Disconnect

Swing from the smoking tree

tell me again why we

are beautiful wretched dead

Goodbye Grey Sky

Faith is an icicle
flirting with the
front steps
just one snap it
could pierce the chest
end the need to believe
forever

Hindsight

It means nothing to be sorry

Not when tomorrow will cry for 

the yesterdays I 

betrayed

Battle Skills

I don’t remember you

your funny smells

or your frog smile

the air in your laughter

a slow hissing tire

the face in the mirror 
blank

my memory as free as a

debt unpaid

I saw it

isn’t that enough?

The Ache in the Neck

Here we recite our reasons for

walking

for talking

with our mouths closed

Here Again

Far out of your orbit

spinning in slow motion

trying to shout louder

than a kitten’s mewling

will the planets find me

all my silent crying

now I can feel nothing

only my plates shifting

into old arrangements

nothing ever changes

nothing at all

The Fall

the place you fell down from

                                                was the air so pure up there

                                that before you could warn me I

might find you

                                     in the rustling of the trees  

you lost your breath

                and I was trapped

                under this avalanche of dreams

          

The Coming Storm

I avoided Bryan all Saturday.  He bore silent witness to this until Sunday morning, when he joined me in the kitchen.  “I just got off the phone with Bob,” he said.  “I have some bad news.  He and Shelly broke up.”

The apple I’d been holding landed with a thud on the cutting board.  “You’re kidding me!”

“I’m afraid not.”

“But why?”

“You know how Shelly has been in Chicago for the past couple of months?”

“Yeah.  For work, right?”

“Not quite.  She’s been seeing someone else there.”

“You mean another guy?” I gasped.  At Bryan's nod I said, “Is Bob sure about that?  Maybe he’s just being paranoid, because of Cathy.”  

“Well, considering the fact that Shelly was the one to tell him, he’s pretty damn certain.”

“She told him?”

“She had to.  She and this other guy just moved in together.”

“Oh, no…”  I sank against the counter.  First Cathy, and now Shelly.  The nightmare never ended.  “Is he okay?”   

“Not at all, so I invited him over for dinner—I didn’t think you would mind.  He could use some cheering up.”

“That’s fine with me,” I answered, but it was going to take a lot more than dinner with sympathetic friends to right what Shelly had wronged.  Bob was a disaster.  Not even Cathy dumping him for a stinky old college professor had hurt him this much, I guess because he’d blamed it on his drinking.  Now that he was sober, and working his program with such earnestness, maybe his worldview had changed.  Maybe he had thought to himself, this time things will be different.  I couldn’t say.  All I did know was that seeing Bob slumped in the dining room chair, appearing aged and defeated, made me hate Shelly more than I’d ever hated anyone in my life.  “There will be someone else,” I told him.  “Someone who will treasure all of the wonderful things about you.”

Bob smiled a little.  He clearly did not believe me. 

“It’s true,” I insisted, but as his puppy dog brown eyes brimmed with tears I could have sworn I heard his heart breaking.  “I appreciate what you’re trying to say, Rachel,” Bob answered.  “I really do.  But my whole life I’ve been taken advantage of by the people I most want to trust.  And the scariest thing is, I don’t know what to do about it.  I don’t know how to change.”

1953

Yes, the water is cold

January sea freeze makes even the sand shudder

no warm-weather month in sight

                my molecules for so long racing

                colliding

                begging

                for the slowing

the midnight water is cold for me

this is the time

Some fisherman embracing this

icy body

he will find me

by my blue silence he will know

                lost interest in breathing

                this air so full of riddles and

rhymes

Fear of damnation gave way to fear of life

                always the smoke from my fingertips

                as the flames gutted me inside

cleansed my faith in waiting

hope extinguished with

the coming tide

Because the water is cold here

and hesitation’s wounds were bone dry

                turn my head to the black sky fading

                to the moon deserting what must die

even God in his kingdom

must forgive those who

gasp for breath as

they cry

because the water is cold enough

this once

and I must

                swallow it

                swallow it

fill the thirsting void

tonight

No more debating

when there is nothing for saying

                                I will be all right

Then

to remember is to fall

memory the betrayal of

what decorates the 

hall

a collection of explosions

kept

in an open jar

Surrounded

“Sabotage,” Lewis said in a dark voice.  “And I think we all know who’s responsible.”

“You’ll never be able to prove it,” Dirk answered, his eyes closed.  “But it would be nice if you could.”

