I Hate It

The phone, never really out of my sight

and the temptation arrives often;

as often as I check e-mail or wash my hands.

I hate that I thought it would happen

that in some esoteric way we'd come together

or he'd suddenly be at the door with 

two plane tickets to paradise.

I guess I also hate the week after 

"my friend" comes to town.

I'm emotional, nostalgic, exacerbated

by oldies love songs on Sunny 107.1,

unwittingly diving into the deep end again.

But I'm lucky, I can snap myself out of it now

by saying, Stop it, Heather. It's never going to happen.

I'm grateful I've become more persuasive

but even now, I know, a small piece has not let go.

 

On The Moon

Well no, not literally

but conversationally, yes,

and it's the rave when fullest

speculative theories flying

on its affective properties

as unusual behaviors 

and off-beat happenings 

simmer throughout the phase.

I can even be seen stopping 

in my tracks as I'm taking 

out the evening trash,

stunned by its halo, smiling

to myself like I would to a baby

likely to trip over my infatuation 

unable to take my eyes away

from its glowing fullness

its mystical pull on my soul,

as if it speaks to it directly

and my soul speaks back.

It's captivating, and luckily 

reoccurring once exhausting

other monthly phases and shapes

back to smile warmly on us again.

How to Find Your New Home

I'm looking for a window
a door
maybe it's a bridge
to carry me over
the past fifteen years.
Memories
and milestones
drifting, reflecting.
I keep on, further
until there's this tunnel
a hidden passageway.
Exiting the other side
it's eerie yet familiar.
Its air is cool, thick
like hands submerged
in damp soil at night.
It's comforting, safe
and I want to linger here
sit a while
rest my eyes
see into tomorrow
and the day after that.
See it on the 25th day
then the 75th day
until it's the 365th
and what I see
is our new home.

The Reachers

I wonder what it's like
to be settled
content, fixed in a
surrounding
so much that it feels
stationary
with no upward mobility
just more and more
and more acceptance
of the comfortable
commonplace.
When do you decide
this is it
I'm done reaching
done rising
taking a back seat
while the others
do, expand
grow towards the sky
limbs becoming
lanky and awkward
and maybe so
but how many
remain seated
perplexed by the
sacrifice
while the reachers
those marvels
against the mundane
they know how high
the sky can go.

How He Does It

The smiling stills taken with the kids
irritate me as he does what he does
and confoundingly so. How does he
take a loving, smiling family and
denigrate it with infidelity, satisfy
casual desires at his any whim
so cavalier, so comfortable with deceit.
She is always smiling, holding his
hand, or there's his loving arm
over her shoulder pose.
He's good at pretending
whether to one or the other
and the fluency of his lies
is tradecraft like
weaponry to a terrorist.
The children smile
happily standing alongside
their model loving parents
the same parents who are estranged
in ways they will never know
but I know. I was there,
I had run into him at the pharmacy
years after, and his method still the same.
Lewd photos and vile suggestions
trying to reel me in, once again,
snake his way under my skin
coil himself around my longing
to be loved, intimately so,
after I told him years ago it was over
that I knew I would never be her
in those smiling photos, and he agreed.

Tears for the World

It was more than two weeks later
and they were asking me, "How did you feel?"
When I was crying into the last of my tissues
did anyone ask then, when it mattered
when I gave a shit?
Never an utterance until fifteen minutes
before we would all meet to rehash it,
ask if we'd do anything different.
When he asked me in that dismissive
unqualified tone, on the day in question,
if he should bring everyone in
one by one to ask what they heard

I saw I was speaking to an empty shell
a person who would never see himself
as the outline of a man he is, and yet the
heartless, soulless, faceless, wins every time.
The ignorant run free, make mistakes
and never take the blame, expose themselves
to humility, but want to squeeze it out of me
like I'm a ketchup bottle they've turned
upside down, when I am already bleeding out
dripping onto the floor, and of course
they're colorblind.

How can he see me when he has no idea
what he's looking at?
It speaks up, so it must be an enemy.
It lashes out at injustice
the very injustice he and those alike
perpetrate. I cried at my desk because
I know this is the world I'm living in.