Windows

I cried myself to sleep last night.
I think I love you, he said
and I said I’m sorry.

Tonight I sleep with the window open
and ignore where his presence used to be.
The cold distracts me from his absence.

Passing cars substitute themselves
for the creaking of the mattress under his weight,
the wind a poor replacement for his breathing
from the other side of the bed.

Tonight I sleep with the window open
and remind myself
that there are worse things than the cold.

Rose Quartz

On the last day of class,
my professor gives everyone a small pink stone.
She tells us that rose quartz represents
love,
compassion,
healing from trauma.
Within seconds I secretly hope mine is
smooth,
unmarred,
perfect.
I want mine to be perfect.

As she sets the stone in front of me, a gift,
I'm already looking for the imperfections,
hoping they aren't there.
They are.
I don't want this, I think,
and feel shame because it is mine.

My fingers slide over the smooth surface of the stone,
my thumb rubbing at the imperfections
as if enough friction will make them disappear.

I set it back on the desk, face down to hide the scars.
Other people hide their trauma,
and I want to hide this too.
I didn’t ask for it.
I don't want my classmates to see my the imperfections.
Is my stone less than theirs because it is marred?

The more I search, the more scars I see,
but the less they bother me.
Like me, the stone has had its share of ordinary trauma.
Now, somehow, it is more beautiful to me, not in spite
but because of its imperfections.

The weight of the stone.
Unexpectedly comforting.
I roll it around in my palm,
enjoying the way it clinks
against the ring on my middle finger.

The rose quartz may be imperfect, but it is mine.
And it is beautiful.

Family History

Grandfather.
Middle child.
Cancer.
Father stayed home every Sunday while his mother took her children to worship.
Since the cancer, he only wears sandals to church — otherwise he gets too hot.

Grandmother.
Only child.
Hypochondriac.
Cleans compulsively, so the kitchen is always spotless.
When her parents immigrated, they changed their name to something more American.
Found her religion at 17.

Mother.
Oldest child.
Inferiority complex.
Compares herself to her sisters, who put more time into their appearances than she does.
Keeps it together for her kids.
Works twice a week to help pay off her husband’s student loans.

Grandfather.
Used to be a child.
Potentially abusive.
Plants a garden every year.
Sends visitors home with more fresh produce than they can eat before it goes bad.
Rarely shows affection, even to his own children.

Grandmother.
Youngest child.
Hip replacement.
Slipped on the way home from her son’s house five Christmases ago and her hip shattered.
Can no longer walk on her own.
Wasn’t there when her daughter died.
Older sister is the only sibling still living.

Father.
Youngest child.
Mostly deaf.
Probably depressed.
Called himself his mother’s favorite child.
Cried when his sister died.
May have been bullied as a child.
Losing control.

Daughter.
Oldest child.
Used to think divorce was the worst thing that could happen to a family.
Self-diagnosed with anxiety, some obsessive tendencies.
Doesn’t want children.
Chose to leave a religion that will damn her for her decisions.
Her brother learned to yell and her sister learned to conform.
Never stopped to think about why.

Arrhythmic

The doctor said something is wrong with my heart.
It beats out of time, pulses irregular,
slower when I exhale, but I can’t control that.
I’ve never been good at controlling my heart.
The doctor said I might have an arrhythmia.

Arrhythmia: any disturbance in the rhythm of the heartbeat—
but an erratic heartbeat is better than a silent one.

The doctor said her brain died.
I didn’t believe him.
When the clot stopped her breathing, her heart stopped too.
By the time the paramedics arrived twelve minutes later,
her brain had swollen too much for her to wake up.
She died a brain death, but it was her heart that killed her.
And then they took her bones, her eyes, her organs
so that someone else could live.
They didn’t take her heart.

The doctor said he needed to know my family’s medical history.
I didn’t trust him enough to talk about her.
I didn’t trust myself not to cry.
I didn’t trust him at all.
Condescending, corrupt, conservative.
He didn’t care about the state of my heart,
just the state of my mother’s bank account.

The doctor said I needed a 24-hour cardiac monitor,
more tests in a month or so.
His needles left a bruise on my hand.
No monitor will every properly diagnose me.
No treatment will ever give me control.

The doctor said something is wrong with my heart.
I’m afraid he might be right,
but whatever it is, he can’t fix it
because maybe I don’t want my bruises to fade.

The doctor said something is wrong with my heart,
and he was right. Whatever else might be wrong,
he can't fix what's broken inside.

Mourning

At first we think we’ll make it,
those beginning steps so promising
before we sink without warning.

The headstones are too far away,
every one a panic-inducing reminder
of our own fragile mortality.
Do we care enough to keep going?
Yes. We have to.

But sometimes you can’t control yourself.
The pain and fear and helplessness
swallow you,
exterminating everything
in the wake of your loss.
‘What if’ changes nothing, and yet—

We’re standing at the graves.
Meant to bring solace to the living,
they never really do.
They allow us to more easily hold on
rather than let go.
To pretend that worlds don’t end
in a matter of minutes.

Grief and rage well up inside me,
some pity but more than that, hate.
Fuck fuck fuck, my insides scream.
But nothing helps.

We carry the things that matter,
but we can never carry this.

They say love triumphs over death.
I say bullshit. Love is death.

Sunlight heats the right side of my face,
but although we leave,
the chill never seems to.
No matter how many times the world ends,
the sun still comes up.

And yet—

Next Window Please

unused postage stamps
and empty envelopes
the only signs of his past presence
people quickly forget
it was the cancer that took him
Next Window Please
says the sign on the table

Fathers and Daughters

Pink sweater,

dirty blonde hair

falling out of a headband

she probably put on herself.

Around six or seven years old,
holding her father's hand

with the kind of smile that will

break someone's heart someday.

I wonder what will happen

before someday.

As she bounces away, 

I imagine a girl

fifteen years older.

The same dirty blonde hair,

longer now,

pulled back. 

A girl who can't sleep in the same room

as another person. 

I wonder what will make her this way.

No Angels In London

They called her fallen,
and she can't fight what they say;
she will never get back up.

Children cry in the streets, not knowing exactly why,
not knowing that it could be so much better
than they've ever known.
The angels can't do anything to help.
Their wings are torn, their hands scarred
from dealing with the pain so no one else has to.
They hide their bruised arms and red eyes
with long sleeves and makeup.
They keep it together so no one else has to.
Because anything short of perfection is the same as damnation,
and anything less than what's expected isn't tolerated.
And so they struggle to maintain the imperfect, impossible ideal.

Identity is lost in a uniform congregation,
and it's difficult to separate the corruption from the institution.
The hollow reflection in the mirror becomes a shadow
as personal histories become suicide notes.
No one escapes unscathed.

While desire is a sin for women,
it's expected of men.

Our purpose is to purify those men
who can't control their own thoughts.
Their privilege is to tell us how to live,
but they can only do so because we let them.

Forgotten suit jackets hang over chairs
and the men turn the heat down
although the women are still cold in the skirts
they've been told to wear as a sign of devotion.

Wealthy old men grow richer on the pockets
of devotees who can't escape their circumstances. 
Senile old women babble on about a time no one remembers,
not even those who lived it alongside her.
Proud young men lose their self-control to obsession,
believing that everything will be just fine.
Battered young women never learn to expect
anything better from themselves or their lives.

Caged birds may sing of freedom,
but women sing because they are told to.
If they stop they lose the only acceptance they have ever known.
To be free is to be irredeemable.

God forbid a woman think for herself.

All they had to do was leave London,
but they can't.
London is everywhere, and
there are no angels to be found.