Everyone sighed.

“We totally need CCTV in this place,” Lewis grumbled, “now that it’s getting so cut throat.”

“It wasn’t like that before Diana showed up,” Mike put in.  

Lewis scowled at him.  “Any guy who can’t handle a girl beating him is a pussy,” he returned.  “Anyway, she’s a freaking MIT graduate!  Of course she’s going to be better than us.  And at least we have someone who can show us new stuff, unlike Scott, whose great ideas always make our bots blow up.”

Now everyone nodded.

“Well,” Lewis said, after a moment’s silence, “maybe we can’t prove it, but someone should go apologize to her.  She might not come back otherwise, and that would suck.  We need her help for our battle with the Droid Boys.”  He turned to Matt.  “You do it.  She likes you best.”

“She does?” Matt asked, taken aback.  

“Of course she does,” Lewis answered.  “She never calls you a moron, does she?”

Now that Matt thought about it, he realized that Diane hadn’t ever called him a moron.  Still, he protested, “I don’t know what to say.”

“Tell her that we know Scott probably did it but we can’t prove it and he’s a moron.  Then beg her not to quit and say we might install CCTV.”

“We can’t afford to install CCTV,” Mike objected.  

“I know, dufus,” Lewis replied, “but she doesn’t know that, does she?”

“Oh, come on,” Dirk said.  “She’ll know we’re lying.”

“Maybe.  But it’s the thought that counts.”  Lewis slapped Mike on the back.  “Go on, Obi-Wan.  You’re our only hope!”

Wake Up

This place I find you

the clouds mirrored in your 

eyes 

daylight                                 

a shade too misleading

Nightmare

silence a mocking foe

shrouded               in hope

I was waiting where did you go        

you cannot say and I         I just do not know

from way over there

you do not echo anywhere

I am so

lost

the deadliest place is no place new at all

this makes me sad               nothing I haven’t been before

this makes me wonder               nothing I haven’t feared before

this makes me afraid to sleep with the door 

closed

The Watershed

I met her at the cafe where I liked to read the paper in the morning.  At the time she struck me as nothing special: just another smiley college student waiting tables over the summer.  Only after she gave me the wrong coffee three days in a row did I really pay any notice to her.

During her rambling apology—“I’m so sorry, I just can’t remember if the white doily means vanilla or regular, I keep thinking white has to be vanilla and then I think, no, it’s the opposite, and then I get myself all mixed up”—I didn’t know whether to laugh or tell her to go away.  In the end I did neither.   Eventually I would come to wish I had done the latter.

Trapped

No longer me

just a girl on a screen

he bit her once 

she never told

they already knew far
too much

for a shot at forever

a lie wrapped in power

she and he bundled 

together

then lavender powder

a hiss in the ear

and the end of it all

but smoke and threats

no match for this master

yesterday jumps out

again

and again

I am so sorry

she screams in the closet

he made her laugh

he was her friend

Cut Down

I am uncovered here
praying for the snow that 
cannot fall
praying but knowing
that once the winter learns
to let go
nothing can coax it into 
the blistering arms of
summer

Against the Glass

oh how I loved you

more than the tides could ever

love the moon

now silence mocks the faithful

as I ripple with the green grass

go blind from the apathetic sun

The Crossover

A crack

the smooth stone in my hand

mist on the grass

gone

We splintered into warnings:

not yet.  Not yet.

So sorry to hear you cry

for the piercing pain between

your eyes

this sorrow 

not their suggestion 

but a fact

god, let me stay

sent back

Kiss the trees for me, lovely

I am longing

I am so afraid

Blocked

Tell them

tell them all

I am as full as the earth

as empty as the sun

The Birth of Fire

I blinked at the traitorous sun streaming in through the blinds.   With a start I bolted into an upright position.

It was morning.

Julia cast a nervous glance behind her to the empty doorway.  When she returned haunted eyes to me, the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up on end.  Instinctively I pulled my blanket over my mouth, in anticipation of the Poltergeist moment I knew must follow.  “Rachel,” Julia hissed.  “He’s here.” 

There was no question as to which “he” she referred to.  Bryan, the oldest son.   Somewhere in the house.  Waiting for me.  

“Don’t make me go,” I begged Julia.  Her face blotchy with tears, she hugged me hard.  “It’s okay,” she croaked out.  “You’re going to be fine.”

