To Twenty Twenty Four
When it is afternoon and we have drawn the shades
and your breath rises and falls beside me,
I sometimes remember how everything I have ever known has shifted.
Even the man who turned against us was once a small pea
who had a mother who kissed the soles of his feet
when he lay small on his back.
Even the bus driver who swears and swerves
once nestled against bosom and arm,
built pathways to recognize her scent and warmth.
Even my mother, as she leaves me marooned a bit more each day,
was once passed from hand to hand
and was praised for simply being, for simply moving at her own pace.
It doesn't matter, after all, which day we choose to walk,
so why do we worry about the day of our first promotion? About the day of our wedding? About the day of achievement?
The only thing we should be worried about is
staying around to see as much of their story as possible,
and hope we will never ever get to see its end.
One day I will tell him, I have been mourning the loss of the end of his story
ever since the day he was born.
I can only imagine his aged face. Did my father imagine mine?
Hannah's 2025 Poem a Week Home
5 posts in this topic.
-
-
Postpartum
I am a blizzard of grease
Four days unwashed
Tricking myself into standing up
And sometimes stepping out
Your uniform a messy bun
Our uniform a baseball cap
Not enough water in all the tumblers
Never enough time to pump
Scent swirls and I am the eye of the storm
But through the sweat swiped sideways
By the wind of to-dos
You come crawling and beaming
Headlights and foglights on high
We will see the clear sky again
It cannot rage forever -
Album-in
There are places on this earth that
My face is bound to fall.
The hospital that sent us to the plane
That sent us to his empty apartment,
For example.
The images in my phone right before
And right after, for another.
When I see his face, the muscles in mine
Always, always slip down
And I am sorry that
The happy weekends on bicycles
Or boardgames and cookies in the oven
And beard clippings in the sink after raspy kisses goodnight
Are all coated in missing and wishing.
I will be shyly hopeful
That the new love permeating my whole world,
Seeping out of his first steps and first words,
Will be enough to mix and tamper
And the next time we look through my phone together,
My heart will simply give a nice, meaty
"And so it was. And so it was."
And my smile will hold up under pressure,
Or be released to the sky on a kite
Decorated with one word, over and over
So he learns in absentia:
Grandpa. -
Just Before the Son Goes Down
We are in a dark room
And you are humming.
You turn your head back and forth
To feel the bedsheets rubbing on your hair --
A sensation you want to collect more of.
You lift your legs up and let them fall --
You play with gravity and touch
As the evening brings you slowly, gently down
So you don't wake at the touch of a cool mattress.
It is too dark for our eyes to meet,
But I see your smile in the dark somehow anyway.
You turn onto your side and I rub your back.
You turn onto this side and you pinch my face.
You flop arms out and up like you are the son of God
And when your breathing slows,
I am calmer too.
Goodnight, goodnight. I mourn the quiet minutes
just before you slip away. -
Sign in to reply to this topic.
Delete this post?
Are you sure you want to delete this post? This cannot be undone.