Yeah, right.  That reassurance might have been more credible were I not about to be carted off to a far-away land called Massachusetts by the right hand of the devil.  No one wanted Bryan around.  No one wanted me to live with him.  Yet Julia had abandoned all attempts to save me.  I had no choice.

Wriggling out from Julia’s embrace, I hit the floor and started running.

“Rachel!” Julia cried.  “Come back!”

I ignored her.  She would never catch me—not with those smoker's lungs of hers.  Normally I was a shy, submissive child, but desperate times called for desperate measures.  If I had to spend the next month hiding out in the prickly bushes in Julia’s backyard, that was just what I would do.  At my last doctor’s appointment I’d heard the doctor call me small for my age.  If anyone could survive on the occasional berry, it was me.   

And if hanging out in the bushes failed, well, maybe I would get saved by a pack of wolves, or abducted by a crowd of friendly aliens.  It happened in Disney movies all of the time.  Why couldn’t it happen to me?  There was at least a chance.   There had to be.  Because I would not go anywhere with him, I would not go anywhere with him, I would not go anywhere with him…my frantic determination rocketing me forward, I rounded the corner of the hallway. 

The tall, dark-haired man appeared before me so suddenly that I never had the chance to avoid him.  With a startled gasp I crashed straight into his legs--and then went flying backwards, on a collision course with the decorative table holding one of Julia's beloved antique flower vases.  

My head was inches away from catastrophe when a strong pair of hands caught me.  Stunned yet otherwise unharmed, I curled my fingers around leather jacket sleeves.“Hey, little girl,” a male voice said from above.  “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

I looked up.  When my rescuer smiled I blinked hard.

He lowered himself down before me.  Dark blue eyes regarded me closely. “Did I hurt you?" he asked.  "I'm sorry about that.  If I'd known you were coming I would have gotten out of the way.  Are you all right?” 

  

I nodded, robbed of the ability to speak.   Because I had met this man before.  I even knew his name, and why he had come here.  But he seemed much too safe, and smelled far too good, to be the person we had all been bemoaning for the past fourteen hours.  How could he be the same person?  He couldn’t be.  And yet he looked exactly like him!  “Who are you?” I whispered.

“You know who I am,” he answered, and with that the last vestiges of my fear vanished forever.   The immediate love I felt for Bryan Jennings was as inevitable as it was baffling.     

“Let’s get you dressed, missy,” he said.  As he lifted me up into his arms I saw Julia, standing in the hallway behind us.  She was looking at Bryan with an expression that let me know she would hate him forever.  

“I told you last night what time I was coming,” Bryan growled at her.  “Rachel should have been ready an hour ago.”  His words left tiny icicles in their wake.  

But I didn't care.  Because my life with Bryan Jennings had begun.

Running Away

I think I can hear it

the pinging in my ears

they were never welcome

we roll around

crash into walls

it hurts

leave me then

your scarlet testimony

what falls in pieces

I am done here

I am done with it all

Cold

So many trains

all leading to distant December destinations

crammed full of strangers breathing

clouds against the windows’ glass

as they exhale their expectations

            Convinced we knew the future from what was

            afraid to confront the past in

            what we had

            become

But for the desperate promise to find

a summer unknown

we dismantled the track that would 

lead us back home

            No one remembered the snowstorm in

            the mountains

            how we yearned to crash

            to ride this shivering disappointment

            right down to its

            final gasp

When all aboard ride the night train alone

mark the passing of the time with the

falling of the

snow

No use in unpacking for tomorrow    

tomorrow is a thousand midnight

dreams of color

away

Judgment

I have considered you as
I watch the creeping
mold overtake the
paint on the
walls.
As the dampness of an
unventilated room drowns
each molecule of
air.
And I wonder which inevitability
chased my belief in you 
away.
But whatever took me down the
other road--
it becomes simply another 
irrelevant
better left unknown.

And just when I thought I had made
myself old over wishing for 
something to whisper like a
kind stranger into 
my ear,
I understand, and I do not
blame you
I find myself catching the edge of
every movement of atmosphere even
the leaves have forgotten,
listening
waiting...

The Impossible Dream

tell the boy with the red straws 

I am not coming back

take care of the dogs

the cats and the
pirate kids

this dark edifice 

locked doors and

stone hallways

courtyards and windows and 

signs with directions
the network is broken
so is our ending

morning was lost

the dolls with knives took it

now all I want is the
afternoon

please